Its been grueling, Stephanie Stearns told reporters after hugging her tearful parents, who sat in the front row throughout the trial. Unlike Stephanie when questioned Buck gave away nothing only answering questions with a yes or no. Stephanie, who was in jail, had inadvertently given the FBI more evidence to use against her and Buck. Walker receives an annual salary that ranges between $46,796, as per NBC News When King asked jurors to consider whether further deliberation would be unproductive, the verdict to acquit was returned less than an hour later. When I read Vincent Bugliosi's book "And the Sea Will Tell," I found it a captivating story. Please join me at my new blog, The Garden of Memory. Stearns was pretty easy to get along with so most of the conflict came from Walker. Authorities found out that a woman had visited Buck the day before his escape. There are 38 fully-developed lessons on 10 important topics that Adventist school students face in their daily lives. Months passed with no word or sighting of the Grahams. Stearns was pretty easy to get along with so most of the conflict came from Walker. The Palmyra Islands are primarily unoccupied but do host a transient population mostly made up of scientists and researchers. Walker never acknowledged committing the murder, self-publishing an 895-word novel he called the true story of an island tragedy.. What happened next was a subject of dispute. Perhaps he murdered them at different times and different places around the island. The author makes some fair points but doesn't address any other possibilities in the deaths of Mac and Muff Graham. Duane Buck Walker was convicted in 1985 for the grisly murder in 1974 of a San Diego woman on an island paradise on Palmyra atoll about 1,200 miles from Honolulu. Then known as Buck Duane Walker, the former Big Island marijuana farmer was convicted in the 1974 murder of a San Diego couple on Palmyra, a remote Pacific island just north of the equator and about 1,100 miles south of Honolulu. At the time, she didnt have a criminal record compared to Buck. Walker earns an annual salary ranging between $ 45,000 $ 110,500. Were they a victim of the seas or something more nefarious? Get Essential San Diego, weekday mornings. Island Search Fearing for the Grahams the FBI agents traveled to Palmyra Islands to see if they had been stranded there. The Iola owners also had very few provisions along with them. And the Sea Will Tell is a true crime book by Vincent Bugliosi and Bruce Henderson. Stephanie Walker Husband. I keep waiting--in vain--for it to pop up on Netflix. The one victim that we know of was Eleanor Graham, called Muff, but her husband, Malcolm "Mac" Graham III, age 43, vanished. There are evidently makeshift memorials to the Grahams on the island, which is private property and illegal to trespass upon, but naturally being so remote it's difficult to police. Stephanie Walker Salary. WebFind helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Final Argument: An Inquiry into the murders of Mac and Muff Graham on Palmyra Island by Buck Walker and Stephanie Stearns at Amazon.com. A law school student in Hawaii had written an article about handling a bag containing the skull of one of the victims in the spring of 2009 during a classroom lecture by an FBI agent. As others have said, the book doesn't seem to have been edited, so much of it reads like a stream of random thoughts, with little coherence, and the endless errors in grammar, spelling and sentence construction are distracting. Although authorities strongly suspected the couple had murdered the Grahams, no bodies were found. By August 17th, The Sea Wind and The Iola were the only two boats left in Palmyra. The owners had covered the button with a layer of fiberglass in the hopes of making it more seaworthy. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. WebFind helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Final Argument: An Inquiry into the murders of Mac and Muff Graham on Palmyra Island by Buck Walker and Stephanie Stearns at Amazon.com. Stephanie had served her time in Hawaii and moved back to California. She most likely changed her name multiple times again over the years. Partington added: "It's a terribly sad story. The pair were desperate enough to murder the Grahams and steal their boat. He had been awaiting sentencing on a drug conviction when he and Stephanie had absconded on The Iola. Top subscription boxes right to your door, 1996-2023, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon. The ex-con, Buck Duane Walke r, and his girlfriend, Stephanie Stearns, had arrived at Palmyra in their shabby, poorly stocked boat while the Grahams were anchored there. Officials at Victorville and at the Bureau of Prisons regional office in Dublin, Calif., could not release Walker's health information. Her manipulative skills are unusually sharp as can be observed while she was at work on Palmyra Island the summer of 1974, and in her interplay with counsel and court during her murder trial. But Walker's former attorney, Earle Partington, says the Aug. 28 "projected" release date posted by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons means only that Walker will be considered for parole then. Buck Walker was paroled from federal prison in 2007. The killer was Buck Duane Walker, also known as Wesley G. Walker, a tough ex-convict and noted con artist, who had also sailed to Palmyra that summer with his girlfriend, Stephanie Stearns. : Ive not been able to find any information on how she lived out her life since being acquitted in the 80s. In it, he rebuts some of the trial analyses put forth in Bugliosis 1991 book, And the Sea Will Tell, later the subject of a TV miniseries. Stearns and Walker were convicted in 1977 of the theft of the Sea Wind, theft of certain personal property of the Grahams aboard the Sea Wind, and transportation of stolen property in interstate commerce. Roy meanwhile was not enjoying the islands as much as Mac was. Meanwhile, Mac Graham was keeping up