John Walker’s Frankenstein Helicopters – Bodies Falling From the Sky

[0:03] Imagine you're a helicopter pilot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. [0:08] Beneath you, nothing but water for hundreds of miles in every direction. You're flying off the deck of a tuna fishing boat searching for schools of fish by spotting their shadows from the air. The boat is your only lifeline, and if your engine fails, if your tail rotor seizes, if anything goes wrong, you're going into the water. And the nearest hospital is a thousand miles away. This is called tuna spotting. It's one of the most dangerous jobs in aviation. Pilots fly low over open oceans, far from any rescue. And they accept the risk because the pay is damn good. And because they trust that the helicopter beneath them is safe. But what if it wasn't? What if the helicopter keeping you alive was built from the corpses of crashed aircraft? What if the engine was military surplus from Vietnam, corroded, leaking oil, and decades past its service life? What if the critical flight controls were held together with zip ties and pieces of cloth fabric? [1:31] And what if every piece of paper saying that helicopter was safe was a lie? [1:40] For more than two decades, a company in Guam called Hanson Helicopters did exactly this. They built what prosecutors would later call Frankenstein Helicopters. They bribed an FAA inspector to sign off on aircraft without ever, ever inspecting them. And they hired pilots who, in their own words, asked no questions. And when those helicopters fell out of the sky, when pilots drowned in inverted cockpits, when mechanics broke their backs in crashes and were left abandoned for days, the company had a solution for that too. [2:25] Sink the evidence. Pay off families. But keep flying. I'm Steve Rode, and this is the story of John D. Walker, the man who turned an aviation company into a death machine, a story of nine dead pilots that became ten during the trial itself, and a story of $400 million in fraud, 48 shell companies, and one corrupt FAA inspector who sold his integrity for an airplane, some cash, and according to court testimony, some money and hookers. [3:14] To understand how this happened, you need to understand tuna spotting. In the Western Pacific, Korean and Taiwanese fishing fleets pursue yellowfin and skipjack tuna across thousands of miles of open ocean. These boats can be out for months at a time, and finding tuna effectively requires aerial observation. A pilot in a helicopter can spot the shadows of schooling fish from altitude and then guide the vessel into the catch. According to industry sources, a single helicopter could earn its operator $40,000 per month when leased to a fishing company that depended on it to fill their holds. It's lucrative work, but it's also incredibly dangerous. Francis Mayreck knows us better than most. An Irish-born pilot with over 12,000 flight hours, Mayreck spent five years in the 1990s flying Hughes 500 helicopters off tuna boats in the Western Pacific. He later wrote Mogi's Tuna Manual. It's considered essential reading for aspiring tuna pilots. [4:37] According to Mayrick, the job pushed pilots and machines to their limits. Long hours. Salt air that corrodes everything. Landing decks that pitch and roll. And if something goes wrong, you're so far beyond the reach of any rescue service. The industry accepted a certain level of risk. what it didn't accept, what it couldn't survive, was someone cutting corners on safety to maximize profit. [5:16] In 1998, a man named John D. Walker purchased Hanson Helicopters. Walker wasn't new to the company, no. According to court records, he had worked there as a pilot, as a mechanic, and as a director of operations before buying it outright. He knew the business inside and out. He knew the margins, the risks, and the regulatory landscape. He wasn't some outside investor who didn't understand aviation. Walker held pilot and mechanic certifications himself. He knew exactly what an airworthiness certificate meant and what it meant to fake one. Under Walker's ownership, Hanson Helicopters grew into one of the largest helicopter operators in the Western Pacific. At its peak, the company controlled nearly 50 aircraft, mostly Hughes Helicopters, the 369 model, military-designated the OH-6A, and leased to fishing companies across the region. Gross revenues exceeded $20 million a year. [6:34] Walker himself did well. I mean, very well. According to court filings, he acquired a 5,000-acre farm in Missouri. He assembled a personal aircraft collection that included a Beechcraft Staggerwing, a plane I would love to fly, a North American T-28 military trainer, a King Air, an extra 300L aerobatic plane, and he became a nationally ranked off-road racer. There's no doubt the money was excellent. The problem is the helicopters were not. [7:14] So how do you turn a helicopter into a death trap? Well, according to trial testimony, it starts with paperwork. In aviation, every aircraft has documentation, registration numbers, airworthiness certificates, maintenance logs. These papers are the aircraft's identity. They prove the helicopter is what it claims to be and has