by Sally Denton
Finding nothing, Thielen began to search the surrounding woods. While walking in the area, he was approached by a neighbor. Thielen showed the man a photograph of the slender, gray-eyed, blond beauty.
“Does this woman look familiar?” Thielen asked the neighbor.
The neighbor recognized the woman in the picture. “I heard my dog barking around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 18,” the man told Thielen. “When I went out on my front porch I saw a young woman wearing blue jeans, high boots, and a black leather coat, walking down the lane. She was carrying a book—it might have been a sketch pad. Her hair was braided and rolled on top of her head.
“I left to go shopping about that time,” he continued. “When I returned I found my back door had been forced open with a chisel, and twelve hundred dollars’ worth of guns and ammunition were missing.”
Thielen thanked the man for the information and drove the half-mile distance to Halls-on-the-River—a restaurant and local hangout in the area.
Dropping a quarter in the pay phone slot, Thielen politely called Lambert to inform him that his cabin was unlocked. Thielen volunteered to return to the site to secure the premises in order to save Lambert the inconvenience of driving the twenty-mile distance.
That evening, December 29, Thielen reported Becky’s disappearance to the Kentucky State Police. He then called Drexel Neal to provide Neal with an update on his progress. Thielen told Sergeant Neal that he had searched the area to no avail. Neal allayed Thielen’s fears that Becky was dead, contending that Becky was but one more party girl who had voluntarily run off to Florida. Neal told Thielen he had decided against opening a criminal investigation into the disappearance. Case closed. Just like Melanie Flynn.
Thielen drove back to Cincinnati late that same night, and a few days later provided the Moores with a ten-page report that vaguely outlined his daily activities and personal opinions.
Becky’s parents were stung almost as much by Thielen’s shallow results and deferential attitude toward Jimmy Lambert as they were by Lambert’s seeming lack of concern for the whereabouts of their daughter.
PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS:
Everything in this report is hearsay evidence. I can personally verify little outside of my actions…I know Becky left Cincinnati and drove to Lexington, presumably alone. If Lambert’s story is true, I know she made it to the River Cabin. I know she was seen walking in the area on Thursday afternoon. I do know for sure that Becky is not hidden in Jim Lambert’s cabin anywhere. My search was quite thorough.
James Lambert has been most helpful to me. I have no reason to question his honesty at this time, but I could be wrong. He has at all times been courteous and has not refused to answer any question that I have asked. He does seem concerned about Becky’s welfare and safe return.
There are two obvious possibilities to the whereabouts of Becky. First, the grim, that she is dead. The second and more probable, that she did leave the cabin with the $1,100, knowing that she would not be pursued by any police authority and has headed for a warmer climate to get away from it all. Of course, a young woman as attractive as Becky could get involved in anything under imposing conditions.
It is not my purpose to paint a rosey [sic] or bleak picture. I only wish to relate all possibilities.
OPINION
I feel that Becky did leave the River Cabin area of her own free will. Where she is now, I have no hunch. I think she will return when she feels that she can deal with this escapade with her family. I feel Becky would and could do anything to maintain her existence, and is alive. Those are my gut feelings from my research into this situation.
Thielen provided no supporting documentation, but attached a substantial bill.
The Moores suspected foul play, and were not assuaged by Thielen’s laid-back conclusions. To them, it seemed their investigator had been co-opted by Lambert’s agents. Like Melanie Flynn’s parents, they thought they knew their daughter better than anyone else did. Christmas was Becky’s favorite time of the year. Barbara Moore would never believe that Becky would miss the holidays at home, voluntarily. But what else could they do? The police in Lexington were obviously not interested in finding Becky. Jimmy Lambert’s blasé attitude was not encouraging. “What was a forty-two-year-old man doing with a twenty-four-year-old student?” Barbara Moore wondered.
“My husband and I both believe that Becky knew more about what was going on at Trumps than she should have known,” her mother said. “Becky wasn’t the type to go to the police and blow the whistle, so nobody really had to worry about her being a threat. She was just a college kid.”
