Nation: High Adventure In Colombia

A pair of pilots find more than they bargained for

There were these two American pilots from Houston—that much seems certain. One was William Spradley, a quiet, popular bachelor normally employed as an engine driver with the fire department. The other was Roy McLemore, fiftyish, short, fat and a sometime singer of country music. On April 29 they got into a twin-engine plane at a small airport near Miami and headed south. So far, so good —or bad.

Spradley awoke the next day with a bullet in his back in a small hospital in Riohacha, Colombia. He explained to authorities that he and McLemore had been flying down to Venezuela to pick up oil-drilling bits. But they had had engine trouble near the Colombian coast and were forced to land on a makeshift runway. Then, claimed Spradley, he was set upon by Indians wearing loincloths. They shot him, robbed him and left him by the plane.

Colombian officials had heard such tales before. The Guajira region where Spradley and McLemore landed is rich in marijuana—most of America's pot comes from there (TIME, Jan. 29, 1979)—and for months the army has been cracking down on clandestine flights from the U.S. that swoop in, load up and head north. The Colombians were particularly skeptical when Spradley admitted he could not remember the name of the airport he had taken off from, or his Venezuelan destination, or the company for which he was supposedly working. The missing McLemore, he said, had all the details. The army held Spradley in custody at the hospital.

Spradley's plight seemed minor, however, compared with that of McLemore. Spradley told authorities that the last he remembers seeing his co-pilot was near the airplane during the Indians' shooting spree, "praying out loud."

The story of the two men filtered back Stateside early this month and was made public when a Colombian attorney phoned Dale Everitt, the Houston fire department's public relations officer, and offered to spring Spradley for $30,000.

Spradley's Houston colleagues rallied to his side and a defense fund was set up. Mayor Jim McConn joined the campaign, hoping to recoup some prestige in the wake of a scandal involving a gambling debt and the indictment of a top fund raiser and aide for extorting kickbacks. In full uniform, Everitt flew to the rescue with Fire Chief V.E. Rogers.

After talking with Colombian authorities and Spradley in the Riohacha hospital, Chief Rogers became convinced that his man might have been seeking something other than drill bits on his ill-fated flight. Said he: "My impression is that it was a marijuana run, a drug deal gone bad. Spradley is not the smartest person in the world." So he decided to head home, leaving Everitt to pick up the pieces.

Co-Pilot McLemore, in the meantime, was being held in a goat-killing pen by the Indians, who were trying to figure out from whom they could demand a ransom for his release. Before leaving Colombia, Rogers received a scrawled message from McLemore: "I am safe and would like to turn myself in but I need help too. Let me know what to do. Roy McLemore."