Finding Bogucki: The fallout, the stuff-ups and a tinderbox of tension

In his 40-year career as a journalist, Western Australia’s Gary Adshead has pursued the truth – no matter how ugly, how dangerous or how ridiculous. Whether on crooks, crimes, state secrets or heroic rescues, we take you behind the headlines of the biggest stories of his career.See all 18 stories.

It was a most memorable telephone call.

“We’ve found him!” Russell Warman hollered down the Nine Network’s satellite phone on August 23, 1999. “Bogucki! We found him!”

“How is he?” I asked Warman, a blunt-talking New Zealand-born television sound engineer with more than a passion for golf.

“He’s OK, mate,” he replied. “He knew what the date was ... we’ve just put the chopper down at a station outside Broome because he was feeling crook in the air. Where do you want us to take him?”

“Fly him to Broome airport and I’ll make sure there’s an ambulance there to take him to hospital,” I told Warman.

At that point, I was sitting in a room at the Moonlight Bay Suites in Broome, almost 200 kilometres away, working on a script for Nine’s A Current Affair, where I worked.

The telephone call had just changed everything about the TV script I was working on: about the ongoing and thus far fruitless search for Robert Bogucki, an Alaskan firefighter who had embarked on a Biblical journey of discovery across Western Australia’s unforgiving Great Sandy Desert.

Unsurprisingly, this had not gone to plan.

The 33-year-old had last been seen 43 days before, on July 11, 1999 at the Sandfire Roadhouse, 1901 kilometres north of the state’s capital, Perth, on the Great Northern Highway.

Much of the landscape in those parts resembles Mars.

When tourists found his camping gear and bicycle abandoned along a desert track leading to Fitzroy Crossing, a Kimberley town more than 600 kilometres from Sandfire, the alarm was raised.

A desperate search-and-rescue operation had failed to locate the deeply religious adventurer.

It became an international story when his Florida-based parents, Betty and Ray, dispatched an American specialist rescue team to WA, complete with bloodhounds, to help local police in the search.

Leading the hunt for clues of Bogucki’s whereabouts from August 17 was the 50-year-old cigar-smoking chief of the 1st Special Response Group, Garrison “Gunslinger” St. Clair.

He claimed to be a Vietnam War hero whose motto was “anytime, anywhere”.

Together with state police, First Nations trackers, volunteers and a reporter and photographer from The West Australian newspaper, the search operation had been under way for almost four weeks before A Current Affair’s executive producer, David Hurley, sent Warman, cameraman Wayne Waller and me to capture the outback drama. Hurley had no idea we would become the story.

We flew from Perth to Broome on August 20, chartered a helicopter and went back and forth to the haphazard base camp, about 300 kilometres inland from the Indian Ocean tourist destination.

Unlike those stuck out in the barren search area, we were starting the days showered, fed and fresh. I recall joking to Ben Martin, the dishevelled and sleep-deprived West reporter, that we had given him long enough to find Bogucki, and we were there to save the day.

On August 22, 1999, two days after we arrived, our eagle-eyed helicopter pilot Andrew Beaumont spotted something crucial.

It was about two kilometres away when I watched it slow, hover and land.

Under a desert shrub was a blue bedroll. Tied to it was a Bible with handwritten notes. There was a buzz of excitement when Beaumont used his helicopter’s radio to relay the discovery to police, and the American rescue team gathered around their vehicles near where I was standing in the late afternoon sun.

A convoy raced across the Pindan dirt to the helicopter and police were quickly satisfied the abandoned property belonged to the missing Alaskan. What occurred next was pure comedy.

Pilot Andrew Beaumont flew across the remote area numerous times, and had an eagle eye. Credit: Nine

“Gunslinger” St. Clair had a team member tie a pink ribbon to one of the helicopter’s landing skids. The ribbon was then stretched out across scrub and back to the helicopter to form a square about the size of the tennis court.

I approached St. Clair to tell him the helicopter would be leaving soon to take the crew and the exclusive vision of the crucial find back to Broome for that night’s news. The pilot would then return to pick up myself, Warman and Waller.

St. Clair insisted the aircraft stay grounded. “I can’t let the chopper leave because it will disturb the scent for the dogs,” he said.

Wearing camouflage cargo pants and an army green T-shirt, St. Clair was smoking a fat cigar as he lectured me about contaminating the air around the new search area.

Even I had worked out that the scent the bloodhounds required was on the bedroll, and that Bogucki was obviously further away than the perimeter of the pink ribbon tethered to the helicopter.

