HELENA STAR
On April 17, 1978, the U.S. Coast Guard seized the aging freighter, Helena Star, 140 miles off the coast of Washington State. It’s hold was loaded with 37 tons of marijuana - the west coast’s largest pot bust - worth an estimated street value of $74 million. Drug agents later seized the sleek Joli, a 61-foot sailboat, for its suspected role in the case. A past winner of the prestigious Victoria to Maui sailboat race, the Joli had been purchased from William Niemi, Jr., former president of Eddie Bauer, by champion freestyle skier Mike Lund. From the trenches, author, Stewart Riley, the attorney for the captain of the Helena Star provides an insider’s unvarnished account of the case. The freighter and the conspirators involved in the smuggling were in the news from the seizure of the vessel in 1978, to its sinking in 2013. This drug bust and the ensuing events comprise a true saga about the inner workings of a Colombian-American drug cartel, smuggling on a massive scale, money laundering, the capture of fugitives in Bolivia, suspicious deaths, and courtroom battles in Seattle and San Francisco. Helena Star is Stewart Riley’s first book.
Helena Star is published by Robert D. Reed Publishers, www.rdrpublishers.com (c) 2020.