by Bob Hamer
Steve had been a member of NAMBLA for many years but had not been active recently. He marched at Stonewall and attended conferences in the mid-eighties. He also spoke of his hatred for George W. Bush and “Ashcroft cronies.” I didn’t ask, but I assume he did not think highly of the FBI, either. Steve said he had been inactive in NAMBLA and had only recently communicated again with Peter Herman, who encouraged him to “not live your life in fear.” Thanks to Peter’s encouragement and invitation, Steve decided to attend the Miami conference.
Although his age of preference was “around fourteen,” he described himself as “very versatile” and that he did “different things with different people . . . very easily pleased. . . . Of course, I love good sex, but I’m not very demanding.”
Steve admitted to coming to the Miami conference with the idea of finding someone with whom to travel and told me he approached David when he learned David might be putting something together. Another tally mark in the “NAMBLA networking” column.
He was open on the phone, but I was reluctant to push too hard. He said teaching provided the benefits of being near boys and that many boys came on to him. He denied having any “special friend” at the time we were talking. When I provided him with the Web site information about the travel agency, he promised to send his deposit to reserve a spot. “I am really looking forward to the trip and have a smile on my face.”
For the next week or two, Steve and I exchanged e-mails and engaged in several telephone conversations. After some initial problems with the travel agency, he was able to connect, work out the details, and set up his flight into Los Angeles. I suggested Steve invite Bob Rhodes, but he had lost contact. Even when he asked Peter where Rhodes was, Peter claimed not to know.
The new year meant continued investigative and undercover responsibilities in all three of my then-current undercover operations. It did not take long for the Ensenada conspiracy to grow. On January 2, I was able to contact Paul Zipszer, something the others had been unsuccessful in doing. Paul and I briefly exchanged pleasantries before I sprang the invitation. He hesitated, but only momentarily. Again, his concern was finances, not criminal culpability. I laid out the details of the trip and relayed David Mayer’s offer to help with airfare to California. Paul took David’s number and promised to call him to discuss the details.
In just a few days, our party of traveling pedophiles had grown from three—David Mayer from Chicago, Todd the “divorced dentist from Dallas,” and me—to five, if both Steve Irwin and Paul Zipzser followed through on their professed interest. And, I would soon learn, there were more fish eyeing the hook.
36
GREG NUSCA, AKA DAVID R. BUSBY
David Mayer was overseas, but I called Todd that evening with the news I contacted Paul. I was fighting a cold, and when Todd noted that I sounded different on the phone, I said I was using my “heterosexual voice.” Todd laughed at this, then told me he was pleased one of us was able to connect with Paul. I attributed my success to the cold and the fact that I claimed to be a friend from the gym seeking a personal trainer.
Although David R. Busby had been ignoring my communications, he did respond to David Mayer’s e-mail, and David forwarded it to me.
Great to hear from you!! Mexico sounds great, I’d love to go. I’m not sure I can come up with that kind of money, although getting off work will not be a problem. Let me hash it over, and I’ll get back to you ASAP.
By the way, you told me that you knew of a good website featuring boy feet. Would you e-mail me back a link?
I’ll email you soon. A very Happy New Year to you!!
A new target emerged, and I needed to prepare.
On January 4, I sent David R. Busby the following:
So excited that you may be able to join us for the trip. I really hope finances won’t get in the way. We may be able to help. As we get more travelers, the price goes down. One thing: it’s probably cheaper to fly into LAX than San Diego. Several of us will be getting on the boat there, rather than in SD. Don’t be shy, let me know. Love to help you join us.
I said the magic words: “we may be able to help.” After practically ignoring me for almost two months, David R. Busby responded in fewer than eight hours.
Can you give me a call? I want to talk about a few details of the trip. For example, I didn’t know that we were talking about a cruise until you mentioned it in this email. . . . I’m excited about the prospect of going if I am able, I just want to ask a few questions. Thanks!
