1954: "Shooting Star" was Caspers' second boating tragedy. The first was also a doozy

The entire “Fuentes/Shooting Star” saga can be found here.

     As you know, I have occasionally noted the high incidence of violent death in the unfolding Caspers/Cella/Harber saga—a lurid fabric into which the young Tom Fuentes was thoroughly woven. The “Shooting Star” disaster and the murder of Arlene Hoffman are but two extraordinary examples. There are several others.
     Here’s one that I haven't mentioned.
     We know that Ronald Caspers perished when the “Shooting Star” went down off the coast of Baja in 1974. But, as it turns out, that was not the first odd boating disaster that involved Caspers. The first occurred nearly twenty years earlier, when Caspers was a 23 years old rich kid.

     ALOHA MEANS GOODBYE. According to former OC GOP chairman (1969-72) Thomas C. Rogers in his Agents’ Orange (2000),

     Caspers had made headlines prior to ... [1970]. He and his wife Beatrice had been cruising in coastal waters south of Port Hueneme in the ketch Aloha on the night of October 1, 1954. With Caspers at the helm, the Aloha veered in front of an oncoming Coast Guard cutter. The Aloha sank and the remains of Beatrice Caspers were never found, despite an intensive search by Coast Guard vessels and aircraft. An investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard of this tragedy at sea never resulted in any criminal proceedings.

     Why did Rogers choose to mention a 1954 Ventura County boating accident in a book about Orange County politics?
     Perhaps Rogers had his doubts about Ron Caspers, a man who, according to him, later had a great impact on OC politics.

* * *

     In a Nov. 8, 1970 LA Times article (“Freshmen supervisors: a study in contrasts”), Caspers described himself as a “Reagan conservative." Guess so. He seemed to like Richard Nixon, too.
     And he was rich: according to the Times, he spent $81,695 winning his supervisor seat—an astounding sum at the time—including $46,984 of his own money.
     The Supe gig made him $15K per year.
     The Times described Caspers’ education:

     The son of the late R.W. Caspers, founder and head of Mutual Savings and Loan in Pasadena, Caspers managed to enter Menlo College at the age of 16, attended UCLA, was graduated from San Jose State College as a business administration major and did graduate work in marketing and financing at USC.

Ron Caspers, c. 1973

     —OK, I’ll say it: how does a guy start his education at a fancy private college, transfer to a UC school, and then end up getting his Bachelors at a state college? What's that about?
     The article goes on to explain that Caspers did indeed make a big success of Keystone Savings—which he founded in 1957, in Anaheim, when he was about 26 years old. 

     THE CASPERS TENENBAUMS. I did a little looking, and it turns out that Caspers came from a rich and perhaps peculiar family. As indicated above, his father, Rudolph, an avid yachtsman, ran Mutual Savings and Loan. By the mid-50s, he seemed to spend much of his time traveling about the world with his photographer wife. He died in 1958 at age 64.
     I do believe that Ron Caspers’ mother had some sort of TV show—perhaps a travelogue.
     I've found references to the “residuary trust under the will of Rudolph W. Caspers.” Not sure what that's about. Ron Caspers' father was named Rudolph, but so was his grandfather.
     There was a Rudolph Caspers in show biz in the thirties and forties. Same guy? Not sure.

* * *

     MOWED BY A CUTTER. I did find some old articles about the “Aloha” tragedy, which, to authorities back then, warranted investigation.
     The ramming and sinking of the Aloha by the Coast Guard cutter Morris occurred on October 2, 1954. The Aloha had five passengers, two of whom perished, including Caspers' wife. Within a few days, there was an official inquiry. In the end, the Coast Guard investigation concluded that the actions of those piloting the two ships—Ron Caspers (age 23) and an Ensign James Frost (age 25)—were responsible for the tragedy:

     …Out of the Coast Guard’s board of investigation and military inquiry yesterday came the tragic knowledge that the Morris and the Aloha both altered direction a few minutes before they collided.
     Ensign James A. Frost, 24, on the Coast Guard cutter Morris, ordered a change to port [left]. Ronald Caspers, 23, at the wheel of his father’s $55,000 racing ketch Aloha, adjusted to starboard [right].
     And the two alterations, each made to avoid a possible collision, accomplished just the opposite. They made for a near perfect collision course. (“Double shift of course blamed for sinking of yacht Aloha by cutter,” LA Times, Oct. 9, 1954)