his weekly contact with his friend in Hawaii filling him in on the exploits of Stephanie and Roy. Bernard asked about the Grahams and if they were still alive. He had been living in a trailer home in Willits, Calif., where he moved not long after his early parole in 2007 from a federal prison in Victorville, Calif. After his release, Walker self-published an 895-page book in which he maintained his innocence and spelled out his own version of events on Palmyra, a remote Pacific island some 1,000 miles south of Honolulu that has a thriving ecosystem largely untouched by humans. You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition. Meaning the wear to Muffs skull came from the hard lining of the aluminum container, not from the bottom of the harbor. On August 30, according to Stephanie Stearns, Buck Walker told her that the Grahams had invited the two of them over for dinner aboard the Sea Wind. Like Roy and Stephanie, they were surprised to see so many people. There was no sign of Mac's body. The new arrivals were Mac Graham, age 53, and his wife Eleanor, nicknamed Muff, who was slightly younger than Mac. Stearns was acquitted. Bernard pointed out to authorities where the yachts appearance had been changed from taking off the nameplate and trying to paint over it and repainting parts of the boat. Reviewed in Canada on March 27, 2016. Roy and Stephanie then tried to take their boat back to Hawaii, but it got stuck on the reef so they decided to take the abandoned Sea Wind instead. Bernard immediately contacted The Coast Guard who had been aware of the search for The Sea Wind. According to Stearns, the Grahams disappeared sometime between August 28 and August 30, 1974, and the young couple found the Grahams' Zodiac rigid inflatable dinghy upside down. Read our revised Privacy Policy and Copyright Notice. The trip to Palmyra atoll typically takes about a week, but the Iola got lost and the journey took Stearns and Walker nearly three weeks. Make sure you have Adobe Acrobat Reader v.5 or above installed on your computer for viewing and printing the PDF resources on this site. In so doing I arrive at an opinion and conclusion contrary to that of the jury, and am persuaded STEARNS and WALKER acted in concert, murdered the GRAHAMS for reasons set forth. So the FBI put a trace on the make and model of her car and that led them to a hotel in Nevada. Learn more. Her boyfriend, Buck Walker, was convicted of murder in June and sentenced to life in prison. , CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1st edition (May 1, 2014), Language The FBI took Roys photo to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) who recognized the picture as that of Buck Walker whom the DEA was also searching for. Bugliosis careful analysis of the tides revealed Stearns was lying about her activities purportedly occurring on the 30th and 31st of August 1974. Buck Duane Walker was a convicted felon and fugitive. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune. After this he wrote an "allegorical" novel about the events on Palmyra, in which he asserted that he was having an affair with Muff Graham, and that Mac went crazy after discovering them in the act. While Stephanie is placed under arrest, authorities were still searching for Roy who had evaded police at the marina. WebStephanie Stearns was tried separately in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. Walker lived off his Social Security check and paid $400 a month in rent. He lived on a scant social security check, renting a 22-foot trailer amongst the redwoods he found on Craigslist, coming to town as needed for groceries and to visit the library. They arrived from Palmyra Island, 1,100 miles south of Honolulu, later claiming they abandoned their own boat and took the Grahams' after the couple mysteriously disappeared. Download: English | German. I read it again quite recently and, finding that Mr. Bucy had written what was apparently a rebuttal of the findings of Bugliosi - specifically that Stephanie Stearns, rather than being innocent of the murders as was determined at her trial - was, in fact, the instigator and sadistic killer behind both deaths. Macs friend feared the worst. During World War II it housed a US Naval base that had long been abandoned. Walker and Stearns tried unsuccessfully to grow vegetables and were forced to subsist on coconuts and fish. Her boyfriend, Buck Walker, was convicted of The Big Book of Serial Killers (An Encyclopedia of Serial Killers), Edmund Kemper: The True Story of The Brutal Co-ed Butcher (Real Crime by Real Killers). Murder charges were added only after Mrs. Grahams skeletal remains were found in a metal box on Palmyra in 1981. Their presence was quickly wearing thin with the others that found them to be more of a nuisance. Wesley G. "Buck" Walker has been paroled from federal prison after serving 22 years of a life sentence for murder in a case that led to a best-selling novel and a TV miniseries. During the years following the Grahams disappearance, Palmyra atoll visitors had maintained a stack of newspaper clippings about the incident in a jungle shack. In the morning they began searching and found an overturned boat on the shore of the lagoon. His friend decided to reach out to any yachtsmen in the Pacific by radio asking if anyone had seen The Sea Wind. Buck Walker was paroled in 2007. It teems with life.". Buck Duane Walker was a convicted felon and fugitive. Macs patience with Roy was wearing thin as he did not like Roy destroying the islands natural environment. The Grahams had spent more than two years planning the trip and provisioning the Sea Wind, also expecting to stay at Palmyra about two years. Important Note: To access all the resources on this site, use the menu buttons along the top and left side of the page. Let's teach children to be unafraid. Try again. To allow the menu buttons to display, add whiteestate.org to IE's trusted sites. Her boyfriend, Buck Walker, was convicted of murder in June and sentenced to life in prison.