Lake Headley

Lake Wellington Headley (August 31, 1930 - May 15, 1992) was a private detective and writer. He developed a name for himself as supersleuth. He also wrote about much of the crime he investigated in a series of true crime books. Some of the evidence he uncovered caused convictions to be overturned.^[1]

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 in that he wished to be a lawyer.

He began his career as a police officer in Las Vegas, but his killing of a suspect, as a young officer, prompted him to quit policing and become a p.i.^[2] In 1962, he left the force, where he was a detective, to become one of the first private detectives in Las Vegas.^[3] He went on to work for thirty five years in the field, and was considered one of the best. Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi called Headley, "the best private investigator on earth."^[4]

Patty Hearst and the SLA

During the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga, two of the families of SLA members, including Willie Wolfe's father, contracted Headley to investigate the matter.^[5]

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."^[6]

On May 4, 1974, Headley, along with freelance writer Donald Freed, 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 black convict, Donald DeFreeze, who later became the SLA's figurehead.^[7]
• DeFreeze's arrest records;
• the work of Colston Westbrook with Los Angeles Police Department's CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section) and the State of California's Sacramento-based CII (Criminal Identification and Investigation) unit.;^[8] and
• evidence of links of the CIA to Police Departments.^[9][10]

On May 17, 1974, The New York Times ran the story of DeFreeze and the Los Angeles Police Department.^[11] 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 and an agent provocateur.

Headley also uncovered evidence that, in the housefire in LA that killed six members of the SLA, at least one of the suspects was shot in the back while trying to surrender.^[12]

Family Life

Headley's wife was Terri Lee Yoder. She was originally his assistant and they married in 1981^[13]

Death

Headley died of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) in 1992.^[14]

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