     The details, however, are worth reviewing.
     On it's face, the incident was strange. On that dark but calm and clear night, the Coast Guard cutter Morris spotted the Aloha when it was still three miles away. The officer on deck of the Morris, Frost, kept an eye on it, for it kept coming at the Morris. He sought to avoid a collision, but the Aloha seemed to change direction to maintain a course directed at the Morris.
     It’s clear that Caspers was to some degree negligent in the incident:

The CG cutter Morris

     …[Attorney] Keith Ferguson … seized on Caspers’ horn testimony during cross-examination.
     “Are you aware that two blasts of a horn is a signal to denote that the ship is to change course to port [i.e., to their left]?” asked Ferguson.
     “No, I did not know that,” Caspers answered.
     “Do you know the rules of the road?” the attorney asked.
     “Not all of them,” Caspers admitted.
     Caspers, far from shifting course to port, altered gradually to starboard [to the right, from his perspective] for approximately five minutes before the crash, according to his testimony.
. . .
     “I thought the craft was stationary,” he said, “and I wanted to give it plenty of room.”
     “Didn’t it mean anything to you that your bearing on the other boat remained the same even though you had changed your course?” Ferguson, an admiralty lawyer, asked.
     “It would now,” Caspers replied, “But my mind wasn’t working that way then.”
     Caspers pointed out that he would not have acted differently even had he known the Morris was moving.
     “The other boat, being on my port [left] side, would have to change course,” he explained.

     Later in the article, testimony provides a dramatic account of the Aloha's actual sinking, an account that seems designed to make Caspers appear heroic:

A ketch

     [Survivors] Caspers, Boisot and Miss Kurz all testified to their almost miraculous escape from going down with the Aloha.
     Caspers said he stood up [when collision became imminent? occurred?] in the cockpit and moved to go below.
     “I kept thinking that I had to get the people out,” he said. “But by the time I got there, the cabin was almost full of water.
     “Then I saw some hands rise up through the debris. I reached down and grasped them and pulled up on them. It was Miss Kurz. I finally managed to pull her out and then we were in the water.
     “The ship went down immediately—almost instantaneously. The Dinghy was floating free and we swam to that. We didn’t see anybody and then we heard Boisot calling out. He swam over and hung on with us.”
     Miss Kurz testified that she was asleep on the starboard side of the cabin, aft. She said Mrs. Caspers was asleep in the port bunk of the same cabin.
     “I was either thrown or I vaulted from the bed,” Miss Kurz recalled. “Then I was standing in the middle of the room. I yelled and yelled for Bea. I felt in her bunk but I couldn’t locate her.
     “I had no time to spare. I started up the ladder and somehow got myself caught in the hatch. Then Ronald reached down and pulled me out.”

     Obviously, there are at least two possible hinky Caspers scenarios. First, Caspers was simply grossly negligent—scandalously ignorant and careless. Second, Caspers deliberately collided with the Morris.
     Why would he do that? Well, you can use your imagination. One possibility would involve collusion with the two other survivors (Boisot, a 32-year-old "manufacturer" and Kurz, a 25-year-old secretary). There's no evidence of anything like that. (But it's hard to find any information at all about so distant and obscure an event.)

* * *

     AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. The best account of the Coast Guard hearing that I could find appeared in an article in the Oct. 8 Long Beach Press-Telegram (“Cutter officer tells of crash”). According to that article, the crash occurred just before 5:00 a.m. Ensign James Frost was in charge of the cutter while the captain was sleeping. He testified that he spotted the Aloha when it was 2 or 3 miles away:

     “The young officer said that as the two craft approached one another visual bearing indicated the other vessel steadily moved from 20 to 30 degrees to his starboard.
     “At that time I considered the vessel to be passing me well to his starboard [i.e., to my right],” Ensign Frost declared.
     He said he went into the wheelhouse contemplating making a navigation “fix” but had been in only a few seconds when he looked out toward the other vessel and saw both running lights, indicating that it had turned toward him.
     “I took the binoculars and stepped out on the wing of the bridge,” he said. “I saw the green light only again. Then both lights again.
     “At this time I gave an order to the helmsman “left five.’” He explained he meant left five degrees rudder. He said the command was acknowledged and carried out.
     For a period of 10 seconds, Ensign Frost said, he could see alternately one navigation light and then both as the other vessel appeared to waver back and forth. [Presumably, Frost's seeing both lights suggested Aloha's course directly toward the Morris.]
     “Approximately 20 seconds before the collision,” he said, “I saw the port running light. I realized the other vessel was trying to cut across my bow. I gave the command “all back full.”
     “We hit the vessel approximately with our prow. We hit amidships on the port side” [the side where Mrs. Caspers was sleeping, aft].
     Ensign Frost said he did not sound any whistle signals prior to the impact and heard nothing from the Aloha at any time. At the time of the impact he sounded a series of four or more three-second whistle blasts. He said the Morris backed off about 50 yards and he gave orders to stop all engines.
     The whistles, general alarm signals, and shouting awakened the captain…. Ensign Frost said the skipper was on the bridge between 30 seconds to one minute of the collision.
     Ensign Frost said the Morris put searchlights into operation to seek survivors, but that he had seen no one on the deck of the Aloha at time of impact.
     The skipper of the Aloha, 23-year-old Ronald W. Caspers of Pasadena, told the board Thursday his version of events leading up to the collision.

     The victims of the tragedy included his 25-year-old wife, Barbara [she went by “Bea”], and Harold Kelly, Jr., 61 of New York and San Bernardino. Caspers and two other passengers were rescued.
     Caspers’ testimony brought out that the sounding of an electric horn may have contributed to the accident.
     Caspers testified that [Aloha passenger] Emile K. (Kelly) Boisot, 32, of Arcadia waked him by sounding the boat’s electric horn “two or three times” about 13 minutes before the Morris rammed the Aloha.
     The witness was asked by Atty. Keith Ferguson, San Francisco, special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, if he was aware “that two blasts of a horn is a signal to denote that a ship is to change course to port?”
     “No, I did not know that,” said Caspers, son of Altadena sportsman Rudolph W. Caspers, owner of the Aloha.
     Caspers said he altered course gradually to starboard for about five minutes before the crash.
     Earlier, the young skipper said he had seen the Morris and thought it to be one of other fishing boats he had noticed.
     “I thought the craft was stationary,” he continued, “and I wanted to give it plenty of room.”

     It’s all very odd, if you ask me. I mean, the collision could have gone down because of a perfect storm of incompetent maneuverings by the two skippers. Speaking as a non-sailor, and given the testimony above, that seems implausible. Maybe experienced seamen see it otherwise. Dunno.
     Why was Bea Caspers' body never found? You'll recall that none of the bodies of the ten passengers of the Shooting Star were ever found either. 
     What's it all mean? Maybe nothing. Bodies get eaten, lost.

* * *

     THE HAWAIIAN YARN. Earlier, I said that we "know" that  Ron Caspers perished with the "Shooting Star" in 1974.

     Do we? There's a reason, perhaps a very slim one, to wonder.
     In his excellent 1984 article "The Sinking of a Political Machine," published (in Orange Coast Magazine) exactly ten years after the "Shooting Star" sinking, journalist Larry Peterson considered the possibility that the yacht was deliberately sunk. One theory that had been proposed at the time, by a private detective and ex-cop named Neal Graney, involved the idea that one of the ten passengers of the "Shooting Star" helped sink it and survived:

     There is some support, however slender, for Graney’s belief that someone got off the boat alive. One former west Orange County elected official told me he thinks he saw a member of the ill-fated party about three years ago in Hawaii.
     At the time, the former official says he was on the beach near the Pacific Beach Hotel in Waikiki, and the supposedly deceased man crossed the street nearby.
     “It looked so much like him that I just yelled his name without thinking that he was supposed to be dead,” said the vacationer, who was well-acquainted with the Shooting Star passenger he thinks he saw. “He took off and disappeared into the crowd….I’m sure that, when I yelled out, he would have recognized me….It seemed deliberate.”
     Scenarios just as bizarre as Graney’s based more on conjecture than provable fact, have been widely circulated and are passed on by Cella, Battin and others to anyone who asks.
     Details vary, but the essentials are this: Somebody hired either organized crime-related figures or a right-wing paramilitary group to blow the Shooting Star out of the water.
     Implausible as that may seem, there is some evidence that the boat would not normally have sunk, even with the pounding it took from heavy seas.

     Peterson was referring to the repair history of the boat and evidence that it had undergone modifications that would make it virtually unsinkable.

     Peterson raised the question of why anyone would want to sink the ship. He turns to Richard Jordan's allegations, in a sworn declaration, that Caspers and his pal Harber (who was also on the boat) were attempting to shake him down—a highly plausible suggestion, given the histories of those two men, as explained recently here on DtB. Perhaps, suggests Peterson, Jordan wasn't the only target of shakedowns? Perhaps some of these others were violent people?