The discovery of the abandoned possessions boded ill. Credit: Nine

“Our helicopter is leaving in 10 minutes and that’s that,” I told St. Clair, who knew perfectly well he had no power over the media.

Just before I started removing the ribbon, The West Australian photographer Robert Duncan asked if there was any room on the helicopter. He wanted to send his most recent photographs of the search back to Perth and was desperate for a shower and good night’s sleep.

There was one seat free on the first trip about to depart for Broome, so I gave him the green light. I told Duncan he would also be able to fly back to the search team on our helicopter in the morning because I had to stay at the hotel to write my script for A Current Affair.

He was elated, grabbed his gear, and hopped aboard the Robinson 44 chopper.

But in less than 24 hours my sympathetic gesture would become a sore point as the Bogucki odyssey came to a dramatic conclusion.

It was mid-morning on August 23, when the helicopter with Warman, Waller and Duncan aboard flew east of Broome towards the search area.

Garrison “Gunslinger” St. Clair.Credit: Nine

Suddenly, Beaumont spotted someone walking through a dry creek bed sprouting eucalyptus trees.

“I don’t think that’s one of the searchers,” he said.

He brought his helicopter lower and the man everyone was looking for came sharply into focus. Waller hauled the Nine camera onto his shoulder.

Duncan – fortunate enough to have my seat on the helicopter – pressed his shutter-release button as fast as his finger muscles would allow before the helicopter landed.

The three newsmen, completely aware of the survival story scoop playing out before them, walked towards Robert Bogucki.

The scraggy desert trekker from Alaska was swigging from a bottle containing mud-coloured water. His face was gaunt, his hair matted, but he was alive and still had a sense of humour.

He reached into his crumpled backpack and took out a clean white T-shirt.

“My girlfriend bought me this shirt a while ago and I haven’t worn it yet,” the exhausted Alaskan said.

If not for the pilot hired by Nine, Bogucki may never have slipped into that shirt. His days were numbered, and a nearby “HELP” message that Bogucki had formed with rocks was proof his Jesus-inspired 40 days and 40 nights in the desert was fast approaching a fatal conclusion.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me,” he told Waller, as our cameraman filmed him putting on the shirt.

One of the best in the business, Waller knew he had to capture every moment of his time with Bogucki.

But when the unedited camera tape was later obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Media Watch program, Nine found itself at the centre of an overblown media storm.

The network was accused of risking Bogucki’s life by not flying him immediately to the nearby base camp to be medically assessed. The news instincts of the crew to interview and film him where he was located were roundly criticised.

At the time, the whingeing appeared to me to be nothing more than jealousy and spite.

The team saw Bogucki walking along this mostly dry watercourse.Credit: Nine

As a consequence of deciding to airlift Bogucki to Broome, Nine had denied “Gunslinger” St. Clair, the rescue team – and the other media outlets at the base camp – their moment of glory.

The backlash was fierce.

“I am actually appalled by the conduct of some of the people involved,” Broome Police Superintendent Steve Roast told the ABC.

“Somebody in Mr Bogucki’s state, it is extremely important under those circumstances to have an orderly appropriate evacuation.”

“When they found him they should have called us and let us get medical help out and examine him before they took him to Broome,” said St Clair.

“They actually endangered him at that point.”

Not a word of thanks for finding the Bible and bedroll the day before. Not even a pat on the back for locating the man for whom time was running out and taking him to hospital.

Bogucki with the shirt he had been saving.Credit: Robert Duncan. AAP image.

The 15 minutes the crew spent in the desert capturing Bogucki’s inspiring story before flying him out of there was also used against us.

Media Watch, armed with the raw footage, made sure it exposed every cringe-worthy minute.

“I thought Channel Seven were the bloody winners,” quipped Beaumont, as he prepared his helicopter for take-off following the rescue.

“Bad luck,” replied Waller, with his camera rolling.

“We are the winners, now.”

That sort of banter between colleagues who had secured a scoop on this scale was not unusual. But having it beamed into people’s living rooms was jarring. The Media Watch hit job on Nine was only just beginning.

Before taking off, the pilot and his crew discussed what to do next. There was only room on the chopper for four people, and given it had been chartered by Nine, a decision was made to leave Duncan on the ground.

The photographer had more than enough exclusive photos of Bogucki and accepted the plan. Beaumont gave Duncan a locator beacon, lifted off, hovered and contacted a helicopter pilot at the base camp.

