Commissioner Guido wanted to send McGuire to California but couldn’t—not at first. Department finances had been scaled back, and Guido’s hands were tied. It killed McGuire, but the Los Angeles FBI first approached Richard Williams for an interview. He’d have given anything to be there to see the look in his eyes. “Hi, Richard. The name Jack Teich mean anything to you?”
The pieces fit. Of course, Williams denied everything. He claimed total ignorance. And the FBI had no hard evidence to show otherwise. Not yet.
Back in New York, McGuire and Guido were making the best of a tough situation. Within two weeks of contact with Williams, they arrived at another breakthrough. They needed to link Richard Williams and Charles Berkley beyond the word of Williams’s convict brother. A review of phone records appeared to do the trick—but not Berkley’s home phone records. They had already tried that. Instead, McGuire asked Berkley’s former employer for a list of unusual long distance phone numbers from June 1973 through December 1974—a period well-before and just after my kidnapping.
A representative from Superior Fireproof Door and Sash Company provided the information, which included thirteen unique numbers that couldn’t be explained. Why would someone from the Scarsdale, New York, business call Los Angeles? More specifically, Hawthorne, California, an area near LAX? Was there a plausible explanation? The company’s office manager was at a loss.
“I don’t recognize any of this,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
McGuire bee-lined to Guido. Williams lived in Hawthorne.
“Danny, we’ve got to get going. We need to get the D.A.’s office involved, now. We can’t wait any longer.”
Together, they approached the district attorney’s chief assistant, Henry Devine. They’d all slogged through the trenches on previous cases, and Devine liked them. Guido made the policy argument. McGuire appealed to his manhood.
“Listen Henry, here’s the deal,” said McGuire. “You’ve known me a long time, and I don’t bullshit anybody. We need a really good D.A., somebody we can work with, who understands what we’re doing. There’s no time to screw around.”
Devine thought about it. He’d have to answer to the D.A. Justice was always the priority, but there were other considerations. The D.A. answers to voters, and voters are influenced by the press. Was this a winnable case? How would it play out in the papers?
“Alright, Dick. I’ve got just the guy for you. Let me introduce you to Ed McCarty.”
Ed McCarty was razor sharp, but he was young. He was in his early thirties and had a reputation for working strictly by the book. “If this case goes forward,” McGuire thought, “can I live with this guy? Could he prosecute the biggest case in Nassau County history?”
McGuire had no choice.
One thing that inspired confidence was that McCarty was an overachiever. When other prosecutors were taking it easy, McCarty was out looking for an edge. He asked the county medical examiner to mentor him when he wasn’t litigating, for instance. He wanted an advantage over his opponents in future cases. By his mid-thirties, McCarty had seen so many autopsies that he could’ve performed one.
A few years after I first met McCarty, he was asked by the county political establishment to run for a judgeship. The same week, he received an offer from a high-profile medical malpractice law firm. He chose the judgeship. When his medical examiner mentor found out, he called McCarty and said, “Ed, you know that decision cost you ten million dollars?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “But you take your own directions in life.”
That’s Ed McCarty.
* * *
By June 1976, Guido had wrangled enough funding to send McGuire to California. The FBI was barely committed at that point, so Guido managed to send Detective Jim Moran along to assist McGuire. They landed in Los Angeles on Father’s Day. They decided to eat at the airport before launching into the investigation. The grizzled New York detectives struggled to find an acceptable food stop. They settled on a restaurant that looked like a spaceship.
“Let’s just say the menu was short on steak and potatoes,” McGuire later recalled. “It was all salads. I ordered a spinach salad. Shit, I’d never done that before. I told them to find bacon for it.”
McGuire and Moran left the airport, holstered their firearms, and pocketed law enforcement permit papers. They’d come in handy if stopped by LAPD. They spent the rest of the day pursuing leads from Berkley’s employment phone records and Richard Williams’s former real estate business. They met the FBI’s Los Angeles point man, Special Agent Doug Ball.
The feds had a general air of superiority, but it was rarely a problem. Most of them respected local law enforcement, but McGuire felt like the L.A. Bureau blew him off. They didn’t think a detective from Long Island was going to drop in for a few weeks and solve a dormant kidnapping case. Doug Ball was different.
“Okay, Dicky. Let’s do it, man. We’re gonna find these guys,” he said.
Ball had a plan. He knew exactly what to do. He’d handle surveillance while the New York detectives pounded pavement and developed human intel.
“Okay, Doug,” said McGuire. “You’re my main man. But listen, we already reached out to the D.A. He turned us down. So let’s keep our eyes open, because things are going to start rolling. Trust me.”
Outside of Ball, McGuire, and Moran, they were on their own. The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office wouldn’t even meet with them, and McCarty was three thousand miles away in another jurisdiction. But they knew they had the right suspects in Richard Williams and Charles Berkley.