The next day, on January 5, I called the number David gave me, and when the voice mail picked up, it identified the person as “Greg Nusca,” or at least I thought that was what it said. I could not quite make out the name on the voice mail greeting. I checked the number he provided and redialed. Again: “Greg Nusca.” I did not recognize the voice and decided it was best not to leave a message. Instead, I immediately e-mailed “David R. Busby” and told him of the voice mail encounter. Within minutes, my cell phone rang, it was “David R. Busby”—or, as I would subsequently learn, Greg Nusca.
No one was forced to fully identify himself at the NAMBLA conferences, and as I learned there, Tim from Michigan was not necessarily “Tim,” “Peter Herman” was actually Peter Melzer, and “Rock Thatcher” was an alias. I never suspected David R. Busby was not my target’s real name until encountering the voice mail message on his phone. He carried himself and his lie with thorough deceit. I guess I should have recognized the work of another professional, but I didn’t.
Greg explained the ruse but refused to give me his true name. It was only later we fully identified him. To the real world, he is known as Greg Nusca. In BL circles, he uses the name David R. Busby, an alias consisting of a “conglomerate of four boys that I’ve been with that I thought were tens”—a sort of memento of his conquests, I guess.
Even though he would not provide his true name, he had little problem incriminating himself in our phone conversation. A production manager at a Miami-area print shop, he hoped to go to massage school and become a physical trainer working with boys’ athletic teams. He told me he found “Mexican and Brazilian boys very arousing,” and after I explained the details of the trip, he said that he would sell his mother to go. Before that sale was completed, however, he needed me to spot him the money until his tax refund check arrived. He agreed to pay the two-hundred-dollar deposit, and I fronted the rest.
Greg’s age of preference was nine or ten, and he wanted the “whole enchilada”—he was looking for anal sex.
I provided him the Web site and e-mail address of the travel agency and asked him to invite Sam from Miami. Greg Nusca, aka David R. Busby, one of the newest members of the NAMBLA steering committee, was excited about the upcoming trip and a more-than-willing participant. I was confident we had snagged another sexual predator on our “Mexican sex cruise.”
On January 6, Greg left a lengthy voice mail message while I was in the air, flying to meet Sam Lindblad in Albuquerque. With time to ponder his decision to join us, he thought of several questions. Greg detailed his concerns in the voice mail: He had still not heard from the travel agency and wondered how I heard of it. Although he trusted me, he was preparing to make nonrefundable airline reservations and wanted to make sure the trip would, in fact, happen. Sam from Miami would not be able to join us and Greg assured me he promised not to tell Peter Herman. Greg added that even if Peter told him not to go, he would still join us.
I was a little worried on the flight in, since I was traveling with my San Diego case agent. I didn’t know how big the Albuquerque airport was, and didn’t want to risk running into Sam Lindblad while in the company of another FBI agent, in case Sam got overeager and decided to surprise me by picking me up at the airport. He stuck to our plan, however, and I was able to score a Mustang for my rental car—a decided improvement over the “soccer mom” ride I’d had at the Miami NAMBLA conference.
Our Albuquerque contact briefed my case agent and me on the scope of the Lindblad in
vestigation, which he had been pursuing diligently, despite certain administrative hurdles presented by the Bureau. He was eager to assist us in any way and agreed to cover me in my meeting with Lindblad that evening, along with my San Diego case agent.
Once I settled into my Albuquerque hotel room, I called Greg. He said Sam from Miami wouldn’t be able to join us because it was too difficult for him to travel. He noted that Sam’s advanced age prevented him from engaging in much sexual activity, but Greg told Sam he would allow him to watch Greg have sex with a boy if Sam desired. What a pal! I put Greg at ease, answering his questions and reinforcing the validity of the trip.
