But Raymond`s scam apparently scared Bussard, because he detailed the transactions in a hand-written note that he left with his wife, Patricia, shortly before he went to Chicago on company business in early June, 1974, according to his stepdaughter, Joni Berry.
Bussard never returned from that trip. He disappeared, and his family has contended ever since that Raymond was responsible.
According to Berry, Raymond came to their home two days after Bussard disappeared and told her mother: ”Don`t mention this to anyone. Keep out of it. I`ll see to it that you never have to worry about anything for the rest of your life.”
Recalling the scene, Berry said, ”It was like he was trying to bribe her.”
Raymond and a muscular heavy-set bodyguard returned 10 days later and again tried to convince Patricia Bussard to keep quiet about the
disappearance, Berry said.
When Bussard`s 17-year-old stepson, Scott, grabbed Raymond, demanding,
”What have you done to my father?” the bodyguard pulled out a gun and told him to leave Raymond alone, Berry recalled.
Bussard`s wife tried to enlist the FBI`s aid in searching for her husband, giving an agent Bussard`s note about his dealings with Raymond and other evidence.
But the agent who interviewed her ”acted like it was a bunch of hogwash,” recalled Berry. ”He was almost joking about it.”
A year after he disappeared, Bussard was indicted for his involvement in the securities scheme. Raymond was never charged.
In fact, on May 21, 1974, just a few days before Bussard flew to Chicago, Raymond offered the local FBI office information on two Miami men who were dealing in stolen Treasury notes, said Lawrence Harrigan, the FBI agent who handled the case.
Harrigan said the offer was made through Philip Manuel, the principal investigator for the McClellan subcommittee. The two men were arrested a month later at LaGuardia Airport.
”Raymond was not a full-time informant,” Harrigan said. ”If something came up, he`d contact us or we`d contact him. He was always around. He was in and out.”
On Oct. 22, 1974, Raymond was arrested by Miami police on four counts of grand larceny and seven counts of passing worthless checks. Details of that arrest are not available, but the charges were dropped.
Dismissal of those charges probably had something to do with an offer that Raymond made to the Los Angeles police on Nov. 25, again through Manuel. Earlier that month, in New York, Raymond had met an old acquaintance, Bernard Howard, who said his accomplices had stolen 18 negotiable blank checks from the City of Los Angeles and needed Raymond`s help in cashing three of the checks.
Raymond later said he called Manuel immediately to report the criminals. But Richard Keats, a partner in the crime, says Raymond told him he first planned to participate in the theft, but changed his mind.
”He said he did some checking and wasn`t satisfied with what Bernie had told him and that he decided to go the other way,” said Keats, now at the Chester County, Pa., jail, where he awaits sentencing for stealing more than $5 million of securities in an unrelated case.
Such thinking would not be out-of-character for Raymond.
William Gallinaro, a former investigator with the McClellan subcommittee, had many dealings with Raymond in the 1970s. ”Raymond will try to put something together illegally and go with it,” Gallinaro said. ”But if he thinks he`s likely to get caught, he`ll go straight to law enforcement.”
On Dec. 6, 1974, Howard and an accomplice were arrested when they went to pick up the cash from Raymond. Howard, Keats and two others were eventually convicted of the plot, but the city never recovered $800,000 from one check that was successfully cashed.
”We couldn`t have broken the case without Raymond,” said Clayton Anderson, assistant chief of the bureau of investigation of the Los Angeles County district attorney`s office.
Raymond knew this and demanded a reward of $125,000 from the city. He got $45,000.
But Richard Walton, an attorney for one of the defendants, contends that Raymond was at least as culpable as those arrested.
”It was Raymond who supplied the enormous figures that ultimately appeared on those checks and Raymond who was orchestrating the whole thing,” Walton said. ”He could hardly have been in the position to demand a reward of that size had he not created the outlandish figures of $800,000 or $900,000 on those checks.”
On Dec. 23, 1974, Raymond testified at a preliminary hearing in the case as a government informant. But two months later, on Feb. 19, 1975, he was arrested in New York City on theft of service charges. Details of that arrest are not available, but it appears that the charges were dismissed.
It was at about this time, early 1975, that Raymond began dating Adelaide Stiles, an eccentric 67-year-old woman in Ft. Lauderdale who worked hard to give the impression that she had more money than she did.
Friends who knew her said she lived an unhappy life, arguing with her older brother and sister, renting out a palatial beach house and living in a small cottage in the rear to save money. She was a tall woman who was overweight.