     And maybe Caspers believed that the DA was closing in on him (Jordan's declaration indicates that) and he couldn't face the fall that would result.

     Admittedly, there's a huge problem with the "Caspers did it" theory: two of Caspers' sons were lost with the ship (apparently). Of course, they might have been "in on it" and survived, along with dad, but that makes the whole yarn ridiculously complex and unlikely.

     Would a guy kill his own sons? Don't think so.

     Of course, we don't know who that former elected official thought he saw that day in Hawaii. Maybe it was Fred Harber.

     We'll never know.

Fred Harber

The mysterious sinking of the "Shooting Star." Part 1

The entire “Fuentes/Shooting Star” saga can be found here.

A typical AVR conversion

Ron Caspers

     Occasionally, DtB readers ask me about that curious moment in Trustee Tom Fuentes’ career when he passed on a fishing trip down up the Baja coast with his boss, OC Supervisor Ron Caspers, a few days after Caspers’ reelection in 1974. The ship—the "Shooting Star"—mysteriously disappeared, with all hands lost.

* * *

     In 1974, the ambitious 25-year-old Fuentes was Caspers’ “executive assistant.” A 1985 article about Fuentes, on the eve of his twenty-year tenure as OCGOP chair (Changing of the Guard for Orange County GOP), explains Fuentes' relationship to Caspers:

     Fuentes credits former Supervisor Ronald Caspers for much of his political rearing. He worked as an aide to Caspers for four years in the 1970s. Caspers' boat was lost at sea with 10 aboard—including Caspers—in 1974. (Fuentes would have been aboard the Shooting Star himself on the voyage to celebrate Caspers' reelection to a second term but decided against going at the last moment.) None of the 10 aboard was found.
     Fuentes had hoped that he would be appointed to replace Caspers. When he discovered that there was a one-year residency requirement that he did not meet, he decided to carry out an earlier plan to enter a seminary and study for the priesthood.

Tom Fuentes, c. 1974

     A year or so after this article (1986), Fuentes had by then established his bullying and autocratic reputation. During a political debate, faced with the Fuentean dictate that his time to run for a local office had not yet arrived, a well-known and respected local Republican (Nathan Rosenberg) angrily referred to Fuentes as Caspers' one-time "bag man."
     It will come as no surprise to long-time OC observers that Caspers, Fuentes' boss, was associated with a powerful group whose corruption eventually made headlines (see below).

* * *

     The 1974 sinking of the "Shooting Star" has never been satisfactorily explained.
     Recently, a close relative of one of the victims of that disaster contacted me in an effort to gather information—she says the family has always been dissatisfied with how little information they got from authorities or from the press—and this renewed my own interest in the event.
     The disaster started on June 13, 1974:

The Star-News, June 15, 1974
Ex-Pasadenan, Sons on Sinking Craft

     A sea search for a pleasure boat containing 10 persons … intensified late Friday with the Mexican Navy and Air Force vessels joining the U.S. Coast Guard in the effort.
     On board the 59-foot “Shooting Star” are Supervisor Ron Caspers, 43 … and his two sons, Kirk, 20, and Rick, 18.
     The drama began late Thursday night [June 13] when the converted Navy vessel was reported sinking by its owner-skipper Fred Harber, an Orange County political manager. In a “May Day” call, Harber radioed that the “Shooting Star” was taking in water off the Baja California coast.
     As the rescue units converged in the search area, about 275 miles south of San Diego in an area dotted by the San Benito Isles and Island De Cedros [see map], authorities said an advancing hurricane was rapidly approaching the operation area.
     Friends and former associates who knew Caspers as a banker here during the fifties recalled ominously Friday how the supervisor’s first wife, Barbara, was killed in an accident at sea on Oct. 2, 1954.
. . .
     Another person, advertising executive Harold Kelly, also was killed in that accident but Caspers and two other friends survived.
. . .
     Also aboard the boat are Thomas Klein, 26, an aide to Orange County Supervisor Chairman Ralph Clark; two of Klein’s brothers, identified as John and Tim Klein; Leonard Basher, an Anaheim contractor; Basher’s son-in-law, Richard Tully, 21, and Basher’s nephew, Robert Basher, also of Anaheim.
     As the search continued, authorities reported that the approaching Hurricane Connie was causing rough seas and limiting visibility to 500 feet. Most of the vessels steaming toward the area were said to have arrived in the rescue area late Friday night or early today. In two calls prior to the distress signal, however, Harber reported that the $65,000 vessel is well-stocked with rations, life jackets and a small lifeboat with outboard motor.
     The 10-member party was on a fishing trip from Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of the Baja peninsula, to Newport Beach when the problems arose.