New questions arose the next day, however, after Greg received an e-mail from the travel agency, asking for a mailing address so they could send him the brochure and application. Greg did not want to identify himself to the travel agency or provide an address. He even had reservations about the manner in which to provide the two-hundred-dollar deposit—cash, check, or money order? My frustration growing with each contact and with his endless questions, I almost wanted to say, “Don’t worry about it, you’re going to jail under any name you use.” I maintained my composure, and after what seemed like a lengthy discussion, I convinced him that I would mail him my extra copy of the brochure to any name and address that he provided. His solution was an intelligence-gathering coup: he provided the name and address of Sam from Miami—another NAMBLA member identified. Greg repeated that his age of preference was “nine to ten” and bragged that he once had an eight-year-old “go down” on him.
I got off the phone, his boast still ringing in my ears: eight years old. As I wrestled with my anger over the thought of Greg Nusca debauching a boy so young, I remembered another eight-year-old whose innocence was erased—but for a very different reason.
It happened while I was working gangs in L.A. We had just conducted one of our all-too-frequent searches, hoping to locate a gang member wanted for murder. We hit the house with a court-authorized arrest warrant in hand. We successfully found our teenage murderer asleep in his bed, and as two police officers took him away, several members of our task force spoke to the grandmother with whom he was living. I walked back out to the car and found the gang member’s eight-year-old brother sitting on the curb, crying. I sat down next to him without saying a word.
After a while, he dried his tears and asked, “Did my brother kill someone?”
I sort of dodged giving him a direct answer. “We just need to talk with your brother,” I told him. “We have to ask him a few questions and need to clear up some things.”
“My dad killed my mom,” he said. “That’s why I’m living with my grandmother.” He paused and added, “I hope my brother didn’t kill anybody.” He then began talking about guns and how plentiful they were in his neighborhood. “I hear gunshots all the time.”
What he said didn’t surprise me. In the early sixties, Los Angeles averaged about six gang-related homicides a year. By the time I got involved in gang investigations in the late eighties, local law enforcement tallied gang-related homicides at well over five hundred per year. By any standard of measurement, this little boy was living in a war zone.
I followed up one of his comments by asking him how many people he had seen killed. He looked down at his open hand and began counting his fingers. He looked up and asked, “You mean shot, or killed?”
A lump began to form in my throat as I thought about my own son, who was also eight at the time, and the boys I coached on our youth league baseball team. This little guy should have been playing ball, watching cartoons, and dreaming about his future. Instead, he was dodging bullets, just hoping to survive long enough to be nine. After a few more calculations, he said, “I’ve seen eight people killed.”
His innocence was stolen, just as BLs stole the innocence of the boys they seduced.
In the world of the BL, a question frequently asked early in any encounter is, “What’s your age of preference?” In the outside world it might be like asking a teacher which grade she preferred to teach or asking me which age group I preferred to coach. But for the BL it has very explicit sexual implications. Although some men I met or corresponded with were satisfied with any underage boy, most had very specific desires. In one conversation a BL said, “Eight to ten, nothing older, nothing younger.”
I was thinking about all this as I prepared for my interview with Sam Lindblad in Albuquerque.
Sam was right on time, a good sign. We made our way through the lobby of the hotel to the Rancher’s Club, where I had made reservations. I said I wanted a quiet corner to conduct business, and the hostess was most accommodating. The rustic setting provided a perfect atmosphere for a business dinner: saddles, Western artifacts, and artwork adorned the walls. I was not disappointed by the meal, either. The Rancher’s Club had received numerous well-deserved awards for fine dining, and it definitely received my personal Undercover Agent’s Gold Star Seal of Approval. The meal was expensive, but price is no object when you have an undercover credit card.
Sam ordered the New York sirloin and red beets. As a twenty-six-year veteran of the FBI, having spent many of those years in various undercover roles, I can categorically say I have never dined with a target who ordered red beets. I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a restaurant that offered red beets. My choice was a bit more exotic, taking advantage of the unique menu. Selecting from the mixed grill, I chose the double-bone antelope chop, grilled wild boar sausage, and venison tenderloin, with baked sweet potato and sautéed mushrooms—a five-star meal to go with the five-star admissions I would gain that evening.
