As Kaua’i civic leader Gary Baldwin awaits an extradition hearing set for today at 2 p.m. in Honolulu, details are emerging of how he was tracked down to his home on Kaua’i where he was arrested Monday. On his trail
As Kaua’i civic leader Gary Baldwin awaits an extradition hearing set for today at 2 p.m. in Honolulu, details are emerging of how he was tracked down to his home on Kaua’i where he was arrested Monday.
On his trail for about 15 years has been Arthur Jackson. Jackson is today a consultant based in Georgia, but knew Baldwin in tony Aspen, Colo. in the mid-1980s through what he claims is a mutual connection to the late singer John Denver.
On Wednesday Jackson faxed from Cobb County, Ga. an affidavit to the City & County of Honolulu Prosecutors Office in Honolulu. Jackson is a friend and former business associate of Dr. David Dulaney, an eye doctor in Phoenix, who alleges that Baldwin stole over $300,000 from him. The funds were given to Baldwin in the mid-1980s, Jackson claims, as a payment made by Dulaney for a new Lear Jet airplane that he claims was never delivered.
Jackson’s affidavit was apparently sent to the prosecutors in Honolulu as part of the extradition process that could send Baldwin to law officers in Phoenix.
Honolulu Prosecutors Office spokesman Jim Fulton said the four-page document, which the court has in its possession, has not yet been introduced as evidence, and may not be admissible as evidence, during today’s scheduled hearing.
In the affidavit made public yesterday, Jackson explains how he found out that Baldwin was on Kaua’i after searching for him for him since early 1986.
“In June, 2001, I was thinking of Mr. Baldwin while I was reviewing the Federal Election Commission database on the Internet,” Jackson says in the affidavit. “I entered his name and discovered a match in Hawai’i. I then had a private detective instructor, Dave Basham, run a Choice Point report on the information I had kept over the years. I concluded with high confidence…in late summer, 2001, Mr. Baldwin had been found.”
Jackson says in the affidavit that he contacted Dulaney after determining that Baldwin was in Hawai’i. They then checked with the Maricopa County Sheriffs Department, and found out that an indictment filed against Baldwin in 1986 was still in the department’s system.
The terrorists attacks of last Sept. 11 drew away FBI agents from regular duties, Jackson says in the affidavit, delaying action on pressing the FBI to arrest Baldwin on Kaua’i. A few weeks ago the case was brought to the attention of the FBI office in Honolulu, he claims in the affidavit, resulting in the arrest of Baldwin on Monday.
The arrest was made by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at Baldwin’s home south of Kilauea, on federal charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. The agents were assisted by Kaua’i Police Department officers. In a Honolulu news report, Kaua’i Police Chief George Freitas was quoted as saying the FBI was absolutely certain Baldwin was the man in the warrant issued for the arrest.
In Arizona, Baldwin is wanted by the Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriffs Department on charges of felony theft and fraud involving the alleged theft from Dulaney.
In an FBI report to the press, the agency said Baldwin was indicted in 1986 by a Maricopa County grand jury on the charges.
Jackson claims he met Baldwin through John Denver’s Snowmass Colo.-based Windstar Foundation, where Jackson worked as an administrator. He claims Baldwin and Dulaney were contributors to Denver’s foundation, and that’s how they met.
At the time, Jackson claims, Baldwin was president of Jet Services, Inc., a an aircraft charter company based at the Boulder County Airport in Colorado. He said he became a good friend of Baldwin’s, and flew with him several times on his charter aircraft.
Jackson says in the affidavit that in the fall of 1985 Baldwin became a closer friend to Dulaney. During this time, Jackson claims, “Dr. Dulaney, impressed as we all were with his financial knowledge, asked Mr. Baldwin to assist with his finances and investments as well as an acquisition of a new Lear Jet.”
Over the Christmas holidays of 1985-86, Jackson alleges in the affidavit, Dulaney became suspicious of Baldwin, and by early January was accusing Baldwin of stealing from him.
In his statement, Jackson claims that Baldwin disappeared from Colorado sometime after a mid-January 1986 meeting held with Dulaney’s attorney, leaving behind a suicide note that detailed who was to get his possessions. He also claims in the paper that Baldwin was affiliated with a car rental agency doing business in the Denver-Boulder area and his car was found at the airport, leading them to believe he had left the area.
Jackson says in the affidavit that he and Dulaney then hired a private detective, and several months later a bounty hunter, but couldn’t find Baldwin.
In May, 1986, Jackson says, he became a business manager at Dulaney’s eye clinic and at that time went to the Sun City office of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department and “opened the case for theft concerning Mr. Baldwin.” He said a detective told him these type of cases take time.
Two years later Jackson says he left his job at the eye clinic to become a marketing consultant for ophthalmologists, working occasionally for Dulaney. He says Baldwin’s name would occasionally come up, but no one knew where he was until he found his name in the election donation database and ran a check on him last year.
Editor Chris Cook can be reached at mailto:ccook@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 227).