In January 1981, one of Ralph’s detectives briefed him on the details of Rebecca Moore’s disappearance and provided him with a copy of Thielen’s report that they had obtained from the girl’s family.
“Did Lambert ever report her missing?” Ralph asked.
He was told that not only had Lambert neglected to report the woman’s disappearance, but the Lexington police, when contacted by Thielen, had declined to pursue the matter.
“Open a criminal investigation,” Ralph said. “Get someone over right away to interview Jimmy Lambert.”
Not surprisingly, Lambert was not cooperative with Ralph’s investigators. He sat sullenly, as the detectives searched his secluded cabin after Rebecca Moore’s car and personal belongings were found at his house.
Ralph assigned his underwater divers to search the river near Lambert’s Boonesboro cabin, but the murky waters and sheer limestone cliffs made their search impossible.
Ralph felt a sense of déjà vu. Another nubile beauty, not much older than his own daughters, had vanished without a trace. He thought of Melanie Flynn, of the psychic who dreamed of Melanie’s hair perpetually swirling in the muddy Kentucky River. He wondered if Rebecca, like Melanie, had been a potential whistleblower on the Lexington drug ring. Had she threatened to expose them? Or did she slip and fall off a cliff, making the similarity off her disappearance to that of Melanie Flynn’s purely coincidental? How many more girls would be drawn to the fast-lane lifestyle of Lexington’s elite, unaware of the hidden dangers? How many more drug-celebrity-gambling groupies had already fallen prey?
BODY IN RIVER IDENTIFIED AS MISSING ART STUDENT
The newspaper’s headline glared up at Ralph from the top of his desk. A badly decomposed body found Friday in the Kentucky River has been identified as Rebecca Anne Moore, a twenty-four-year-old Cincinnati art student who has been missing since December, said the first paragraph of the story.
“Too bad her body was found on the Fayette County line,” Ralph.commented to his partner, Don Powers, knowing the location of the corpse meant the Lexington police would have jurisdiction in the investigation.
When the once-striking blonde washed ashore on June 5, 1981, rumors quickly flooded Lexington that the body of Melanie Flynn had finally turned up. But the comparison of dental records proved the dead woman to be Rebecca Moore instead.
Since the local media had succumbed to pressure from Lambert, deciding not to report Becky’s disappearance six months earlier, a public mini-stir was created when her remains were found. The cold river water had ravaged the body since December 18, 1980—which was little more than a skeleton with a small amount of flesh on the torso. That was the day Jimmy Lambert claimed she had left his Boonesboro house to go for a walk. Five miles downriver from Lambert’s cabin, Becky’s torso became snagged on debris on the bank of the river, attracting the attention of passersby.
The coroner in Lexington, Chester Hager, quickly ruled out foul play, and determined the death to be the result of “accidental drowning.”
Ralph called the detective he had originally assigned to investigate Becky’s disappearance.
“Don’t pay any mind to what the county coroner says,” Ralph told him. “Get the autopsy report from the state medical examiner.”
Overruling Chester Hager, State Medical Examiner George Nichols opined that “no anatomic cause of death”—including accidental drowning—could be determined, given the massive deterioration of the cadaver.
On the possibility that Becky’s foot was missing because it had been “weighted” by something heavy enough to hold the body underwater, Ralph ordered the five-mile stretch of river between Lambert’s cabin and the location where Becky’s body had surfaced searched by state police divers,
He dispatched three detectives to Boonesboro to retrace the route that Lambert claimed Rebecca had taken from his cabin. They reported back to Ralph:
Assuming she tried to walk along the riverbank, she would have encountered approximately a half mile of steep earthen embankment followed by a half mile of sheer limestone cliffs. It appears to be impossible to travel by foot on the bank of the river in this area. Had Rebecca Moore fallen in the river at the area of the cliffs, her body would have traveled approximately eight river miles to where it was recovered.
The detectives, who were also scuba divers, decided that such a search would not only be futile, but would be exceedingly dangerous due to the geology of the area.
