News-Info-Alerts

Re: Private Eye Finds Bomber Crash Answers

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: November 28, 2003

"Sleuth finds answers to bomber-crash mystery
The headline goes here
KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE

DEERFIELD BEACH - Private eye Shirley Ann Casey took on a mystery that had stumped Navy officials and police. But sure enough, it was the tenacious Casey, a gumshoe at 52, who cracked the case.

It would prove to be the case of a lifetime - a mystery spanning nearly 60 years that began on a snow-covered volcano in Russia, thousands of miles from Casey's home in Deerfield Beach, where she did most of her sleuthing.

Partly because of her efforts, a burial ceremony honoring World War II bomber pilot Lt. Walt Whitman and his crew of six took place earlier this month at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Standing in the crowd was Casey, representing the family of Philadelphia-born Whitman. One cousin on Whitman's paternal side was too ill to travel, and one on his maternal side wished to remain anonymous and had no desire to attend.

"This story touched my heart," said Casey, who has no family in the military but volunteered her services to the Navy two years ago after reading about the military's unsuccessful search for relatives of a World War II pilot.

Crew vanished

"We were running up against a brick wall," said Ken Terry, head of the POW/MIA section for Navy Casualty, a division of the Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn.

Whitman and his crew of six vanished into an icy fog March 25, 1944, while on a bombing and reconnaissance mission to Japan from Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

The fate of the crew was a mystery until three years ago, when Russian officials notified the United States of a missing PV-1 Ventura, a twin-engine patrol bomber that crashed nearly 60 years ago on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia.

The bomber was one of five assigned that cold March night to fly 1,500 miles round trip to Shumshu Island in the Northern Kurils on a bombing mission, then head back home. The route, known as the "Empire Express," was flown repeatedly in the final two years of World War II.

Only one plane completed the mission. One crashed on takeoff, and two were forced to turn back. The fifth, carrying Whitman and his crew of six, vanished.

Whitman's crewmates included co-pilot John Hanlon Jr. of Worcester, Mass.; Samuel Crown Jr. of Columbus, Ohio; Clarence Fridley of Manhattan, Mont.; Donald LeWallen of Omaha, Neb.; James Palko of Superior, Wis.; and Jack Junior Parlier of Decatur, Ill.

After excavation of the crash site, DNA comparisons were made of the lost crew and relatives. Both paternal and maternal bloodlines were required for a complete DNA search.

But the Navy, which even sought help from Miami Beach police, ran into trouble hunting down maternal relatives of the pilot, who was 25 at the time of the crash. His personnel file mentioned only an aunt living in Miami Beach.

Casey, a Boston native who has been tracing people for a living since 1990, works as a detective for a financial firm in West Palm Beach. In her spare time she finds missing persons, from crime victims to biological parents to hard-to-find heirs.

The search for Whitman's aunt was frustrating, with one dead end after another. But Casey persevered.

According to her research, Whitman left Philadelphia at age 3 after his parents divorced. He moved with his mother and her new husband to Texas, then to St. Louis as a teenager to live with relatives after his mother's death. With his aunt's help, he entered the University of Cincinnati before joining the Navy for training as a pilot.

The aunt, Frances Williams McClain, married four times and lied about her age, leaving a confusing paper trail, Casey said.

The aunt died in 1977 at age 92, but Casey was able to trace a cousin mentioned in her will.

The cousin was willing to provide the Navy with a blood sample.

Had it not been for Casey's work tracking down a DNA sample from the maternal bloodline, the DNA investigation would have been inconclusive, said Terry of Navy Casualty.

"The remains might have included Walt Whitman's, and we would have never known," he said.

But they didn't. Only the remains of Fridley, LeWallen and Palko were found in the wreckage.

Despite the ceremony in Arlington, this case remains open, Terry said. He and his team will continue to research the fate of the other crew members, including Whitman.

© 2003 Tallahassee Democrat "