This post is kind of a follow up to a post I did a while back detailing some of my exploits while working in private security. The owner of the company, whose father I would later partner up with in a firearms dealership, was quite a character and was good friends with two local private eyes that would eventually be of some notoriety. (I also became a licensed PI and will get into that in a bit.)

 The first was Billy Franklin, your archetypical private eye who would gain fame for exposing Senator, and former Virginia Governor, Chuck Robb's cocaine use and adultery. (The photo above is of yours truly and former Miss Virginia Tai Collins that was taken in front of the store. Tai was a playmate and would eventually become a screenwriter and actress on Baywatch. She was also one of the women Robb was cheating on his wife with.) Franklin would end up writing a book about his investigation of Chuck Robb. I had several occasions to visit Billy and he was, indeed, quite a character.

In the end, there was overwhelming evidence of Chuck's drug use and adultery. Franklin mentions in his book that the main character that corrupted Robb was Va. Beach local Bruce Thompson. My only contact with Thompson came when I was working uniformed security at a local hotel where Bruce was the General Manager. We had an incident that required the notification of Beach PD. The night manager had been trying to get a hold of Bruce, who we knew was in his suite at the hotel. Long and the short of it was Beach PD went to check on Thompson. They entered his room via master key and found him and another man naked on the bed along with some drug paraphernalia. OOPS!! 

The second PI of note was famous spy John Anthony Walker, Jr. In case y'all may have forgotten here is a bit of bio on John: 

"In May 1985, the FBI was tipped off to Walker's activities by Walker's then ex-wife Barbara, to whom he had refused to pay alimony.  Following an investigation, the FBI arrested Walker, Whitworth, Arthur Walker and Michael Walker. Ironically, Walker himself was arrested using a trick he used to catch people in adultery cases: telephoning their hotel room and telling them that their car was broken into.  Barbara Walker was not prosecuted because of her role in disclosing the ring.  Former KGB agent Victor Cherkashin, however, details in his book Spy Handler that Walker was compromised by an FBI spy named Martynov, who overheard a conversation by chance in Moscow. Documents in his trial, Cherkashin argues, claimed that Martynov played a crucial role in the compromise of Walker's cover.

Walker cooperated with authorities and in a plea bargain, he agreed to submit to an unchallenged conviction and life sentence, provide a full disclosure of the details of his spying and give testimony against Jerry Whitworth in exchange for a pledge from the prosecutors that his son would receive a sentence of no more than 25 years imprisonment All of the members of the spy ring besides Michael Walker received life sentences for their role in the espionage. Jerry Whitworth was sentenced to 365 years in prison and was fined $410,000 for his involvement.

Walker's son Michael, who had a relatively minor role in the ring and agreed to testify in exchange for a reduced sentence, was released from prison on parole in February 2000.

Walker is currently BOP Prisoner number 22449-037 and is incarcerated at a United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners (MCFP). He is said to be suffering from diabetes and stage IV throat cancer. His earliest possible parole date is 20 May 2015, at which point he will have served 30 years in prison."

The thing we never could figure out about Walker, who I met once, was how he could afford all of the expensive surveillance equipment he had while the rest of the local PI firms were starving. Walker also had a surveillance van that most of the local PD's would have loved to have. It was only later that we found out where his money was coming from.

Back to the Tai photo. She was at the shop because we were located in the same building as the security company I was  also still working for. The Playboy magazine with her in it had recently come out and she was doing some promotional stuff in the area and needed security. We had several issues of the magazine handy when she stopped by the shop and I had the opportunity to compare the Playboy photos to the real thing. Tai was quite the hottie, but Playboy manages to erase all the blemishes. She was a very nice person and it was good to she she ended up having some significant success in her life. (If only we were all so fortunate)

My own experiences as a private eye were relatively boring. The guy who taught the vehicle surveillance portion of the  PI class was a retired FBI agent and was quite skilled at his trade. Today, you can stick a GPS tracker on a car you want to tail and be done with it. Back in those days, you actually had to follow the car and not be detected by the person you were following. Doing this correctly requires a great deal of patience and some skill combined with luck. The thing that really sucked about surveillance in general was that you were often sitting in car for hours. (and I mean hours, ten, twelve hours or more) The bulk of our PI work was divorces and we were often bugging phone lines or following suspected cheaters to their adulterous rendezvous.

Other common assignments involved catching internal theft by employees. You cannot believe the kind of theft that goes on in bars and nightclubs. From the managers to the bartenders to the guys collecting the cover charges at the door. It's amazing any of the owners ever make any money. Food was often stolen by putting it in a trash bag and tossing it in the dumpster, then recovering it after closing time. (If you have to resort to dumpster diving, you will eventually stumble upon a stolen stash or two and have some good eats for dinner)

Another thing that I found surprising was how many nightclub owners were involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. If you see a restaurant/nightclub that usually has few cars in the parking lot and you wonder how they are keeping the doors open, you can bet there are some shady dealings going on.

Because of our location, we had some fairly well known local folks stopping by to pop off a round or two (we had an indoor pistol range). One guy we would see every now and then was Phillip Parker. Phil was the FBI counterintelligence official in charge of the Lee Howard spy case. Lee Howard was a CIA agent who was a turncoat, but managed to escape to Moscow. Below is a photo of Phil.

Getting back on topic, another annoying thing about PI work in those days was trying to get photos of your subjects. Digital photography was not really available back then and the cameras were still fairly bulky. That was also another one of those times where you were laying in wait for hours on end.

Today, you can find out most publicly available information on someone via various paid internet sites. Again, back in those days, you had to have at least a few contacts who could do NCIC checks on folks or access other data sources to obtain current addresses on folks or certain financial information, etc. It might be a better profession to be engaged in today, but, as I say, it didn't really float my boat at the time.