     Ultimately, all ten passengers were lost. Despite some big unanswered questions, the incident faded into oblivion. Slowly, politically aware locals began to view the matter as curious, mysterious, odd. It became mythic.


     Nine years later:
     Here’s a portion of an article about Orange County “mysteries” that appeared in Orange Coast Magazine in October of 1983 (“Some OC Tales Could Add Another Chapter To Ripley’s—Believe It Or Not”; by Cathy Eilts):

     ...The third major mystery occurred June 13, 1974, when the 59-foot yacht, the Shooting Star, carrying Orange County Supervisor Ron Caspers, the former Buena Park Mayor and Cypress City Manager Fred Harber, and eight others disappeared near San Benitos Islands off Baja California. The group was on a return voyage from Cabo San Lucas celebrating Casper’s reelection as 5th District Supervisor.
     According to an article which appeared in the Register of October 2, 1974, a search for the vessel began after an engineer aboard a private research ship on the night of June 13 picked up the following distress signal: “Mayday. This is the Shooting Star with nine persons aboard… We are sinking about 50 miles from Turtle Bay.”
     The Coast Guard searched for the Shooting Star from June 14 to June 20, covering 40,000 square miles. Six to ten private planes also searched the area….
     In June, debris was found from the yacht including the top of the cabin, some furniture, and a sailboat which had capsized. In July, a foreign freighter recovered the yacht’s lifeboat 350 miles from the first sighting of debris. None of the bodies or the yacht’s hull were found.
     Three years later, according to another Register article, new questions surfaced regarding the incident. A sea captain who often traveled from Orange County to Cabo San Lucas may have been the last American, other than the Shooting Star travelers, to talk to Harber. According to the seaman, Harber had said the group planned to make a leisurely voyage and do some marlin fishing. However, in order to travel to the spot near Turtle Bay where the distress call was picked up, the yacht would have had to travel 69 hours straight and often in stormy seas. Why did Harber, who was considered an expert seaman, try the fast-paced and dangerous voyage contrary to former plans?

     This next article, which appeared, again in OC Magazine, exactly ten years after the incident, continues the “mystery” theme and reports some remarkable speculation and political intrigue.
     Some began to ask, "Was it murder?"

The Sinking of a Political Machine
by Larry Peterson

Dr. Louis Cella

     …Among the ten men lost and presumed dead on the ill-fated fishing trip were County Supervisor Ron Caspers and political strategist Fred Harber.
     Following its investigation of the disappearance of the converted naval rescue craft just before midnight on June 13, 1974, the U.S. Coast Guard concluded that there was no evidence of foul play.
     But, other than to suggest that bad weather may have been a factor, the probe failed to determine why the 63-foot vessel, owned by Harber, disappeared with barely a trace in rough, shark-infested waters. What is not subject to question is that Orange County’s politics never have been the same since that tragic night.
     The voyage was supposed to be a celebration of Caspers’ re-election only a few days before. The victory was engineered by Harber, who had close links to Dr. Louis Cella and other political figures who later were to be indicted on charges ranging from fraud and embezzlement to campaign-finance cover-up and bribery.
     At the time, Cella headed the closest thing Orange County has ever had to a political machine. [Please note: Fuentes’ turn as county GOP chair started in 1984 and lasted about twenty years.] In the mid-seventies, Cella and south Orange County land baron Richard O’Neill teamed up to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to dozens of candidates.
     District Attorney Cecil Hicks, close to the country’s Republican establishment, fought a running battle with Cella. Hicks once publicly accused the doctor of heading a “shadow government” that controlled the county Board of Supervisors. Cella responded by accusing Hicks of alcoholism. In any case, a majority voting bloc, usually consisting of recipients of Cella’s political largesse, repeatedly helped stymie Hicks’ attempts to investigate Cella and his allies.
     Within four years after the sinking of the Shooting Star, most members of the shadow government had been driven into political exile. Some, indeed, were behind bars, and others were fighting rear-guard legal battles that would end in their incarceration.
     Cella was convicted in 1978 of using a hospital he owned to defraud the federal government of hundreds of thousands in Medi-Cal funds, much of it used to underwrite his campaign contributions. After serving time in federal prison, he moved to Coachella. County Supervisor Robert Battin, for whom Harber had been an aide, was convicted in 1976 and briefly jailed for illegally using county funds to help his unsuccessful 1974 bid for the Democratic nomination of lieutenant governor. He now practices law in Santa Ana. Supervisor Laurence Schmit, a Cella ally and a major beneficiary of his political influence was defeated in his 1978 re-election bid. He moved to Northern California Supervisor Ralph Diedrich, who tried to reassemble the shattered machine, was convicted in 1979 on bribery charges. Recently released from prison, he, too, has left the county. O’Neill—never accused of wrongdoing—eventually became chairman of the state Democratic party. But that was only after years of virtual political hibernation during which he lived down the onus of his alliance with Cella.

