Ten Degrees of Reckoning (19 page)

“So, in effect, my brother’s murderer gets to decide whether or not to put himself on trial,” John said. His frustration was palpable.

John Sleavin was grateful to the New Zealand MSA for its thoroughness in tracking down the
Pan Grace.
He knew that it was too much to assume they would send a representative to South Korea to await the arrival of the
Pan Grace,
which was expected to dock in Inchon on December 11. Additionally, he felt strongly about having a United States presence in Inchon. John lived in Portland, Oregon, and contacted the United States Coast Guard there. It was suggested that he call the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Hawaii, since that office might have more information about an investigation taking place in the South Pacific.

John reached Lieutenant Commander Bob Acker in Honolulu. Acker told John it was unlikely that the Coast Guard would be involved in the investigation in another country, save for a United States-flagged commercial vessel, in some exceptions. Acker told him the Coast Guard had already done as much as it could; they had evaluated and dismissed a possible suspect vessel that entered American Samoa with a damaged hull.

Beyond that, the United States Coast Guard had granted the request of the New Zealand MSA to continue the investigation on their behalf, based upon the UNCLOS resolution. However, John was informed, the New Zealand investigators definitely would not be going to South Korea; the authority granted to them was limited to reasonable actions deemed necessary in determining the cause of the
Melinda Lee
incident.

John had always been involved in advocacy issues, from bicycling paths to light rail, and he understood what a concerted effort by the Sleavin siblings could do. He talked to them about using diplomatic channels to increase the possibility of United States participation in the investigation. His sister Peg lived in Oregon, his sister Colleen lived in Washington state, his sister Kathy lived in Colorado, and his sister Sharon lived in Alexandria, Virginia. If they all contacted their respective members of Congress, surely it would result in some congressional action.

Sharon’s state representative in Virginia was Jim Moran, and her state senator was John Warner. On December 8, with time running out before the
Pan Grace
would dock in its home port, she faxed both offices thirteen pages of information and articles. Sharon was told that Senator Warner had been in the navy in the Second World War, and he might offer the best support. In fact, Senator Warner had disrupted his law school education for active military duty on the Korean Peninsula in 1951, a year after the Korean War broke out. He also had completed a bachelor of science in engineering degree. He had more in common with Judy than he would ever know.

In 1995, when his office was contacted, Senator Warner was the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. His actions on behalf of his constituent Sharon Sleavin MacDonald, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and on behalf of her family, reflected his reputation for being conscientious and fair-minded. Senator Warner ensured that the United States Coast Guard would become involved with the investigation and that one of its officers would be waiting on the dock for the
Pan Grace
to arrive. Within several days, Acker in Honolulu was directed by U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C., to oversee the investigation from Honolulu and to assign an officer from their Marine Safety Office in Asia to head to South Korea immediately. His presence would be supported by the International Maritime Organization Resolution A.637(16), which establishes procedures for member countries to cooperate in marine casualty investigations, and to share information, where they have a substantial interest.

The
Pan Grace
did not come directly into port. It remained at an anchorage just outside the harbor. The shipping company, Pan Ocean, sent its own inspector and a company lawyer out to the ship. Company representatives sent back several inconsistent messages: Pan Ocean initially reported traces of fiberglass, scratches, and paint markings on the bow of the
Pan Grace,
but later the ship denied having been in the area of the collision.

“Scratches are common,” said a company spokesman.

The
Pan Grace
had been given clearance to dock and unload the cargo, but the ship remained at anchor.

“The ship is mooring off the port awaiting required procedures,” said its spokesman.

Eric Matthews, the United States Coast Guard officer, took a launch out to look at the hull of the
Pan Grace.
He noted several areas of paint and scratches and he photographed them as the launch circled twice, but he was not allowed to board the ship or even get too close.