been maintained to federal standards. If you've ever looked up at an airplane and seen letters and numbers on the tail or on the side of it, that's the registration number. In the United States, they all start with the letter N. So pilots call them N numbers, like N12345 or N9068F, Foxtrot, or N243Delta. The best way to think about it is like a social security number for an aircraft. It's supposed to be unique. It's one number, one helicopter, one set of records tracking every flight, every repair, every inspection from the day it rolled off the assembly line. The entire aviation safety system depends on that number actually meaning something. [8:37] Walker's scheme, according to prosecutors, was elegant in its corruption. He would purchase wrecked or destroyed helicopters, aircraft that had been crashed, burned, and been written off as total losses. And he bought them cheap, sometimes for a few thousand dollars. But he wasn't buying the helicopters themselves. He was buying the paperwork. According to government filings, Walker's team would take the registration numbers and documentation from destroyed aircraft and attach them to completely different helicopters. An aircraft that had been totaled in a crash would be resurrected on paper, its identity transferred to a different airframe assembled from whatever parts were available. [9:33] The government's trial brief describing the process, in chilling detail, laid it out. One helicopter registration, November 243-D, or Delta, was destroyed in a 2004 crash that left its pilot, James Marson, severely injured. Marson sold the wreckage as scrap, but according to prosecutors, before Walker's team even acquired that scrap, they'd already started using November 243 Delta's registration on a completely different aircraft. [10:15] Then in 2011, they bought the scrapped remains and forged Marston's signature on the bill of sale. According to the government's trial brief, at one point, there were at least three different helicopters simultaneously using the same registration number, November 243 Delta. Three helicopters, same identity, same paperwork. You can see why prosecutors called them Frankenstein helicopters. The bodies were stitched together from salvage and scavenged parts. But the real horror was what went inside them. The Hughes 369 helicopter requires a Rolls-Royce turbine engine, specifically the M250-C20B. According to industry sources, a new Charlie 20 Bravo engine costs approximately $250,000. Proper maintenance and overhauls add to that substantially. But John Walker had a cheaper solution. [11:31] According to Francis Mayrick, who witnessed this firsthand, Walker purchased surplus military engines from the Vietnam era models designated Charlie 10 and Charlie 18 decades old bought at military surplus auctions for five to ten thousand dollars an engine and Mayrick would later describe what he saw to investigators. [11:59] I saw the container, and there were all these cardboard boxes with dirty, black, corroded oil leaking out of them. These engines, corroded, leaking, designed for a different era, were installed in helicopters that pilots would fly a thousand miles from shore. According to Mayreck, quote, The job is dangerous enough without dickering around with that kind of stuff. But the engines were only part of the problem. According to the government's amended trial brief, Hansen installed counterfeit tail rotor pitch change links, critical flight components that, quote, the failure of which could have a catastrophic effect upon the rotorcraft. These parts were supposed to cost over $1,000 from approved manufacturers. Hansen bought counterfeits for as little as $28. And when the counterfeits didn't fit properly? According to the trial brief, mechanics were required to jerry-rig them, placing foreign material through the bearing holes to maintain friction, A practice that even the defendant's own expert found appalling. [13:28] But the most damning detail came from post-installation photographs. According to the government's filing, critical tail rotor components were found attached to other rotor parts with, quote, zip ties and pieces of cloth. Zip ties. Holding together the parts that kept a helicopter from spinning out of control. [13:59] Now, I need to stop here because I haven't told you something about myself. I've been a pilot since 1987, a commercial pilot. I flew search and rescue operations for years and dog rescue flights. And I've found myself in situations that absolutely could have killed me. I can set a capacity for you. Go ahead. I'm at the land of the nearest airport. We have low oil pressure. Are you declaring an emergency? Declaring an emergency, 5,41. Master Flight 431, understand the center. Maintain 4,000. Your closest airport is going to be Easton Airport. It is off your 2 o'clock and 12 miles. Runway 4 is going to be your best. Actually, Runway 22 is going to be your best set. Let's fly heading of 2, correction, 300, 300 on your heading. Maintain 4,000. 