Ralph Diedrich

     Cella, interviewed last year in Coachella, where he practices medicine at a farm workers’ clinic, said the sinking of the Shooting Star marked the “death knell” for his role as a power broker.
     The loss of Harber, he said, deprived him of his political allies of a “political genius,” who, had he steered the boat safely home, could have helped pilot the shadow government through troubled political waters.
     And, in Caspers, Cella added, the group lost a reliable ally who could have helped push through a Cella-backed move to investigate the district attorney’s office and blunt any possible probe of the Cella-O’Neill combine.
     “If Caspers had lived, we would have had the votes to stop Hicks,” said Cella. “He was a very strong vote against Cecil and he disliked Cecil even more than Fred did.”
     Battin agrees with Cella’s assessment, calling the loss of Harber and Caspers “the beginning of the end.”
     But even if the demise of the Cella-O’Neill machine is attributable to that of the Shooting Star, the events that sealed the boat’s fate remain a mystery.
     Neither bodies nor pieces of the wooden hull of the ship were ever found. Recovered 350 miles away from what was believed to be the site of the boat’s sinking was its thirteen-foot lifeboat. More than 300 miles from the presumed resting place of the Shooting Star, but a like distance from the lifeboat, debris from the yacht was found: a thirteen-foot sailboat, two large pieces of cabin top, two life jackets, some furniture and a few smaller items.
     The Coast Guard investigation failed to determine why the life jackets apparently were not used or why radio reports before the sinking indicated different positions.
     Also still a mystery is why no one, according to the official report, apparently was able to transfer from the Shooting Star to the lifeboat. 

Robert Battin

    Another discrepancy that remains unexplained is that a mayday message picked up by a research vessel in the area said there were nine persons aboard.
     And still subject to guesswork—and not addressed by the report—is why, according to witnesses, the party on board suddenly forsook plans for two days of leisurely marlin fishing and headed—apparently in a hurry—for San Diego.
     The Coast Guard said it found no evidence of fire or explosion aboard the lifeboat. But at least one person believes there was an explosion aboard the Shooting Star and that it was set off deliberately.
     Private detective Neal Graney, who conducted his own unofficial probe, went so far as to publish a 200-page fictional account—Mayday! Mayday! Morningstar—a thinly disguised rendition of his speculations about what happened. The names, of course, have been changed. Currently, he is trying to market a screenplay based on the same theme. “I know I don’t have a smoking gun,” says the former Chicago policeman. “But, in my gut, I’m sure it was murder.”
     Though long on conjecture and short on proof, he also theorized that one of the men aboard knew the yacht was about to blow up and left in the lifeboat before the explosion. That, he argues, explains the mayday report of nine aboard and the great distance between the discovery place of the lifeboat not only from the sinking site but also from the other debris.
     And the bodies? “There are many reasons,” explains one of Graney’s fictional characters. “When bodies go down to the bottom of the sea, they usually float to the top within two or three days. That is, unless they are in small pieces. Then they are fish bait.” As for the condition of the life preservers, some of them damaged but none demonstrably bloodied, Graney attributes that to the impact of metal or wood fragments from the explosion.
     There is some support, however slender, for Graney’s belief that someone got off the boat alive. One former west Orange County elected official told me he thinks he saw a member of the ill-fated party about three years ago in Hawaii.