The evidence seemed suspicious; the photographs showed the paint scratches on the
Pan Grace
’s hull to be the same color blue as the antifouling paint on the
Melinda Lee.
However, it was circumstantial evidence, and the
Pan Grace
could easily maintain that the scratches were made by their own anchor or anchor chain, or the ship bumping the wharf in Tauranga, New Zealand, before they departed. In fact, while some of the crew said they could not account for the scratches, several crew members said the hull was “not in good shape” when they left Tauranga, despite a recent painting. Without the
Melinda Lee
(which was at the bottom of the ocean), there was no paint available to compare to the transferred paint. Indeed, a Pan Ocean representative sent a list of questions, and the top three were: Where is the
Melinda Lee
? What is the state of the
Melinda Lee
’s condition? and Will the
Melinda Lee
be raised? The Pan Ocean Shipping Company could be looking for a way to refute all the evidence.

Both issues—proving the scratches and paint markings on the
Pan Grace
occurred after the ship departed from its last port in New Zealand, and identifying the source of those paint transfers as the
Melinda Lee
—were solved in the most improbable ways.

The newspapers had been reporting the progress, or lack thereof, with headlines such as KOREANS STALL OVER SHIP EVIDENCE. In New Zealand, a letter was delivered to the Whangarei Hospital for Judy, from Camlab Colour Limited in Tauranga.

Dear Mrs. Sleavin,

My deepest sympathy for your tragic loss. Enclosed are two photographs of the Pan Grace as she left Tauranga Harbour on 23 November 1995. I cannot see any marks on the bow, and to confirm this, I have enlarged a portion of the negative. Please use the prints if they are of any benefit. The negatives belong to Howard Dunn, whose hobby is to photograph commercial ships when they enter or leave from Tauranga.

Yours sincerely,

Adria E. Cameron

We were all grateful to Howard Dunn, the retired gentleman whose interests in shipping and photography were invaluable to Judy, and we blessed Adria Cameron, the proprietress of the camera shop, whose hobby surely could have been in the amateur detective field. The photographs proved irrefutably that when the
Pan Grace
left Tauranga, the ship’s last port before the collision, she left with a clean hull, devoid of scratches and markings or paint transfers.

The second problem was more difficult to solve. A Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion went out again, over a region of 1,500 square miles, on a recovery search for the bodies and the wreckage of the
Melinda Lee.
A shoreline search was conducted as well. Marine experts had warned that it was highly improbable the bodies would come ashore with the weather conditions and prevailing currents. They also explained that “due to the depth of the water and the pressure of the cold, it would be extremely debatable whether the bodies could float up.” Nevertheless, the trained spotters were optimistic that they might sight pieces of the hull for the evidence the investigation required. They did find some flares and some metal canisters, most likely from the Sleavins’ life raft, but there were no remnants of the hull itself.

None of the yachties in Opua or Whangarei had been in Trinidad when the Sleavins had purchased their antifouling paint, in bulk, with a number of cruisers. Annique asked Judy if she could remember any of the other cruisers who had used that same bottom paint, because if they could be found, they might be persuaded to send in samples from their boats. Judy thought maybe their dear friends Peter and Glenda Couch had been part of the group that purchased the paint. She thought Peter and Glenda might be in North Carolina on their sailboat,
Lamorna.
They had said goodbye to the Sleavins in Venezuela and sailed to Puerto Rico, planning to make their way up the East Coast of the United States. Judy also told Annique to be gentle when she told them about the tragedy; they had been Ben and Annie’s surrogate grandparents for eight months.