But in early 1975, her mood suddenly changed, and she was bubbling with happiness.
”She felt that she had fallen in love,” recalled a friend. ”She had finally found the love of her life.”
The object of her affections was Michael Raymond.
Raymond would take her to sumptuous restaurant dinners, but, much to her disappointment, he didn`t want to meet her friends. ”When I saw them together, he looked like her son,” said a friend. ”It must have been embarrassing to him to be seen with her.”
One weekend, Raymond took Stiles to a resort in the Everglades, but the romance of the trip was somewhat muted by the presence of Raymond`s longtime associate Robert Johnstone and his secretary, Barbara Bishop. Raymond and Johnstone stayed in one room, Bishop and Stiles were in the other, Bishop said.
As the year went on, Stiles told friends that she and Raymond were going to go on vacation to Europe. They were to leave on July 21, Raymond`s 46th birthday.
That day, after Stiles had borrowed suitcases from a friend, Raymond arrived in a large white luxury car, and they drove off together. Adelaide Stiles was never seen again.
Robert McGarvey, a private detective hired by her family, later determined Stiles had withdrawn $42,000 from her bank accounts during the months she knew Raymond. McGarvey said he discovered that at least one check, for $6,000, was made out from her to Raymond`s firm and was deposited in his account.
McGarvey contends that Raymond caused Stiles`s disappearance. ”He either killed her personally or was responsible,” he said.
His contention is buttressed by an account that a longtime associate of Raymond`s gave to authorities later that year.
On Dec. 10, Ralph Rapp, who had known Raymond for 20 years, came to the FBI and Ft. Lauderdale police with a story that Raymond had bragged about killing Stiles and ”another guy”–an apparent reference to Bussard, police believe.
Rapp gave this account to police:
Raymond was visiting Rapp at his New York apartment in late August or early September of that year when, in a conversation about Stiles, he told Rapp, ”I killed her, and they`re never going to find her.”
Raymond contended he had to kill Stiles because an associate had made her suspicious of him. ”I`ve been to the jail many times, and I`m not going to go back,” Raymond said.
In a conversation later in the year, Raymond told Rapp, ”They`re never going to find the stone she`s under.” He added, ”There`s another guy that they`re looking for in Florida that they`re never going to find either.”
Rapp told police that he was coming to them with the story because ”I`m in fear of my life.”
According to Rapp`s account, in mid-November of that year, Rapp had gone to Chicago to demand money that Raymond owed him. Raymond and another man drove Rapp into Indiana. At around 10:30 p.m., Raymond got out of the car and made a phone call. The three men then returned to Chicago.
On Dec. 3, Rapp stopped Raymond outside his Miami office, again demanding his money.
According to Rapp, Raymond said, ”You`re lucky you`re alive today, because when you came up to Chicago, I had you come out there on that story to kill you.”
Late in 1976, Raymond was again in the Ft. Lauderdale area, where he arranged an introduction to Anne Sessa, an attractive 63-year-old widow with assets of nearly three quarters of a million dollars.
In the next two months, Sessa and Raymond took two trips to Europe, during which she cashed $165,000 in securities while in Switzerland.
On Feb. 2, 1977, Sessa drove away from the Sea Ranch Club, where she lived. Her car was found the next day parked at the Miami airport. Anne Sessa was never seen again.
Sessa`s attorney, George Gore, a prominent Ft. Lauderdale attorney, notified her children and reported her disappearance to police when she didn`t show up to prepare her tax returns.
Her son, David, of Peoria, said his father had been a wealthy jewelry designer and manufacturer with a firm in New York`s famous diamond district off Fifth Avenue in mid-Manhattan, and his mother had some $500,000 in jewelry and uncut stones in her apartment.
Richard Simpson of the Broward County Sheriff`s office says only a handful of cheap costume jewelry was found in Sessa`s apartment. In all, Sessa`s family set the loss of stocks and jewelry at $750,000.
Like the police in Ft. Lauderdale, Simpson tried to question Raymond, but Raymond wouldn`t cooperate.
Simpson said he believes that Raymond is responsible for Sessa`s disappearance and the earlier disappearance of Stiles.
”I have no doubt in my mind that he killed her,” Simpson said. ”I can`t prove it. I thought he killed them both. But I couldn`t come up with anything–no bodies, no luggage, no nothing.”
Monday: Raymond runs into trouble.