300 on the heading. Oil pressure still dropping. Affirmative, we have zero oil pressure. Two holes on board, we have about 60 gallons. Passion Flight 431, that heading that you're on is going to put you on about a 4 mile base. Do you guys want to put it a little bit tighter than that? Camp Hyder, please. Compass Flight 431, let's start with 10 degrees to the left. [15:12] 10 left, what do you want? I'll stay with you for another 500 feet or so. Okay, are you still IMC? Just breaking out the bottom. Okay, the airport should be just off the left side of the nose in 5 miles. Enjoy, uh, 431. Okay. Master Flight 431, the airport's now at 11 to 12 o'clock in 4 miles. [15:33] I believe I have a field inside. Just give me a few more minutes. Bastion Flight 403 at 1, roger. You are clear to land and you run away at Easton. I say again, you are clear to land at Easton. All right, field inside off the tower, 431. 431, roger. What you just heard, that's real. That's an emergency. That's me in the cockpit. When my engine was losing oil and I had minutes to get on the ground before it seized. That emergency was caused by a mechanical problem. a mechanic's mistake. And here's what you need to understand about the relationship between a pilot and a mechanic. It's built on trust, complete trust. When I strap into that cockpit, I'm betting my life that someone I may barely know did their job right. Every bolt, every seal, every inspection. When I was flying search and rescue, I even had my mechanic's name lettered on the side of the airplane. I told him I wanted people to know who to call if a mechanical problem brought me down. I was laughing when I said it, but I was dead serious. [16:49] But here's the part of aviation people outside don't see. If you're a commercial pilot and you refuse to fly an aircraft that looks questionable, if you ask too many questions, you raise concerns, the word gets around. The aviation world is smaller than you think. Pilots who get a reputation for being difficult stop getting work. The FAA wants to keep people safe. And the aircraft owners want to reduce expenses. And the pilots? Now, the pilots need to fly. That's how they feed their families. It's a totally imperfect system. And it can put pilots in impossible positions. [17:41] I've been in those jams. I've lost friends to crashes. I've had good friends barely make it out of flights alive. So when I tell you about the pilots flying Hansen's Frankenstein helicopters, men flying a thousand miles from shore in an aircraft held together with zip ties, I'm not judging them for getting in those cockpits. I'm asking why anyone put them in that position to begin with. [18:14] Before we go further, I need you to meet someone. I want you to meet Rafael Antonio Cruz Santos. He was a helicopter pilot, probably a damn good one. According to court records, he flew for Hanson Helicopters in the tuna spotting operations. The same dangerous work over the same unforgiving ocean. Every day he climbed into a cockpit and trusted his aircraft with his life. [18:46] We don't know much about Rafael's personal life His family didn't create English language memorials There are no GoFundMe pages, no obituaries I could find What we know comes from court documents From the records of what was done to him, Not from memories of who he was, But here's what I do know Rafael Cruz Santos was a professional pilot He showed up, he did the work He flew hundreds of hours over open ocean Landing on pitching decks, searching for fish, He trusted that when he was strapped into that cockpit Someone had made sure the aircraft would keep him alive, On September 2nd, 2015, Rafael Cruz Santos took off on a routine tuna spotting flight. He would not survive it. [19:49] If this story is already making your stomach turn, you're not alone. It gave me chills. If you're finding value in how I'm telling the story, the court transcripts, not clickbait, name sources, not speculation, then let me ask you to subscribe wherever you're listening. True crime cases you haven't heard exist because listeners like you share it, give it five-star reviews, and keep coming back. And I'm just getting started. [20:30] Now, by now, you're probably asking yourself, where was the FAA? The Federal Aviation Administration exists precisely to prevent something like this. Aviation safety inspectors are supposed to review aircraft, verify maintenance records, ensure that every helicopter in American airspace meets federal standards, and Hansen Helicopters was subject to FAA oversight. So how did this continue for more than two long decades? The FAA wasn't failing to catch the violations. It's just that the FAA inspector was being paid to help create them. [21:15] His name was Timothy Sislow, and according to court records, Sislow was an aviation safety inspector assigned to the FAA's Honolulu Flight Standards District Office. His salary was approximately $102,000 a year, and his job was to inspect aircraft like the ones Hansen operated. According to prosecutors, between 2009 and 2017, Sisko didn't inspect Hansen's helicopters. But he certified them anyway. And according to government filings, CISLO was being bribed. And those bribes included cash payments. They included what CISLO himself described under questioning as, quote, money and hookers, unquote. And they included something uniquely aviation-specific, A vintage