Peter and Glenda were indeed in North Carolina, and at the same time Judy and Annique were figuring out a way to contact them, they heard the terrible news from good friends on another boat nearby. Their friends had access to a phone, and Glenda called Judy at the hospital. Judy was thrilled to hear her voice. They cried together and then, Judy recalls, she told a startled Glenda they would have to mourn later, right now she needed help with the investigation. Had they bought the same antifouling paint as the Sleavins in Trinidad, she asked Glenda, and if not, did they remember any of the cruisers who had? The Couches had not, but offered to get on the ham radio and put out a worldwide call asking for the information. A ham operator soon relayed a reply from Sherry and Lenny Beckett, who were still in Trinidad on their boat,
Island Time.
Sherry went to the boatyard, asking if the owners might supply her with the invoices or names of everyone who had been part of the bulk purchase of the Ameron blue antifouling paint that had been used on the
Melinda Lee
in 1994. The boatyard personnel found a copy of the Sleavin invoice and passed it on to the paint manufacturer. The manufacturing warehouse was searched to find the antifouling paint with the exact matching date code, and a wet sample was provided. The paint manufacturer ensured that the paint went directly to the United States Coast Guard. The boatyard personnel then directed Sherry and Lenny to the sailboat
Nereides
from Gothenburg, Sweden. Rolf Berg had just hauled his boat out for maintenance. He was happy to allow them to chip some paint samples from
Nereides
’ bottom, from paint with the same date code, bought at exactly the same time the Sleavins had bought theirs for the
Melinda Lee.

It was a confluence of factors that led to gathering all the evidence. Later we would learn that this was the simple part.

Eighteen

The Investigation

THE NEW ZEALAND MARITIME SAFETY AUTHORITY HAD sent a communication to the port authority in Inchon, South Korea, apprising them of the impending arrival of the
Pan Grace
and of its probable involvement in a collision. They also notified their maritime safety counterparts in Seoul that the New Zealand investigators had been granted limited authority on behalf of the United States, and they appealed for full cooperation. They asked the Korean Central Marine Accident Inquiry Agency (CMAIA) to question the master and crew of the ship and share the responses. The New Zealand MSA would also interview Judy over a course of several weeks, asking for more and more detailed information.

The United States Coast Guard’s role was more informal, as their findings could not be entered as evidence in a court of law. They were there to support the Korean investigators in their efforts, to represent the United States, and to verify that a thorough and complete investigation was being done.

The Honolulu office of the Coast Guard sent Chief Warrant Officer Eric Matthews to South Korea from his post in Japan. He was experienced in the area of ships and shipping, and well acquainted with the formalities in Asia. In fact, earlier that year, he had been assigned to Ulsan, South Korea, to conduct the required annual safety inspections of United States-flagged vessels hauled out in the shipyards there for maintenance. Matthews met with the personnel at the United States Embassy in Seoul, read all the reports the New Zealand investigators had sent, and then went to Inchon to meet with the chief investigator and staff of the Inchon District Marine Accident Inquiry Agency (MAIA). He asked for access to all related files. They declined, but suggested he contact the United States Embassy in Seoul; it was the beginning of many circuitous routes Matthews would have to take to obtain information. The MAIA did take him to catch a launch to look at the hull of the
Pan Grace,
anchored out a number of miles. The vessel was still loaded with logs when he circled twice and took photographs.

The United States Embassy asked the South Korean authorities to send the U.S. Coast Guard copies of documents containing the responses of the crew members to questions sent them by the New Zealand investigators. However, the authorities were not forthcoming.

“The responses to questions sent by New Zealand MSA to the crew are still being worked on,” Matthews was told by memorandum.

Eventually Matthews received a document, in Korean. The Inchon investigators refused to help with the translation. They told him to go back to the embassy and hire a translator.

He did. The document revealed that the Inchon investigators had interviewed the master of the
Pan Grace,
Captain Kim; Second Mate Han, who was the duty officer on watch; and Quartermaster Lee, who was at the helm of the ship. The second mate said he saw a red light from a vessel off the ship’s starboard bow, but would not provide a rough estimate of the bearing of the vessel or its distance from the
Pan Grace.
He also refused to say what the visibility was during the period in question. Publicly, at least, the Inchon investigators were not disturbed by his lack of information, or even skeptical.

The
Pan Grace
remained at an anchorage just outside the harbor. Matthews requested a launch to look at the hull more closely, but his request was denied. The United States Embassy made a formal request to the other investigating authority, the South Korean Maritime Police. They agreed to take him out, but left him standing at the dock. Eventually someone came by to tell him the Maritime Police had decided at the last minute to go out to the
Pan Grace
an hour before the appointed time.