Their first interview was with Leroy Don Darrett, a former employee at Ric Williams Realty. Darrett, an African-American, said business was good until Williams left to teach Black History at Cal State Northridge. “He changed,” said Darrett.
“Ric said he was proud of being his own boss and that he didn’t have to work for ‘whitey,’” said Darrett. “He spoke like that all the time.”
He told McGuire that Williams began putting African figurines around the office, as well as posters of political extremists. “Ric idolized Chickenman. He was some kind of rebel who taught Caribbean islanders how to grow crops,” said Darrett.
“I told him, ‘Ric, this is hurting the business.’ He said, ‘It’s my office, and I’ll do as I please. You don’t tell me!’” He also said Williams began carrying a loaded .32 caliber pistol around that time.
McGuire and Moran moved to another former employee named Gloria Larkin. She said Williams disappeared in 1971 and that he owed her money. But in September 1974, he resurfaced as abruptly as he’d left. Larkin said she pursued the debt and was surprised when Williams paid her. She remembered receiving $400 with a four-page letter attached signed, “Kufanya.”
Then, in January 1975, Larkin said she got a phone call from Williams asking her to dinner. “He looked nervous. He said the CIA, FBI, and police were after him. I asked him what for, and he wouldn’t talk about it,” she explained. Without solicitation, Larkin offered that Williams—whom she knew to have financial problems—paid for the dinner with a one-hundred-dollar bill.
Larkin said she couldn’t identify Williams from the New York police artist sketch, but said he was extremely smart, well-organized, and very militant. “Ric would say the ‘establishment’ was the reason for black people’s problems,” she said.
As one lead led to another, McGuire and Moran met with a former Ric Williams Realty employee who was so burned by his employment experience that he agreed to sign a written statement. The New York detectives played tape recordings of the November 1974 ransom calls to my wife, Janet. The man’s jaw dropped. “I immediately recognized the voice of the man demanding the money as my former employer, Ric Williams. I have no doubt as to the identity of the voice,” he attested.
A week later, McGuire and Moran located Williams’s brother-in-law, Earl Fields. He claimed no knowledge of anyone named Charles Berkley, but added Williams liked to go by his African name, Kufanya. Fields also said that Williams, who was married, had a girlfriend named Marie Washington.
McGuire requested a records check on Washington, which yielded another breakthrough. Washington had an Exxon credit card. From August 2 to August 9, 1974, a clear path of gas station purchases was made in an apparent cross country road trip. The trail of gas purchases began in Lennox, California, just east of LAX, and proceeded in a northeasterly direction. First Barstow, then Needles, California, followed by Seligman and Flagstaff, Arizona; then Cuervo, New Mexico; Amarillo, Texas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Joplin, Missouri; Terre Haute, Indiana; Somerset, Pennsylvania; and Plainfield Station, New Jersey.
Last stop, Larchmont, New York—the place where my brother, Buddy, lives and also the place where the kidnappers left the ransom bag in the trash can at the Exxon station.
An extended timeline of gas purchases shows a distinct split. From October 28 through the end of my kidnapping on November 22, 1974, Marie Washington was making Exxon credit card purchases back in Los Angeles. The gas purchases were tied to the same vehicle that had previously journeyed cross-country, California license plate 865 ETO. But Marie’s husband, someone who went by the name, “James Washington,” was making Exxon credit card purchases during the same time period in Springfield Gardens, New York—a Queens neighborhood next to JFK airport.
Apparently, there were two Exxon cards and two vehicles. The vehicle “James Washington” used had a New York license plate, 482 QUA. According to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, that car was a two-door 1965 Ford Mustang. It also happened to be registered to a young woman named Celestyne Williams, the daughter of Richard Warren Williams.
McGuire had found the kidnapping car.
What’s more, three Exxon gas purchases on November 24, 1974, indicated another road trip, this time in a third car heading due south. The first credit card entry was in New York, and the third was at a gas station in Battleboro, North Carolina, at I-95. Connecting the dots gave the impression of an escape route.
With the information in hand, on July 8, 1976, an FBI agent under the direction of Doug Ball approached the owner of Williams’s Hawthorne, California, apartment complex. The owner confirmed that “James Washington” rented an apartment from him and said Washington always paid in cash. He added that Washington lived with his wife, Marie, and that they left during the summer of 1974, came back the next month, and left again in October 1974.
At the end of the interview, the agent brandished a photograph of Richard Williams. “Yep, that’s him,” the apartment complex owner said. “That’s James Washington.” It was an alias. “James Washington” was Richard Williams.
McGuire and Moran had since returned to New York, but not before driving more than two thousand miles and conducting dozens of interviews while in Los Angeles. By late July, McGuire had located Celestyne Williams, who went by her married name, Celestyne Glenn. He dropped by her Jamaica, Queens, apartment for a surprise visit.