Despite his investigators’ decision to abandon the search for Becky’s body parts, Ralph felt optimistic about the prospects of the probe. He finally had a full-fledged homicide case on his hands— something much more tangible than Melanie Flynn would ever prove to be. Even more significant, Jimmy Lambert was smack dab in the middle of the case—at the very least, the primary witness; at the most, the suspect. Ralph arranged for Lambert to be given a lie detector test. That assignment faced innumerable political obstacles, creating an increasingly tense atmosphere between the governor and his elite police force. Finally succumbing to the examination, Lambert reacted “negatively” to a couple of questions, according to test administrators. A few days later, Welch approached Ralph and asked for a copy of Lambert’s test results. Governor John Y. Brown had asked Welch to obtain a copy, Welch told Ralph.
Ralph assigned the Lambert investigation a case number, and euphemistically titled it “Confidential Investigation”—its true nature concealed from those outside Ralph’s team. Every day, beginning January 3, 1981, at least five undercover detectives, dressed in plain clothes, wove in and out of traffic behind cars driven by Jimmy Lambert, Drew Thornton, Bill Canan, and others.
Each officer detailed his precise movements and observations, submitting reports every few days. Ralph studied them, poring over every line for clues, piecing together the significance of the items.
INVESTIGATION: Surveillance was continued on James P. Lambert, 805 Old Dobbin Road. Surveillance report for January 8, 1981:
0800 hours: Surveillance was set up on Lambert’s residence. A gray Cadillac, KY DYK-124 was parked in front of the residence.
0900 to 1315 hours: No activity.
1315 hours: The Cadillac, operated by a white female with brown hair departed from the residence.
1325 hours: A brown station wagon parked in front of the residence. Operator unknown.
1330 hours: James Lambert departed from the residence in another Cadillac.
1340 hours: Lambert’s vehicle arrived and parked in the 800 block of Euclid Avenue. He exited the vehicle.
1342 hours: Lambert entered the Bank of Commerce.
1350 hours: Lambert exited the bank.
1353 hours: Lambert entered the Mid-State Disco Lounge.
1400 hours: Lambert departed the Disco Lounge.
1405 hours: Lambert returned to his vehicle and drove east.
1410 hours: Lambert’s vehicle arrived and parked in front of the Library Disco Lounge. After exiting the vehicle, he entered the Lounge.
1420 hours: A Lexington Metro cruiser was observed parked at Lambert’s rear garage. License number of the cruiser was LA1-827, Kentucky official.
1440 hours: Lambert returned to the vehicle. The vehicle departed heading north on Woodland Avenue.
1450 hours: Lambert arrived at his residence.
1744 hours: White Nova pulled into drive. Parked in front of residence. White female, dark shoulder-length hair goes to front door.
1802 hours: White and red Cadillac with Florida tags parked at residence.
1829 hours: White and red Cadillac leaves residence, travels north on Totes Creek Pike.
1841 hours: White and red Cadillac parks in front of Hyatt Regency. White male, 6’1”, brown hair, short beard, late 30s, checks in.
1941 hours: Returns to Cadillac with envelope in hand.
1949 hours: Parks west of the Little Inn Restaurant, enters. In the restaurant the subject met with two white males. One, 6’ 1”, dark hair, brown coat, clean-cut, driving 1977 Mercedes, personalized plate. Entered restaurant carrying a folder. Second white male, hunchbacked, late 40s, driving a black Oldsmobile.
2220 hours: Mercedes left the Little Inn.
2223 hours: Oldsmobile left the Little Inn.
2240 hours: Subject leaves the Little Inn with a white female, 5’3”, possibly a waitress. They sit in a Mustang in the parking lot
2320 hours: Subject exits Mustang, gets into Cadillac and returns to Hyatt.
2328 hours: Subject enters Hyatt.
2400 hours: End of day.
0100 hours: Surveillance terminated.
Request registration checks on all vehicles referred to.
Attached to each report would be a computer printout detailing the ownership and registration of the cars. No editorial comments or indication of personal opinions on the matter were added.
