Notorious Palmyra Murderer Freed

As noted in recent ‘Lectronic reports, the remote North Pacific island of Palmyra is a quiet, peaceful place these days. But it has one particularly dark chapter in its past – a chapter which burst into the headlines again recently when convicted murderer Wesley G. ‘Buck’ Walker, now 70, was released early from prison on August 28 after serving 22 years.

The haunting chain of events which led to his incarceration was chronicled in the best-selling novel And the Sea Will Tell, by attorney Vincent Bugliosi and Bruce Henderson. Initially, Walker and his girlfriend Stephanie Stearns were only convicted of stealing the sailboat Sea Wind belonging to Mac and Muff Graham of San Diego in 1975. The owners’ whereabouts remained a mystery.

It wasn’t until six years later that another piece of the puzzle fell into place, when a box containing Muff Graham’s charred bones washed up in the Palmyra lagoon. At the time, however, Walker had escaped from prison for the earlier charge, but was eventually caught and convicted of the murder. Represented by Bugliosi – who, when working as an L.A. Deputy DA, put Charlie Manson behind bars – Stephanie Stearns was acquitted. Walker argued his innocence in a self-published, 895-page tome titled Palmyra: The True Story of an Island Tragedy.

The sea has yet to reveal the fate of Mac Graham.