Taylorcraft BC 12D airplane worth approximately $20,000. It was shipped to Hawaii for Syslow to assemble and fly. [22:24] But probably the most damning evidence came from CISLO's own emails. In February 2015, seven months before Rafael Cruz Santos would die, CISLO sent an email to Kenneth Crow, Hansen's director of operations, and according to testimony, the email was read aloud in court, quote, All we need is an FAA Form 8130-6 for each one. When do the current certificates expire? I'm looking at May or June to have a sign fest. A sign fest? That's what the FAA inspector called it. A mass signing event. Certifying aircraft as airworthy without ever actually inspecting them. According to the FAA manager who testified at trial, a proper inspection of a single aircraft can take up to five days. And CISLO was planning to sign off on 20 or more in a single visit. Another email described CISLO's payment. Quote, CISLO wanting the yellow one with the spare engine for 20K. [23:39] The FAA inspector charged with protecting pilots was being paid to endanger them. And according to court records, CISLO issued at least 30 fraudulent airworthiness certificates to Hansen aircraft. 30 certificates saying helicopters were safe to fly when no one had actually inspected them. And the FAA itself? Well, according to evidence presented at trial, the agency sent 29 letters to Hansen seeking inspections. All 29 went unanswered. [24:22] And here's what I keep asking myself as I read through these transcripts. Where were the other inspectors? Where were the whistleblowers? Did no one else notice that helicopters were crashing at an unusual rate? Francis Mayreck tried to sound the alarm in the 1990s. And he was threatened and ignored. [24:48] Let me stop here for a moment. I spent 30 years as an investigative writer tackling financial criminals, Ponzi scammers, embezzlers, corporate fraudsters. I also worked emergency services, including years, as a chief pilot for search and rescue operations. I've seen both sides of this How criminals exploit systems And how systems fail to stop them, What happened at Hanson Wasn't just one corrupt inspector It was a structural vulnerability. [25:21] Aviation safety depends on trust And when a pilot sees An airworthiness certificate They trust I would trust that someone verified the aircraft, and when a fishing company leases a helicopter, they trust the paperwork represents reality. The entire system runs on the assumption that inspectors inspect. When an inspector stops inspecting, when he starts just signing certificates in exchange for airplanes and cash and money and hookers, the whole chain of trust collapses. Every document becomes suspect. Every certified aircraft becomes a question mark. And the people who pay the price aren't the criminals making money. No. They're the pilots who trusted the system. [26:20] Raphael Antonio Cruz Santos is flying over the western Pacific. His aircraft is registered as November 9068 Foxtrot. A Hughes 369 leased through Hansen Helicopters for tuna spotting operations. [26:38] According to court documents, the conditions were routine. Santos had done this hundreds of times, searching for fish, guiding the boat, and then returning to the deck. What Santos doesn't know, what he can't know, is that the helicopter beneath him exists on paper only as November 9068 Foxtrot. According to prosecutors, the aircraft's true history, its actual airframe and components are a patchwork of parts from different sources, maintained by mechanics who may not even hold proper certifications, and certified by an FAA inspector who is being paid to look the other way. Money and hookers. [27:31] According to trial testimony, the helicopter experienced a mechanical failure. It went into the water. The helicopter came to rest, inverted. Upside down. He must have been scared shitless. According to court records, Rafael Antonio Cruz Santos drowned. Trapped in the cockpit of a helicopter that should have never been flying. [28:09] He was not Hansen's first victim, and he would not be the last. The day after Rafael Cruz Santos drowned, September 3rd, 2015, Kenneth Crow, Hanson's Director of Operations, sent an email to Philip Kapp, the Director of Maintenance. According to court exhibits, the subject was the company's situation. The body of the email contained four words. Quote, Shit's fallen out of the sky. Four days later, another email, this one about the funeral arrangements, quote. [29:00] According to prosecutors, Hansen paid the Cruz-Santos family $100,000. Not as compensation acknowledged in court, but to prevent a lawsuit. Hush money. And the helicopter, November 9068 Foxtrot? That aircraft that killed Rafael Cruz Santos? According to prosecutors, Hansen told the FAA it had sunk, lost to the ocean floor, unrecoverable. And the airworthiness certificate? Also lost at sea. In the trial, prosecutor Marie Miller addressed the court directly about the evidence and what it actually showed. [29:53] The defendants represented to the FAA that November 9068 Foxtrot sunk to the bottom of the ocean and was involved in an accident that killed Mr. Santos. They also represented to the FAA that the airworthiness