The joint project for the Bulletin provided the perfect vehicle for allowing Sam to openly discuss his past. Keeping with my handicap cover, I asked Sam if it would be okay to record our conversation, since writing was sometimes difficult because of my “condition.” He readily agreed to my request, never inquiring into the exact nature of my medical problems.
I placed a small recorder on the table and began asking some prepared questions. At appropriate times, I turned off the recorder to inquire about more intimate details. What Sam didn’t know was that I was wearing a separate recording device, and when the tabletop recorder was off, my body wire was still running. That evening I obtained a wealth of information—most of it rather disturbing.
37
DIARY OF A SEXUAL PREDATOR
Out of prison less than fourteen months, Sam Lindblad made criminal admissions throughout the evening, including a statement that he molested over twenty boys. As a twenty-year-old camp counselor, he let a boy sleep in his sleeping bag. While on a cruise with his wife, “a ten-year-old caught my eye and before I knew it I was sleeping with him on the deck.” Even after being released from prison, he attended a church where he “hung around the older brother [an eighteen-year-old] ’cause I liked the younger brother [a thirteen-year-old].” Once, while at their home during the mother’s working hours, Sam was in the kitchen helping the thirteen-year-old and his sister with the dishes. The mother called and Sam instructed them “not to tell their mother” that he was there. I’m sure if the mother had realized her children were at home alone with a recently released sex offender, she would have found someone to cover her shift.
Sam had a master’s degree in special education and worked with the developmentally disabled. Obviously, such employment provided him with a target-rich environment and he took advantage of his position. He denied engaging in oral or anal sex but said he enjoyed “fondling.” His age of preference, “nine- to fourteen-year-olds,” was a pretty broad range compared to most of the men I encountered. Since many boys begin puberty before fourteen, few men I met targeted both pre- and postpubescent boys.
Our discussion of the prison rehabilitation program brought into question the value of any organized effort at rehabilitation, at least as far as it applied to boy lovers. Sam said something that never occurred to me.
The mandated prison counseling program he attended consisted of approximately fifty i
nmates, all sex offenders. By Sam’s estimates, 10 to 20 percent were boy lovers. Here, for the first time in his life, thanks to the required prison counseling, he met other BLs. “I made some good friends in the program,” he told me. Even more enlightening was the fact that despite the counseling and therapy, he still considered himself a BL. “I don’t know anybody that’s gone through the therapy [who changed sexually as a result]. . . . You don’t get cured and they know that. . . . You play the game. . . . It’s not what’s between your legs; it’s what’s in your brain.”
Sam’s frank admissions reflected the views expressed on the NAMBLA Web site regarding their “Prison Program.”
Some states conduct “therapy” programs for inmates, and for parolees once they are released. The therapy ranges from drug therapy and aversion therapy to group counseling. For parole or early release, an inmate’s “cooperation” with the prison therapists conducting these programs is required. Prisoners are required to enroll for a “cure,” to participate, and to seem to be rehabilitate. . . . These programs have never [emphasis added] been shown to have any lasting value for the prisoner or for society.
I once heard Vin Scully, the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, say that statistics are like a lamppost to a drunk: they are used more for support than illumination. Sam’s “therapy” program and his admissions of offending multiple times since his release reminded me of a study I read in preparing for this investigation. The Sex Offender Treatment Program established by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina, studied ninety inmates who volunteered for the treatment program. During their presentence interviews, these ninety prisoners, who were admitted or convicted child sexual offenders, admitted to 106 sexual contact crimes. After completion of the federal treatment program, these same ninety inmates admitted to 1,728 previously undocumented sexual contacts. Each offender admitted to an average of 19.2 additional and previously undocumented sexual contacts. How many of the men we were targeting were truthful in admitting, either to me or their counselors while in therapy, to the number of sexual contacts they had with minors?
