“Death comes to everyone, even those — like Raymond Grady Stansel Jr. — who have been dead for 40 years. • His first passing was by far the more newsworthy. • It was 1974, and Florida's statewide grand jury had indicted Stansel for smuggling more than 12 tons of marijuana. Prosecutors described Stansel, then a 37-year-old fisherman and charter boat captain out of Tarpon Springs, as a "soldier of fortune.'' • When arrested that June, he had $25,000 in cash, receipts for two $25,000 Rolex watches, signed blank tourist visas that would allow him into Nicaragua at any time, unused checks on a Swiss bank account, flags from six countries and a passport indicating he had been in 12 in the preceding 30 days. • Stansel posted bail with a $500,000 cashier's check, surrendered his U.S. passport and left the Hillsborough County Jail to await a trial scheduled for Jan. 5, 1975, in Daytona Beach. • On the morning of Jan. 5, Stansel's attorney announced that he had disappeared in a scuba diving accident off Roatan, Honduras, on New Year's Eve. His body had not been recovered but airplanes were searching the shoreline. • Few believed the story. On the other hand, no one could find him.”
Then came that fateful day in late May when “Dennis Lafferty’s” pickup failed to make a curve on a road in Australia, but did not miss the tree.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/traffic-accident-in-australia-ends-40-year-old-mystery-in-florida/2234369
Story encountered at www.fark.com
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