certificate and the registration for November 9068 Foxtrot was also lost. And then Miller delivered the truth. Quote, None of that is true. The file has the original airworthiness certificate. It has the issued airworthiness certificate from Tim Sislow. It has the registration paperwork that the defendant said was lost at sea. It has proof that the helicopter was not lost at sea. It was retrieved. And that is one of the helicopters that we found at Rogers' facility that the defendants were going to patch back together and put a new data plate on with a different serial number. The judge responded, If it was lost at sea, you wouldn't be having the data plate. And Miller cut in, Exactly. It was a lie. [31:12] A Frankenstein helicopter that had killed a man would rise again with a new identity. Rafael Cruz Santos was one of nine deaths the prosecutors attributed to Hanson helicopters. Nine pilots who went up in aircraft that were held together with lies. According to the former NTSB accident investigator, Jeff Guzzetti, who examined Hansen's safety record. There were 29 documented accidents dating back to the 1990s. Of those, 18 had never been reported to the NTSB. 22 involved substantial damage to the aircraft, and seven helicopters were completely destroyed. And those were just the crashes that left evidence. According to testimony from Marvin Reed, Hanson's executive vice president, who later became the prosecution's star witness, some crashes never made it into any report at all. [32:24] Reed testified about two workers who were injured in a Hanson helicopter accident. According to sworn testimony, He admitted on the stand that they had two men in an accident. Both men broke their backs and were left on the tuna boat for days before getting any help. Days! Men with broken backs abandoned on a fishing vessel in the middle of the Pacific while the company figured out how to handle the situation. And when another helicopter went down, according to Reed's testimony, the pilot received a direct order. Quote, the pilot was told to sink the helicopter so they couldn't find and report it. Sink the evidence. Bury the truth. But keep flying. [33:24] To understand how Walker evaded accountability for so long, you need to understand the corporate structure he built. According to trial testimony from IRS Special Agent, Walker operated not one company, but dozens. 48 shell corporations, mostly incorporated internationally, in Vanatu, in the Philippines, in jurisdictions far from American oversight. And here's one number that tells you everything about how Walker valued these aircraft and the lives of the pilots flying them. On paper, the helicopters were worth $14 million. And Walker sold them to another company he controlled for $340,000. That's 2.4% of their stated value because he knew what they were actually worth. Quote from the IRS agent, The exchange was basically between John Walker and John Walker, so there was no real exchange of money. [34:34] When the defense tried to argue these were legitimate separate companies with different owners, the prosecution asked the agent four simple questions, according to the trial transcript. Question. What evidence did you see that there was shared ownership of the Vanatoo companies? Answer. There was none. Question. What evidence did you see that there was shared decision-making? Answer. There was none. Question. What evidence did you see of recorded meetings? Answer. There was none. Question. Question. What evidence did you see that anyone besides John Walker received profits? Answer. There was none of shared profits. Then the prosecution asked the central question. Quote. Who owns every single company? It was used to lease helicopters to the tuna boat companies. Answer. Defendant John Walker. According to the IRS special agent's testimony, quote, These were all alter egos of John Walker, so there was no change of ownership. [35:56] 48 companies, one man, $400 million. $400 million. [36:05] You're listening to True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard, and I'm Steve Rode. This case, the fraud and the deaths and the corruption, represents years of investigative journalism and court document analysis. This is the kind of in-depth, documented true crime storytelling that you've been looking for. So please take a moment to rate and review the show. It genuinely helps other listeners find us. And if you're already subscribed, thank you. I mean, seriously, thank you. [36:47] It's October 21st, 2016. Thirteen months after Rafael Cruz Santos drowned. Frightened, scared, and trapped. Federal agents moved on Hanson helicopters. According to court records, the U.S. Attorney's Office obtained search warrants and executed a coordinated seizure. Fifteen helicopters were taken from Guam, from Georgia, and from facilities in the Philippines. According to news coverage at the time, Hanson's attorney, David Lujan, was furious. The case was sealed. No charges had been filed publicly. and the government wasn't explaining what crimes they suspected. Quote from Lujan, The FAA has taken no action whatsoever, absolutely none. [37:43] And when Lujan demanded answers, demanded the return of helicopters, demanded