“Missus Glenn, my name is Detective Sergeant Richard McGuire. I’d like to talk with you about a 1965 Ford Mustang and your father, Richard.”
Williams-Glenn reacted emotionally and refused to let McGuire inside. He’d touched a nerve. McGuire diffused the situation and got her to agree to listen to a tape recording of one of the ransom calls. He waited outside the apartment door. She returned two minutes later and said that the recording, “sounds like an Israeli newscast.”
When asked about the 1965 Ford Mustang, Williams-Glenn said, “I won’t answer that, and I don’t know. I don’t have to answer. All I have to do is die and pay taxes, right?”
McGuire reminded her that she had told the FBI in February 1976 that she hadn’t seen her father in five years.
“It’s not good to lie to the FBI, Missus Glenn,” said McGuire.
“Well, I guess that’s what I said then,” she answered and slammed the door.
* * *
Agent Doug Ball had been trailing Williams for months. He was still living by LAX and was going about his business without so much as jaywalking—until August 18.
“Dicky! Dicky, we got one. We got one!”
“Slow down, Doug. What do mean ‘we got one?’” asked McGuire. He’d stepped out from a briefing at NCPD headquarters in Mineola, Long Island, to take the call. It was Doug Ball.
“We got a bill, Dicky. A one-hundred-dollar bill with a matching serial number. It’s ransom money,” said Ball.
McGuire instantly felt the gravity of the discovery.
“Williams paid his rent with it,” said Ball.
“That’s great, Doug. That’s really great. I’ll tell Danny [Guido]. Keep on ’em. We’re close.”
It was cause for celebration. Connecting Williams to a ransom bill was hard evidence, but McCarty wasn’t jumping for joy. He’d have to prosecute the case. He needed more.
Ball placed Williams under around-the-clock surveillance hoping he’d drop more ransom bills—which he did.
On September 3, Williams spent another one-hundred-dollar bill with a matching serial number at a Los Angeles tire store. The store manager said the bill was passed by a man named C.R. Lee. Williams was known to use multiple aliases, including Charles R. Lee. It was another piece of the puzzle.
Two days later, Williams spent yet another matching one-hundred-dollar bill at a Santa Monica grocery store. He was going out of his way to use the bills at unrelated locations. A cashier at the supermarket told the FBI that the customer who handed him the money was a stocky African-American male, about forty years old with a mustache.
McGuire, Guido, and Doug Ball had done incredible work, but time was running out. The investigation was hitting on all cylinders, but the case hadn’t budged at the Nassau County D.A.’s office. Their backs had been against the wall for months. Now they had something tangible to go on. Henry Devine put Ed McCarty on the case full-time. It was time to make a play.
They decided to wiretap Charles Berkley’s phone. McCarty then had McGuire send Berkley a loaded letter seeking his “cooperation.”
“Mister Charles Berkley, we are requesting that you sit for an interview at the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office. New information has come to light concerning your relationship with Mister Richard Warren Williams, and we may be able to help you avoid serious legal entanglements. Your cooperation is necessary.”
They hoped Berkley would read the letter and make a call to Williams, but he didn’t. Berkley did nothing but go about his regular business. It was a perfect example of what made the case so frustrating. “These are not your average crooks,” an FBI agent was quoted saying in Newsday. Williams and Berkley were incredibly disciplined. Williams and Berkley were pros.
McCarty and McGuire were taken aback when Berkley made his own play. He called McGuire and scheduled the interview. McCarty figured one of two things would happen: Berkley would roll on Williams when he dropped the hammer, or Berkley would make a mistake.
McCarty, a junior prosecutor, commandeered the elected district attorney’s main office to enhance the perception of power. He sat behind his boss’s grand, ornate desk. He may have been young, but McCarty projected authority. He held the keys to Berkley’s future, although he wanted Richard Williams.
McGuire met Berkley and escorted him inside the wood-paneled room.
“Hello, Charles,” McCarty said straight-faced. “How would you like the deal of a lifetime?”
McCarty then took his time painting a damning picture: Berkley’s history with Williams, his knowledge of the Acme Steel Partition profit sharing fund, and the phone calls to Hawthorne, California, prior to my kidnapping. The Ford Mustang, the credit card receipts, the unnamed informant who linked him to Williams—McCarty laid it all out, item-by-item. He wanted Berkley to feel the pressure.
“So, what’s it going to be, Charles? I’m prepared to grant you immunity,” McCarty said.
Berkley paused, looked McCarty in the eye and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
In fact, that’s all he said. Berkley turned around and walked out.
McCarty and McGuire were stunned.
