Lake Wellington Headley (August 31, 1930 – May 15, 1992) was a

private detective A private investigator (often abbreviated to PI; also known as a private detective, an inquiry agent or informally a private eye) is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private investigat ...

and writer who made a name for himself by being hired to investigate high-profile crimes. Crimes included the

Wounded Knee incident The Wounded Knee Occupation, also known as Second Wounded Knee, began on February 27, 1973, when approximately 200 Oglala Lakota (sometimes referred to as Oglala Sioux) and followers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized and occupied the ...

Patty Hearst Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) is an American actress and member of the Hearst family. She is the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. She first became known for the events following her 197 ...

kidnapping, court-martial of Clayton Lonetree, the murder of Vicki Morgan, and the

Don Bolles Donald Fifield Bolles (July 10, 1928 – June 13, 1976) was an American investigative reporter for ''The Arizona Republic'' newspaper who was known for his coverage of organized crime in and around Phoenix, Arizona, especially by the Chicago Ou ...

car bombing. In a series of

true crime True crime is a genre of non-fiction work in which an author examines a crime, including detailing the actions of people associated with and affected by the crime, and investigating the perpetrator's Motive (law), motives. True crime works often ...

books, Headley wrote about his investigations.

Early life and career

Lake Headley was born in Indiana. He attended Goshen High School in Indiana. In the yearbook for 1948, at around age 16, he stated that he wished to be a lawyer. He began his career as a police officer in

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

, but his killing of a suspect when a young officer prompted him to quit policing and become a p.i. In 1962, he left the force, where he was a detective, to become one of the first private detectives in Las Vegas. He went on to work for thirty years in the field, and was considered one of the best. Los Angeles prosecutor

Vincent Bugliosi Vincent T. Bugliosi Jr. (; August 18, 1934 – June 6, 2015) was an American prosecutor and author who served as Deputy District Attorney for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office between 1964 and 1972. He became best known for suc ...

called Headley "the best private investigator on earth."

Patty Hearst and the SLA

During the

kidnapping saga, two of the families of SLA members, including

Willie Wolfe William Lawton Wolfe (February 17, 1951 – May 17, 1974) was one of the founding members in 1972 of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American radical group based near Oakland, California. While in the group, he adopted the name "Kahjoh", ...

's father, contracted Headley to investigate the matter. Headley concluded his investigation, and filed a sworn affidavit of his findings. Among these included:

That Patricia Campbell Hearst and her parents disagreed bitterly over Patricia's political and personal relations. That a love affair between a black man and Patricia Hearst did take place prior to her relationship with her fiancé Steven Weed. That Mrs. Randolph A. Hearst subjected her daughter to extreme pressure to change her personal and political relationships.

On May 4, 1974, Headley, along with freelance writer

Donald Freed Donald Freed (born May 13, 1932) is an American playwright, novelist, screenwriter, historian, teacher and activist. According to Freed's friend and colleague, the late Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, "(Freed) is a writer of blazing imagination, c ...

, held a press conference in San Francisco. They presented 400 pages of documentation of their findings, some of which included: * a year before the kidnapping Patty Hearst had visited convict,

Donald DeFreeze Donald David DeFreeze (November 16, 1943 – May 17, 1974), also known as Cinque Mtume and using the nom de guerre "General Field Marshal Cinque", was an American man involved with the far-left radical group Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and co ...

, who later became the SLA's figurehead. * DeFreeze's arrest records; * the work of

Colston Westbrook Colston Richard Westbrook (September 14, 1937 – August 3, 1989) was an American teacher and linguist who worked in the fields of minority education and literacy. At the University of California, Berkeley, he established a program of prison outr ...

with

Los Angeles Police Department The City of Los Angeles Police Department, commonly referred to as Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), is the primary law enforcement agency of Los Angeles, California, United States. With 8,832 officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the th ...

's CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section) and the State of California's Sacramento-based CII (Criminal Identification and Investigation) unit.; and * evidence of links of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

to Police Departments. On May 17, 1974,

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

ran the story of DeFreeze and the

. However, the story was largely overlooked due to this being the day of the shoot out and conflagration that killed DeFreeze and five other members of the SLA. In a book he co-wrote with freelance writer, William Hoffman, ''Vegas P.I.: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Detective'', he presented well-documented evidence that Donald DeFreeze, was a

police informant An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a "snitch", "rat", "canary", "stool pigeon", "stoolie", "tout" or "grass", among other terms) is a person who provides privileged information, or (usually damaging) information inten ...

and an

agent provocateur An is a person who actively entices another person to commit a crime that would not otherwise have been committed and then reports the person to the authorities. They may target individuals or groups. In jurisdictions in which conspiracy is a ...

. Headley also uncovered evidence that, in the house fire in LA that killed six members of the SLA, at least one of the suspects was shot in the back while trying to surrender.

Family life

Headley's wife was Terri Lee Yoder. She was originally his assistant and they married in 1981

Death

Headley died of

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or—in the United States—Lou Gehrig's disease (LGD), is a rare, Terminal illness, terminal neurodegenerative disease, neurodegenerative disorder that results i ...

in 1992.

Bibliography

* 1994 ''Contract Killer'' (published posthumously) * 1993 ''Vegas P.I.: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Detective'', with William Hoffman (published posthumously) * 1990 ''Loud and Clear'', with William Hoffman. * 1989 ''The Court-Martial of Clayton Lonetree'', with William Hoffman.

References