Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 10, 1995 TAG: 9501100065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Since Wallace Thrasher disappeared more than 10 years ago, state and federal authorities haven't given up looking for him. Drug-smuggling warrants are still out on him, even though many are convinced he's long dead.
Some say he died in a plane crash, running drugs in the jungles of the Caribbean nation of Belize, just south of Mexico. Others say he was murdered, double-crossed, for a $250,000 haul in Florida.
His wife, Olga, said he was killed in a plane crash in Jamaica and even produced a death certificate, which later was proven false.
And some, such as Drug Enforcement Administration agent Don Lincoln, think Wallace Thrasher still could be floating around the Caribbean, sipping margaritas and living the life of a Jimmy Buffett song.
At the heart of Lincoln's argument is Thrasher's gold wedding ring, supposedly recovered from the plane wreck in Belize and delivered to Olga Thrasher by her husband's aides in such good condition that the inscription inside the band still could be read.
"They said he died in a massive conflagration. The fire was so intense supposedly that it burned everything to ashes," Lincoln said. "They said there was nothing left but an outline of the plane.
"The reality is, if it burned intensely enough to burn up an airplane, [the wedding ring] would've been an ingot of gold."
Thrasher "was very intelligent," Lincoln said. "If he was going to make himself disappear, he could've done it." And Thrasher has been known to have used aliases, he added.
Max Jenkins of Radford, one of Olga Thrasher's attorneys at the time of her husband's disappearance, said, "I know a lot of people who think that Wally's still out there. He had a big motive to disappear. I have not seen anything to make me believe he was dead. He had good reason to lose his identity and he was very familiar with the South American countries and the Caribbean."
John Perry Alderman, a former U.S. attorney in Western Virginia, said, "If hunches are worth anything, I've got one. I think Wallace Thrasher is dead. But I don't think he died in Belize. I don't think he died the way they say he died."
Douglas Pardue, a former Roanoke Times & World-News reporter who's now an editor at the Columbia (S.C.) State, covered Thrasher's disappearance.
"I think he's dead," Pardue said. "He's too flashy a character to have disappeared. Something would have shown up."
Olga Thrasher wouldn't return calls for this story. But Lincoln said she has the same doubts he has about whether her husband is alive, despite interviews she gave years earlier in which she said she believed her husband had died.
Though there have been no sightings of Thrasher, Lincoln said he thinks he'll find the fugitive.
"I've been to the Caribbean numerous times since then. We kid about it in the office that someday we'll be undercover in the Caribbean and we'll walk into a bar and he'll be sitting next to us."
by CNB