Word: spradley
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...Spradley's plight seemed minor, however, compared with that of McLemore. Spradley told authorities that the last he remembers seeing his co-pilot was near the airplane during the Indians' shooting spree, "praying out loud...
There were these two American pilots from Houston-that much seems certain. One was William Spradley, a quiet, popular bachelor normally employed as an engine driver with the fire department. The other was Roy McLemore, fiftyish, short, fat and a sometime singer of country music. On April 29 they got into a twin-engine plane at a small airport near Miami and headed south. So far, so good...
...Spradley awoke the next day with a bullet in his back in a small hospital in Riohacha, Colombia. He explained to authorities that he and McLemore had been flying down to Venezuela to pick up oil-drilling bits. But they had had engine trouble near the Colombian coast and were forced to land on a makeshift runway. Then, claimed Spradley, he was set upon by Indians wearing loincloths. They shot him, robbed him and left him by the plane...
Colombian officials had heard such tales before. The Guajira region where Spradley and McLemore landed is rich in marijuana-most of America's pot comes from there (TIME, Jan. 29, 1979)-and for months the army has been cracking down on clandestine flights from the U.S. that swoop in, load up and head north. The Colombians were particularly skeptical when Spradley admitted he could not remember the name of the airport he had taken off from, or his Venezuelan destination, or the company for which he was supposedly working. The missing McLemore, he said, had all the details...
...story of the two men filtered back Stateside early this month and was made public when a Colombian attorney phoned Dale Everitt, the Houston fire department's public relations officer, and offered to spring Spradley...