Several Questions Remain In Investor's Disappearance

Suspect Says Man He Is Accused of Killing Is Alive

DANA POINT, Calif. -- Two men were aboard when the sailboat Odyssey motored out of the marina here on Feb. 16 last year, chugging past the breakwater under the power of an outboard motor installed a day earlier by the rotund, talkative man at the tiller.

Gary Shawkey billed himself as a motivational speaker, and police say that over the previous three years he had motivated his passenger mightily. From retiree Robert Vendrick, 71, Shawkey -- a Virginia bail bondsman, Internet marketing promoter and onetime holder of the Guinness world record for walking on hot coals -- allegedly coaxed a grand total of more than $1 million.

Vendrick, an Arizona resident, told his wife their life savings were being invested in a software program essential to homeland security. He described the project as secret and lucrative, as so much government contracting came to be after Sept. 11, 2001. Before the Odyssey set out, Vendrick told family members he was confident he would return with a fat check from a meeting that "government agents" insisted take place on San Clemente Island, a U.S. Navy property 50 miles offshore, beyond the horizon.

Three days later, the Odyssey returned without one of its anchors, a 70-pound outboard motor, a measure of rope and Vendrick.

How Vendrick, a mathematics major who spent his career calculating decisions for engineering firms, came to put seemingly total faith in a salesman he met on the Internet stands as a mystery on par with his disappearance. One factor, investigators note, is the peculiar intimacy of hours spent online, presenting a new spectrum of opportunities for confidence artists who rely above all on the illusion of trust.

"Once you get in so deep, you lose all sense of things," said Fred Vendrick, whose brother has not been seen since.

Shawkey was alone on the Odyssey when it docked at a pier in Long Beach. He told police he had returned Robert Vendrick to Dana Point after the retiree complained of choppy seas, then put to sea again and enjoyed a solo weekend on Catalina Island. Customers at an island bar confirmed his presence there, recalling a large, extroverted man who made a strong impression everywhere he went.

"He does have quite a life story," said Orange County sheriff's Det. Mike Thompson, who investigated the case for more than a year. "Have you read his book?"

There are two. "Gary Shawkey's Secrets" and "If I Can . . . Anyone Can!" both promote the notion that bundles can be made "mining the Internet for money." Shawkey's formula involved not arcane algorithms but, rather, simply persuading people to send you checks.

Tom Vendrick said his father, bored in retirement, was looking to parlay his wealth "into more than he had in order to take care of his kids and family.

"My dad built up a hell of a credit card bill left for my mom, through what he thought was going to be the road to riches."

One year after Vendrick's disappearance, Shawkey, 45, was charged with murder for financial gain. He was extradited from Mechanicsville, Va., to Orange County and pleaded not guilty. Public defender Brian Waite, who is representing Shawkey, declined to comment.

Police and prosecutors said that the defendant has consistently maintained that Vendrick is alive, and that Shawkey spent much of the year before his arrest looking for him.

Shawkey telephoned police from Mexico. He announced that he had spotted the missing man in Tijuana and was trying to coax him to return north, but lost him when Vendrick boarded a bus to Mazatlan. Earlier, Shawkey urged detectives to look for Vendrick in Daytona Beach, Fla., saying the retiree had expressed an interest in Bike Week.

Detectives dutifully made inquiries, but they also studied ocean currents and dead-weight buoyancy. Investigators learned that Shawkey, who told police he did not know how to sail, had bought the Odyssey one day before Vendrick arrived from Phoenix for the trip to San Clemente. Vendrick never returned to a motel room that contained his laptop, diabetes medication, the keys to a parked rental car and a television set that was still on.

In Orange County, the investigation recalled the 2004 murder at sea of Thomas Hawks and his wife, Jackie, who was pregnant and, according to testimony, begged for her life before being pitched overboard. The two were offering a test cruise of their 55-foot motor yacht Well Deserved to a gang led by a failed child actor who had brought along his girlfriend and their 9-month-old baby to win the Hawks's trust.

But local officials see Shawkey's case as an unusual escalation of the white-collar crimes that lard the prosecution docket of this affluent Southern California county of 3 million. In one case last year, a man under investigation for allegedly bilking investors of $11 million was arrested on charges that he drugged the cocktail of an Olympic ice dancing gold medalist during a business dinner to discuss a vitamin line.

Shawkey has no record of violence beyond a conviction for discharging a firearm while corralling a bail jumper in Virginia. Though he has faced no previous fraud charges, an online search produces pages of warnings from angry former investors.

"We are dedicated to the removal of Mr. Gary Shawkey from the internet," reads a posting by one investor in BizOpAlliance, which Shawkey had pitched as a "business in a box."

"He has a very powerful personality," said Stephanie Shawkey, in a brief phone interview from Ohio, where her husband long raised funds in the name of a camp for special-needs children that those who contributed say never opened. He also spent time in Florida, where in a 2000 publicity triumph he walked on 165 feet of burning embers.

In Mechanicsville, the company Gary Shawkey International reported annual sales in 2008 of $1.3 million. That is about how much Vendrick's family told police he invested in a "top secret project," which he described vaguely as people-tracking software, including $100,000 wired just before he disappeared. Shawkey has denied any knowledge of a project with the government.

Thompson said the salesman's knowledge of information technology appeared to reach no further than contracting with the servers that hosted his Web sites.

"I can't find any service that Mr. Shawkey was capable of providing that the United States government would be interested in," he said.