to see the affidavit explaining the search warrant. In that same letter, Lujan demanded the return of Hanson certificates and to provide them with an explanation for the search warrant, threatening to file a motion to return property in district court. In response, Leon Guerrero wrote back, quote, feel free to file your motion, end quote. The government was building something, and it would take them nearly two more years to finish it. [38:20] May 2018, John D. Walker, Kenneth Crow, Philip Kapp, and Marvin Reed were indicted. [38:29] On multiple federal charges. A superseding indictment in December 2019 expanded the case further. The charges read like a catalog of aviation nightmares. Conspiracy to defraud the FAA and NTSB. Aircraft parts fraud causing serious bodily injury and death. Employing uncertified mechanics and pilots. Helicopter registration fraud, wire fraud, money laundering. Let's not forget the bribery. 110 counts in total. And the scale of the fraud, well, according to prosecutor Marie Miller, John Walker had signed FAA registration documents under penalty of perjury, claiming to be a U.S. Citizen or that the companies were U.S. corporations, 317 times. Quote from Miller, 317 times John Walker registered as a U.S. Citizen or U.S. corporation. [39:41] The co-conspirator who made it all possible, timothy sislo the faa inspector he had already pleaded guilty to three counts of honest services wire fraud and according to the irs special agent the testimony quote mr sislo received an airplane for looking the other way and not doing his due diligence as a safety inspector for the faa, The trial was set for 2022 But the deaths They weren't finished. [40:26] Four years passed COVID delayed proceedings Motions were filed Motion after motion was filed Witnesses were deposed that defendants remain free on bail. And then in the summer of 2022, the trial finally began. [40:52] August 2022, the trial of USA v. John Walker was underway in the District Court of Guam. The prosecution was led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Miller. She was presenting evidence of decades of fraud. then on August 16th 2022 while the trial was in session a helicopter crashed in the Philippines, the pilot was named Diastato Lamelan and the aircraft was MD 369 Hotel Sierra Philippine registration R.P. C6911. According to prosecutors, it had previously been an FAA-registered aircraft under the number November 1 Delta Quebec, and it was operated by Pacific Spotters Corporation, a Hanson affiliate that Walker controlled. [42:03] Lumenland died, and two mechanics aboard were seriously injured. The next morning, August 17th, Prosecutor Miller addressed the court directly about what just happened. Quote, And then we learned this morning that one of these helicopters, which was previously November 1 Delta, Quebec, which is currently being operated in the Philippines, crashed yesterday and killed another pilot. It hasn't stopped, Your Honor. And then later in the trial, Miller said something else, something that changed the case. Quote, And now it's 10 deaths. The body count had risen during the trial itself. [42:58] I want to stop here and ask you something that's been sitting with me since I started researching this case. If everything the prosecution alleged is true, and a jury of 12 people agreed that it was, on all 110 counts. Then, what separates John Walker from a serial killer? I'm serious, think about it. He knew the helicopters were dangerous, and the emails proved that. Shit's fallen out of the sky. He knew pilots were dying. He attended the funerals. He paid off families. And then he kept putting pilots in those cockpits. Year after year, death after death. [43:43] A serial killer chooses victims and kills them directly. Walker built death traps and let statistics do the work. He didn't know which pilot would die, but statistically he knew someone would. And he kept the operation running anyway. The legal system calls that reckless indifference or depraved heart. It's a different charge than murder. The sentences are different, the language is different But the victims are just as dead, The families of Rafael Cruz Santos and Lomelin Don't get to say, well, at least he wasn't technically a murderer, I've covered financial crimes for 30 years Ponzi schemers, embezzlers, fraudsters Most of them steal money and destroy lives But they don't stack up bodies, Walkers stacked up bodies, 10 of them and he did it while collecting $400 million and racing off-road vehicles and building a personal aircraft collection. [44:50] The law has categories and the law has distinctions and I understand why. I absolutely do. [44:56] But when I read through those trial transcripts, when I saw, thought we were getting off cheap about a dead pilot's funeral, I stopped seeing a fraudster and I believed that I saw something else. [45:17] The following day, August 18th, the government called their final witness, Jeff Gazzetti, the former NTSB accident investigator. As Gazzetti prepared to testify, someone in the courtroom noticed the date. According to the trial transcript, Gazzetti mentioned it to the judge, quote, Today is World Helicopter