War Story: “Unsolved Mysteries” and John Quinn – Part Two

Written by Jim Cavanaugh – After a year with no solid information the Bureau offered the case to Robert Stack’s TV show, “Unsolved Mysteries” and they approved a segment on their weekly show. The film crew came to Palm Beach and reenacted the case with actors and video from all of us involved in the investigation. I got my first “15 minutes of fame” with that one. When they were taping at the office, I must have been interviewed for a couple of hours, but when the show actually aired I bet I wasn’t on the screen for more than three or four minutes. Guess I really do have a face for radio.

After the crew left, there were several weeks of post production to put the package together before it was broadcast. I flew out to LA and Hollywood for the airing, because the show and the Bureau wanted an agent in the command center in the event a valid tip was received. An LA agent picked me up and gave me a tour of the city before heading to the studio. We got there about 3 p.m. because of all the prep that goes into one of these shows. I really had never thought of it before, but having seen it, it makes sense.

The actual room where the show airs is almost non-existent. Since it is all on film, Robert Stack, the host, makes the introductions and does a lead-in script. Then someone in a booth hits a button, and the film rolls. Stack simply sits and waits for it to conclude before doing the next one.

Outside that room is a larger one. It looks like a boiler room scam. There are rows and rows of little cubicles where there is a person sitting with a telephone headset on. Above each pod is a blue flashing light that can be activated by the person talking on the phone. As a phone call is received, the person in this room has been briefed as to the facts of the case. They will try to filter out those callers that are obvious nut-jobs (and there are legions of them) from sincere citizens who simply think they may have seen Quinn. A third group of callers are often people that knew/know Quinn and want to see if there is a reward for turning him in.

Those answering the phones are students from UCLA and several other colleges and universities in the area. They are all psychology and sociology majors, and they do this for spending money. Before the show began to air, I was introduced to the group (75-100) and gave them a briefing on the case. They could ask questions and I attempted to answer them. At the end they all returned to their pods, and I moved to a raised stage at the front of the room. A couple of supervisors sat at a control panel that allowed them to plug into any of the pods to listen in on a conversation.

If a person received a call that seemed to be valid, they would activate the flashing blue light above their pod. The supervisor and I could then listen in on the call, and I would make a decision if the caller was legitimate or not. In some cases the caller was patched through to me personally. This happened if the caller seemed to have very specific information as to Quinn’s location or if the caller mentioned something that agents call a “holdback.” This is some little piece of information that only Quinn and I would know. The people answering the phones would not have it, and I never told anyone outside of the Bureau what it was.

We all had to be in position at 5 p.m. L.A. time. The show was on air on the East Coast at 8 p.m. Eastern, so we had to be ready. As the clock moved westward the show would air in the Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaskan and Hawaiian time zones. The call center had to be up and running until 1 a.m. Pacific Time with a full staff and then for another three hours to catch straggler calls. After that a tape machine was activated and the caller could leave a message.

During the course of any call, the person talking with the caller could punch a button and “mark” the call. I could also do that from the platform. These calls were then targeted for review at a later date by me.

When it was over, I had over 1,000 phone calls logged in. Of that, only slightly over 200 were worth checking out further and of that, only four or five really looked promising. Two of the callers mentioned knowing Quinn personally and of seeing him several weeks earlier in Mexico. Both callers named the same resort area on the eastern coast of Mexico and both claimed to have seen Quinn with a woman many years younger. Neither actually spoke with Quinn, so their claims were based only on his appearance.

I had the agents assigned to Mexico immediately ask the local cops for assistance and they reported several people that claimed Quinn’s picture “looked like” a man that stayed in Cozumel for a week. They never could match a name to the picture, so the lead turned into a dead end.

There were other leads in Australia and several states within the US. All the leads were checked, and nothing ever came from them. Quinn was still a ghost.

In late 1991, I was preparing to go undercover and had to re-assign all my pending investigations to other agents. Just before leaving West Palm Beach for Houston my partner (Tony) came to tell me that they just had the first positive sighting of Quinn and it was in Houston. Quinn, using another name, had obtained a Texas Drivers License and the thumbprint was identical to him. When I got to Houston I spoke with the Texas agent that ran down that lead and discovered that, although it was definitely Quinn, he had used a Mail Box Etc address that he rented for six months and then closed. All the information he gave to that company was phony. He had rented it simply to use as a mail drop and was now long gone.

I retired in 1996, and, as far as I know, Quinn is still on the run.