Richard O'Neill and family, 1950

     At the time, the former official says he was on the beach near the Pacific Beach Hotel in Waikiki, and the supposedly deceased man crossed the street nearby.
     “It looked so much like him that I just yelled his name without thinking that he was supposed to be dead,” said the vacationer, who was well-acquainted with the Shooting Star passenger he thinks he saw. “He took off and disappeared into the crowd….I’m sure that, when I yelled out, he would have recognized me….It seemed deliberate.”
     Scenarios just as bizarre as Graney’s based more on conjecture than provable fact, have been widely circulated and are passed on by Cella, Battin and others to anyone who asks.
     Details vary, but the essentials are this: Somebody hired either organized crime-related figures or a right-wing paramilitary group to blow the Shooting Star out of the water.
     Implausible as that may seem, there is some evidence that the boat would not normally have sunk, even with the pounding it took from heavy seas. Louis Fallows, co-owner of the Wilmington-based firm that was one of the government’s contractors for the type of naval rescue boat that was rebuilt to create the Shooting Star, is graphically emphatic on that question. She said the boats were built with air-tight compartments that would have buoyed themselves so much that it wouldn’t have sunk completely even if there were a big hole in the hull. “The only thing that would have sunk it would have been if it were blown apart,” she said, without being prompted by being told of theories about an explosion.
     Why anyone would want to deep-six the Shooting Star, especially in the manner Graney suggests, is unclear.

From the 6/24/74 Star-News

     But evidence that Harber and Caspers were up to potentially dangerous mischief at the time surfaced four years later. In 1978, developer Richard V. Jordan alleged in a suit against the county that the two were trying to shake him down for a $10,000 payoff plus $2000 a month for approval of a project he wanted to build near El Toro, in Caspers’ supervisorial district.
     The county settled out of court on Jordan’s claim that the county illegally revoked his building permit, paying him $700,000. The matter was investigated by the district attorney’s office to determine whether persons still alive might be criminally liable, but that probe ended inconclusively.
     As it turns out, preliminary discussion concerning the alleged deal took place in Mexican waters aboard the Shooting Star, Jordan said in papers filed with his lawsuit.
     Before the arrangement could be consummated, however, Caspers, Harber and the others departed on the fateful trip. Ironically, Jordan said, he was invited along, but declined because he didn’t think the Shooting Star was seaworthy. But the Coast Guard cited reports that deficiencies on the boat had been corrected prior to the trip.
     Jordan, the record shows, knew how to seek and obtain remedies for his grievance in a court of law. But one is tempted to ask: Were Harber and/or Caspers using the same routine on anyone else, perhaps someone prone to resort to different—and more violent—remedies?
     That might be a point of departure for any resumed investigation of the disaster. For years, however, there has been no evidence of any official interest in the matter—with one exception. In the past year or so, the FBI, questioning a politically connected Orange County person on a different matter, slipped in some questions about the Shooting Star. That doesn’t amount to a new probe, of course. But ten years later, even a residue of official curiosity at any level is intriguing.
     Still, until the questions left hanging by the official report are answered, who is to say that Graney’s explicit but seemingly farfetched version is wrong? Those questions, of course, may never be answered. And the tale of the last voyage of the Shooting Star may make as good a whodunit ten years from now as it does today.

SEE Part 2

The "Shooting Star" was a converted WWII-era AVR

Background on Fuentes:

• Dear Mr. Fuentes (Nathan Calahan, April 28, 1999)
• GOP's Fuentes Favored to Win 7th Term Chairing O.C. Party (LA Times, January 19, 1997)
• Interview With Tom Fuentes, Part 1 (Red County, September 15, 2008)
• Interview With Tom Fuentes, Part 2 (Red County, September 16, 2008)
• Trouble in the Big Tent (Jean Hastings Ardell, Orange Coast Magazine, March 1996)

• It's Hoffman vs. Sumner, Badham vs. Rosenberg at TV Taping (LA Times, May 20, 1986)

• Changing of the Guard for Orange County GOP - Incoming Chairman Sees Party's Role as 'Anchor to the Right' for State (LA Times, Jan. 7, 1985)

• Guiding With an Iron Hand (LA Times, July 11, 1996)

• Tom Fuentes: professional schmoozer, circumventer of open processes, and THUG

• Tom Fuentes at 34: "consultant"

• Tom Fuentes: ubiquitous paid consultant

• Tom Fuentes and LFC/Lange

• Thanks, Tom Fuentes: incestuous and Cronyistic South Orange County politics

• Tom Fuentes, Caspers' "bagman"?

• The day Fuentes’ boss called Mexican-Americans “banditos”