By May 1981, Ralph had nearly fifty people working full-time on Jimmy Lambert, and part-time on Drew Thornton. The more elusive of the two, Drew proved to be difficult to track. His reputation was that of a transporter par excellence. Drew piloted planes into the country, turned them over to the ground crews and distributors, and walked away clean. What happened after his plane landed was someone else’s problem and responsibility. Drew varied his patterns and never stayed long at one location. Sometimes he would spend several days at the condominium of his friend Henry Vance; other times he would alternate between his parents’ farm in Paris and Triad in Jessamine County; or at the apartment of his girlfriend, Rebecca Sharp, or the home of his former girlfriend, Sally Sharp— who was Rebecca’s aunt. Most of the time, though, Drew was not to be found in the Lexington area, spending weeks at a time in Miami, the Virgin Islands, New Orleans, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Detroit. Some reports indicated that Drew was a regular cocaine user, while others claimed he never touched the stuff. Regardless of his personal habits, Drew confided in few, and those whom Drew allowed into his inner circle were loyal to the point of devotion, encircling him against hostile forces. The more Jimmy Lambert and Bradley Bryant moved into the limelight, the more Drew seemed to recede into the background. Ralph considered Drew’s ability to maintain insulation despite his hands-on involvement an art.
Jimmy Lambert, on the other hand, was practically an open book. He operated with total abandon and flamboyance, as if any suggestion of vulnerability was an insulting absurdity. Partying was second nature to him, and the wild cavorting at Old Dobbin Road was hardly a secret to Lexington’s campus, sports, police, and society crowds. Keeping track of Jimmy Lambert’s daily activities had become a form of vicarious living for many of the investigators. Models and actresses were daily fare at Old Dobbin Road, providing the troopers with light-hearted relief from the tedious and boring task of physical surveillance.
Not once had Bradley Bryant turned up at Jimmy Lambert’s house during the months of Ralph’s investigation. Ralph assumed Bradley’s
conspicuous absence during the spring of 1981 merely meant that Bradley was running the Company’s drug operation from another locale.
As Ralph drove his pickup through Frankfort’s wide streets, he was oblivious to the playful lights that emanated from the windows of the Victorian homes. The country western radio station he always listened to was playing a mournful honky-tonk tune, with which Ralph sang along. He considered popping into Beans for a bourbon or two, but decided to head home when he saw the bar’s parking lot was empty. No point in boozing it up alone at some depressing saloon. He could just as easily contemplate the Company while lounging on his motel-room bed.
Ralph felt a momentum building, as though he was being catapulted forward. For a decade, from 1970 until 1980, he had plodded along, carefully monitoring and analyzing the activities of Drew Thornton’s group. Once or twice a year, an event had occurred that attracted his attention: Drew sold pot on the University of Kentucky campus and stole evidence from the Lexington police narcotics unit; Melanie Flynn disappeared; Bradley’s house burned down; Ray Ryan’s car blew up; Bradley was busted in Philly, his warehouse raided in Lexington. Plenty of time went by between incidents, affording Ralph the luxury of stalking his prey in the orderly, disciplined fashion that was his nature.
But now everything accelerated. The assassination of Judge Wood seemed to mark a turning point—as if May 1979 was the beginning of a new game, and Ralph wasn’t sure of the rules or how to keep score. To kill a judge was pretty brazen… prosecutors, witnesses, cops, and reporters were off-limits to more traditional crooks. Ralph wondered what else was considered fair game to this new breed of criminal. Suddenly, dramatic events occurred with more frequency. The governor’s best friend was under surveillance; jets owned by Bradley Bryant were bringing tons of dope from South America to Lexington; a top-secret military base in California was missing nightscopes and radar equipment; the CIA’s involvement was being bandied about as if the “Agency” routinely used thugs and smugglers to perform its dirty work; Drew Thornton’s remote farm, Triad, whose air traffic and rifle range was once nothing more than an irritation to neighbors, had segued overnight into a suspected haven for terrorists and Central American soldiers; DEA agent Harold Brown was boldly flexing his muscles, blatantly associating with Drew and meddling with other investigative agencies; and now, another girl was missing and presumed dead.