KEESEE, BOBBY JOE
Name: Bobby Joe Keesee
Branch/Rank: Civilian
Unit:
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record:
Date of Loss: 18 September 1970
Country of Loss: NORTH VIETNAM
Loss Coordinates: 181000 North 1061700 East
Status (in 1973):
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Aircraft
Missions:
Other Personnel in Incident:
Refno: 1662
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action
Combat Casualty File, and NAM-POWs, Inc.
REMARKS: 03/14/73 RELEASED BY DRV
NO ONE KNEW HELD FOUND 1 WK BEFORE RELEASE BY GUTTERSEN
Bobby Joe Keesee was a criminal who had stolen an aircraft in Thailand and
was fleeing from authorities when he ran out of fuel and landed on a NVN
beach. He is now in a Mexico prison for an assination attempt against the
President of Mexico. Keesee's exploits and his assassination conviction as
reported a number of times in the New York Times in 1975. The understanding
is that Keesee got Life and started serving his sentence at the Federal
Prison in San Diego.
------------
from the Norbert Gotner bio...
One case which supports the theory that only the "Hanoi" group, which
was known to each other, was released is the case of American civilian
Bobby Keesee, whose existence was discovered only days before the general
prisoner release in the spring of 1973. Keesee, who had been held in a
separate section of a prison from other Americans, was not scheduled for
release and may yet be imprisoned were it not for a unified effort on
the part of other POWs to see that he was released....
--------------
Date unknown
SOLDIER OF MISFORTUNE CHARGED WITH KIDNAPPING San Diago (UPI)--A "massive
investigation" by US and Mexican officials led to Federal charges that the
kidnapping of an American diplomat in Mexico was spearheaded by Bobby Jo
Keesee, the "soldier of misfortune" who has been held prisoner in Jordan and
Vietnam and once flew a stolen plane to Cuba.
Keesee was indicted by a federal grand jury Friday for allegedly "aiding,
abetting, inducing and causing" the kidnaping of Vice Consul John S.
Patterson in Hermosillo, Mexico on March 28. Patterson's whereabouts are
unknown.
Keesee, already in custody on other charges related to the kidnap, was the
"mystery man" who turned up among the US prisoners of war released by North
Vietnam. The State Department said at the time the US officials had no idea
there was a civilian American POW.
Keesee was arrested May 28 at his home in Huntington Beach by FBI agents who
charged him with trying to extort $250,000. At the time, the FBI said Keesee
had nothing to do with the kidnaping but tried to cash in on it.
But the US attorney's office charged Friday an investigation showed that
while Keesee did not actually kidnap Patterson, he made trips to Mexicao to
put the diplomat under surveillance, scouted "properties and locations"
involved in the crime, and directed "preparation of a hand written $500,00
ransom note" delivered to the consulate after Patterson disappeared. Keesee
was also accused of telephoning Patterson's wife with ransom demands, and
setting up a rendezvous to collect the money.
Mrs Patterson has said that she tried to deliver the ransom but could not
keep the rendezvous and had appealed to the kidnappers to get in touch with
her for another try.
The Justice Department would not say what new evidence led to the indictment
Friday, only that "it resulted from a massive investigation by US and
Mexican authorities spearheaded by the FBI." Keesee has been held in the
Orange County jail in Santa Ana since his earlier arrest.
He was dubbed a "soldier of misfortune" for his involvement in a series of
strange international incidents, often winding up in prison. Keesee, was an
army paratrooper and decorated for service in Korea. A metal plate was
inserted in his skull because of a head wound. In the late 1960's, he
served a two-year prison term for deserting from Ft. Huachuca, Ariz.,
stealing a light plane and flying it to Cuba after a spree across several
states.
Keesee later turned up among hostages held by Palestinian guerrillas in a
hotel in Jordan. He was released unharmed. He has refused to talk about
how he came to be a POW in North Vietnam. But his appearance tended to
confirm a report by a Thai charter pilot that an American hijacked his plane
at gunpoint in 1970 and forced him to land on a beach in North Vietnam,
where the American got out and vanished.
---------------
Arizona Republic
9 Jan 99.
"The FBI was continuing a search Friday for an Arizona pilot whose stolen
plane was found with a puddle of blood in the rear passenger area.
Harry Christensen, 48, of Lake Havasu City, has not been seen since
Wednesday morning, when he told his wife he was meeting people interested in
buying his plane, FBI spokesman Doug Beldon said.
The search for the pilot was centering on the Albuquenque area, he said.
The FBI and New Mexico police arrested Bobby Joe Keesee, 64, and his wife,
Hildgund Keesee, 52, on Southbound Interstate 25 near Las Cruces about noon
Thursday, Beldon said. Hildgund Keesee lives in Albuquerque and Bobby Joe
Keesee stays there part time and also has an address in Southern California.