Not only would he go radio-silent, but Berkley disappeared within the week and wouldn’t surface again for four years. Police believed his parting gift was to secretly warn Williams. Luckily, Doug Ball had been watching.
On the morning of September 6, 1976, Williams quietly slipped away from Los Angeles in a motor home that pulled an International Harvester TravelAll—a mid-’70s version of the modern SUV.
On the east coast, McGuire was playing a solitary round of golf before heading into the office. Hitting the links helped him think. When he returned to the clubhouse, an urgent message was waiting from the D.A.’s office. “Call ASAP.”
McGuire dialed from the club.
“California’s moving, Dick. They need to know what to do.”
“Follow him!” said McGuire. “Tell them to follow the son of a bitch. Gimme thirty minutes.”
McGuire threw on a jacket and raced toward NCPD headquarters in an unmarked car.
It was Labor Day, and by outward appearances Williams was just another highway vacationer. But in truth, he was on the run. He drove along I-15, heading northeast into the desert. The FBI pounced when he stopped in Barstow, a town situated around a road junction about two hours from Los Angeles.
From Barstow, one can continue driving northeast to Las Vegas or cut due east toward Arizona. Authorities believed Williams may have been heading back to New York, but McGuire and Moran wondered whether Williams was planning to take a series of southward backroads that would’ve led him to Mexico.
Barstow was also the eastern edge of the Los Angeles-based U.S. attorney’s jurisdiction, and Doug Ball knew a local magistrate in Barstow who was friendly to the FBI. Williams stopped to service the thirty-two-foot motor home at Barstow Tire & Brake before crossing the Mojave Desert. He went inside a free man and came out in handcuffs.
Richard Warren Williams was arrested at 11 a.m. on Monday, September 6, 1976—almost two years after I was abducted at gunpoint from my driveway. He was at the register when the FBI seized him. Williams gave up without a fight—surprising, given that he had $10,300 in marked one-hundred-dollar bills on him.
A woman and two children were escorted off the motor home while it was searched. Williams refused to identify them, though they were later released back in L.A. He’d been under surveillance for six months as authorities amassed evidence and hunted for alleged kidnapping accomplices. Now, he was in custody.
The motor home was taken to a nearby dealership. An expert from the company examined the vehicle off-site.
“See anything unusual?” Doug Ball asked the man as he walked around looking it up and down. “Look over here. This thing’s brand new, and up there by the overhang there’s some chipped paint near the screws. See it?”
The serviceman stood on a ladder, removed the screws, pulled on the siding, and one-hundred-dollar bills came raining down. “Jackpot.” In all, $20,300 was confiscated: $10,300 from a money belt Williams was wearing and $10,000 hidden in the ceiling of the motor home—all one-hundred-dollar bills, all with matching serial numbers to the ransom money.
The TravelAll was torn apart in an effort to find the rest of the money, but nothing turned up.
Williams was charged with interstate transportation of monies obtained from an unlawful activity—a federal crime.
McGuire flew to California the same day and landed at a nearby Marine Corps reserve center. He then hand delivered a separate arrest warrant charging Williams with my kidnapping. It was New York’s victory lap.
“It’s a fantastically long and complex story,” said Commissioner Guido at a New York City press conference. Guido and J. Wallace LaPrade, the FBI’s Assistant Director from the New York Office, identified Richard Williams as the first suspect who was arrested and charged as result of Operation Jacknap.
“Williams was one of many, many names developed over a year ago,” Guido said. He also praised McGuire and Moran for their persistence and dedication. LaPrade said the money was identified “by denomination and serial numbers,” and that authorities were still searching for other suspects.
LaPrade said they were also trying to determine if there was more unspent ransom money, which was hugely important to me. Another $18,000 was found hidden in a wheel well of the motor home two days later. Where was the rest?
Reporters called me for comment throughout the next few days, but I had no desire to talk. I was elated about the arrest and didn’t know Williams. One reporter came to my house. I gave him a few words so he’d leave: “Everyone did a superb job, and there is nothing else I can say.”
The next day, Williams was arraigned in federal court and held on a $500,000 bond. He was facing a five-year prison term and a $100,000 fine for extortion and illegal money transportation.
We had to get him out of California. Five years and a fine?
In a sign of what was to come, Williams waived his right to an attorney and claimed to be unemployed. He wasn’t cooperating with investigators, either.
“What about this being released on your own recognizance?” he asked the judge assertively.
“That’s not possible in your case, Mister Williams,” the judge replied.
McCarty was furiously assembling evidence for a grand jury proceeding back in Nassau County. He also obtained an extradition order from a local district court judge that night.
Several days later, a grand jury returned an indictment after hearing seven witnesses over six hours. Williams had been indicted on first-degree kidnapping, first-degree conspiracy, and first-degree grand larceny.
He was going to face justice in New York come hell or high water.