Day, believe it or not. And the judge's response? How ironic. World Helicopter Day, a day meant to celebrate rotorcraft and the people who fly them. And in the courtroom in Guam, a federal jury was hearing testimony about 10 pilots who would never fly again. September 9, 2022, after weeks of testimony, including the revelation that another pilot had died during the trial, the jury retired to deliberate. [46:18] What the jury didn't know came out briefly during the proceedings. The presiding judge, her own father-in-law, had been a helicopter pilot in the war, and she understood what those machines meant to the people who flew them. According to the court records, two jurors had requested to be excused during deliberations to attend a funeral. And then the verdict came back. Guilty. All 110 counts. John D. Walker, guilty of conspiracy to defraud the FAA and NTSB. Guilty of aircraft parts fraud causing death. Guilty of money laundering. Guilty of bribery. And Hanson Helicopters, Inc., the company itself, was also found guilty on all counts. Three days later, Walker's $1 million bail was revoked, and he was remanded to federal custody to await sentencing. He would wait nearly three years. [47:29] June 9, 2025, in the District Court of Guam, the chief judge calls the case for sentencing. John D. Walker, 60 years old, stood before the court. Behind them was a trail of fraud stretching back more than two decades. Ten deaths, more than a dozen serious injuries, over 30 crashes, $400 million extracted through 48 shell companies and endless lies. The sentence came down as follows. 405 months in federal prison, 33 years and 9 months. And at 60 years old John Walker's earliest possible release date would come when he is 93 or 94 years old it's effectively a death sentence, In addition, a $250,000 fine, $48.4 million in forfeiture for fraud proceeds, $11.7 million in additional forfeiture for money laundering. Hanson Helicopters, Inc. received a $4.9 million fine and five years of corporate probation. [48:48] The legal outcome is clear. The accountability is documented. [48:53] John Walker will almost certainly die in federal prison. But the numbers don't tell you everything. They don't tell you about Rafael Cruz Santos' family receiving $100,000 in hush money and a lifetime of grief. And they don't tell you about the two workers with broken backs, abandoned on a tutum boat for days, wondering if help was coming. And they don't tell you about the pilot who died during the trial itself, killed by a company that was actively being prosecuted for killing pilots. And they don't tell you about the seven other victims whose names I couldn't find, pilots who died far from home in helicopters built from lies, mourned by families who may never have received any explanation at all. [49:47] Francis Mayreck, the whistleblower who tried to stop this decades ago, spoke about the case to journalists. Quote, The whole Hanson thing upsets me. It was about the love of money, the golden dollar. It was purely demonic. Prosecutors during trial saying the company's alleged fraudulent operations and love of money led to nine deaths and more than a dozen others injured. Miller saying, quote, this is a very serious case about somebody who just blatantly and completely violated the law over and over again. By the time the trial ended, the number had risen to 10. [50:33] I started this story by asking you to imagine being a helicopter pilot over the Pacific and trusting the machine beneath you. Trusting that someone, somewhere, had made sure it would keep you alive. For more than two decades, John Walker betrayed that trust. He built an empire on Frankenstein helicopters, Aircraft assembled from crashed remains, powered by corroded military surplus, held together with zip ties and cloth, and certified by a bribed FAA inspector, who signed paperwork in exchange for an airplane and prostitutes. When pilots crashed, workers were abandoned. Evidence was sunk, families were paid off, and the company kept flying. [51:27] It took the deaths of 10 people, including one who died during Walker's own trial, to finally stop it. And the question I keep coming back to is this. How many people knew? Francis Mayreck tried to sound the alarm in the 1990s, and he was threatened and ignored. The FBI interviewed him years later, but never called him to testify. The FAA sent 29 letters. All went unanswered. And the system that was supposed to protect pilots? [52:06] And 10 deaths to deliver accountability. I don't think that's justice. I think that's damage control. I'm Steve Ridd. This has been True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard. If this episode moved you, if you learned something, if you want to listen to more deep-dive investigations like this, subscribe. Leave a review. Share the show with someone who cares about these types of stories. Every rating every review every share helps me reach more listeners and more listeners means more resources to tell the stories that aren't getting told the cases the algorithms bury the victims who didn't get English language obituaries yeah thank you for listening remember Stay curious. [53:08] Stay safe, and stay subscribed.