He said that Bogucki had been found, was lucid, appeared to be in reasonably good health and would be flown to Broome. Duncan’s coordinates were also relayed, and the photographer was picked up by the rescue team’s chopper minutes later.

The judgment was swift and fierce.Credit: Nine

On board the Nine helicopter, the famished Bogucki asked his rescuers if they had any food.

There was a bag of fruit and Bogucki took out a banana and savoured the first bite. That banana became a focus of ridicule for anyone wanting to undermine Nine’s discovery of Bogucki and the story Warman, Waller – and Duncan – had gathered.

If the American had chosen, and then eaten an apple, the mockery of those who weren’t there wouldn’t have come so easily.

I have always pondered what St. Clair and his team would have said to Bogucki if he had asked for something to eat. I doubt they would have denied him food.

After more than 30 minutes in the air, Bogucki told the pilot he was feeling sick and Beaumont quickly landed.

Waller, knowing it was another opportunity to film aerials of the survivor, asked Beaumont to fly over him while he recovered on the ground.

The crew giving the famished man a bit of fruit came in for scrutiny. Credit: Nine

That decision was a mistake. When Media Watch aired the uncut vision of Bogucki appearing to vomit alone in the desert, the crew’s handling of their exclusive was brought into disrepute.

The West Australian then turned on Nine by distorting the decision to offload its photographer.

One story falsely claimed the newspaper had jointly chartered the helicopter.

I was so furious when I read it that I banged on the hotel door of reporter Ben Martin to complain. He knew the helicopter was Nine’s and blamed the Perth office for adding that falsehood.

When I returned to Perth, I suggested half of the hefty bill for the aircraft’s charter be sent to the newspaper to make a point.

I’m not sure if that happened, but the newspaper wasn’t complaining when Duncan went on to win industry awards off the back of his on-the-spot photographs. Waller was also recognised for his camerawork.

The taking of these images was to become a story in itself. Credit: Robert Duncan. AAP image.

Bogucki fully recovered and returned to his Alaskan home after doing an interview for all media from his hospital bed in Broome.

“I scratched the itch,” he said. “I just wanted spend a while on my own, just nobody else around, just to make peace with God, I guess.

“I feel bad that a lot of people came looking for me, that there was so much spent in time and effort, and I really appreciate it.”

Rather than accepting the miracle in the desert as a positive story and outcome, local politician Larry Graham said Bogucki should be made to pay for the rescue effort. His family had already paid for St. Clair’s team to turbo-charge the mission in Australia.

“I think [the state] should pursue Mr Bogucki and see what money they can get back out from him,” Graham insisted.

“It could take a civil action against him, for example.”

It is a good job Graham was not around when Jesus was doing his thing.

Bogucki recovered well and told reporters he had not been taken to Broome inappropriately.Credit: Nine

There were also threats to launch a full investigation into Nine’s handling of the rescue and news event. It was bluster and nothing further happened.

Strangely, a year after the rescue, Florida-based reporter Kris Millegan wrote a lengthy piece about St. Clair, which alleged he had no military history and had been jailed for fraud in the 1970s.

“St. Clair, who got six months and three years of probation, won’t discuss the case, but doesn’t dispute the court records,” wrote Millegan in a piece headlined “Military Intelligence Paragon a Fraud”.

The reporter had done background checks of St. Clair’s war service boasts and concluded they were bogus.

Gunslinger’s defence was to suggest “all is not as it seems” and that when you have been part of the “black ops” community it was necessary for military records to be altered or erased.

In the end, the allegations spread quickly through the world of search and rescue enthusiasts and operators and St. Clair stood down as head of 1SRG.

“This isn’t being done because someone considers 1SRG is a bad SAR,” he told Millegan. “This was done because someone wanted to hurt me.”

He repeated his “I know the truth” line, and that he was “comfortable with who I am”.

It is true that without the curious ingredient of an American team of searchers and their floppy-eared bloodhounds taking to the Great Sandy Desert, Nine might not have sent the camera crew and I to Broome.

Indisputable is the fact that our pilot made two crucial discoveries as he flew above the desert terrain, and in doing so brought the month-long search to a successful end.

Telling St. Clair that his involvement had been pivotal might undo some of the hostility he felt toward my colleagues and me at the time.

But it is too late for that. The cigar-loving man of mystery has since died.

Nine is the publisher of WAtoday.

Next week on The Reporter: The truth is out there – at a spy base 35 kilometres east of Geraldton.

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