Keesee flew Christensen's twin-engine Cessna 340 to an Albuquerque airport
Wednesday afternoon, where he was met by his wife.
Christensen and the plane were reported missing Wednesday. Beldon said
Christensen's wife called friends in Albuquerque about his disappearance,
and they found the plane at a small airport and called police.
Keesee was arrested on a federal warrant charging parole violation, while
his wife was arrested on suspicion of assisting the interstate theft of an
airplane."
---------------------------------------------
TV news stated Keesee had been in prison in California.
---------------------------------------------
Arizona Central
N.M. arrest latest chapter in soldier's strange saga
Bobby Joe Keesee / Has an eventful past.
By Mark Shaffer
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 14, 1999
When Lake Havasu City businessman Harry Christensen met a potential
buyer of his plane for a test flight last week, he probably heard some
dramatic stories about the frozen trenches of the Korean War.
After all, his passenger, Bobby Joe Keesee of Amarillo, Texas, had been
a teenage hero, participating in a daring rescue of U.S. prisoners and
winning the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
But Christensen probably never heard about Keesee's dark side -- and the
big question is whether his ignorance got him killed.
Keesee is many things besides a hero. At 64, he has more than earned the
label given him: "Soldier of misfortune."
A hijacker of planes to North Vietnam and Cuba, a conspirator in the
death of a U.S. diplomat, a consummate scam artist who posed as a CIA
agent -- Keesee, 64, and his wife, Hildgund, 52, were arrested last
Thursday in New Mexico after Christensen's plane was found at an
Albuquerque airport.
Bobby Joe Keesee was charged Wednesday in Albuquerque with interstate
transportation of a stolen aircraft and air piracy following a complaint
filed by the FBI. Authorities also say Keesee is a suspect in
Christensen's death, though he hasn't been charged with the crime.
Authorities have not found Christensen. They did find a large pool of
what they believe to be Christensen's blood in the back of his
twin-engine Cessna.
For Keesee, it was merely the latest in a long and bizarre international
saga that has landed him in prison for most of the past 35 years. In
some ways, his path seemed unlikely to cross with that of a popular Lake
Havasu City civic leader.
Keesee is "the most persuasive, intelligent con man I've ever seen,"
said George Newhouse, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted
Keesee in a 1996 San Diego case in which the soldier impersonated a
federal emergency management official to procure contracts.
"In his last three crimes, he's been trying to obtain by fraudulent
means an aircraft which will fly long distances," Newhouse said. "He
told federal agents that he wanted to go in the drug-running business in
Mexico."
By all accounts, that would have been merely another routine adventure
for Keesee.
His early years were spent on the road of the Texas Panhandle and
western Oklahoma with his father, Peyton, who put on a traveling
vaudeville show, said Keesee's cousin Francis Pamplin of Amarillo.
But in the years after the Korean War, most of his fellow servicemen
felt he'd been content with life as a career Army man.
Keesee had attained his sergeant stripes while stationed at Fort
Huachuca near Sierra Vista. His future seemed secure, if ordinary. Then
one day in early 1962, he left the base, stole a plane in Texas and flew
to Cuba, where he asked Fidel Castro's government for asylum.
The request was denied. Keesee was sent back to this country, convicted
and given two years in prison, despite his claim that he was a CIA agent
pursing secret operations against Castro, according to news reports.
Shortly after getting out of prison in 1964, he was arrested and
convicted of stealing government-owned parachutes.
Next, in 1970, he popped up in Amman, Jordan, as one of 57 hostages
being held by Palestinian guerrillas in a hotel. Keesee gave no
explanation as to why he was in the Middle East.
But the most sensational incidents were yet to come.
Later in 1970, according to New-house and press reports, Keesee hijacked
a charter flight in Thailand and ordered it to fly to North Vietnam.
Narrowly avoiding anti-aircraft fire in Laos and Vietnam, the plane
landed on a makeshift strip near the North Vietnamese coast.
Keesee was taken into custody by a North Vietnamese army unit and
confined in isolation at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," where downed
American military pilots also were imprisoned. He was believed to be the
only civilian American captive in the country.
Keesee was sent home on the same plane in 1973 as some war heroes,
returning to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where cameras
recorded him kissing the American flag.
A year later, Keesee, then working as a cabinetmaker in Southern
California, was arrested for conspiracy in the murder of John Patterson,
a U.S. consul posted in Hermosillo, Sonora, in a failed ransom attempt
for $250,000. Keesee was sentenced to 20 years in prison, yet he denied
any role in the death.
During the next 12 years behind bars, Keesee worked filling out
requisitions for purchase orders, New-house said. That would lead to his
next scam upon his release in 1986.
Posing as a purchasing agent for the U.S. Navy in Seattle, Keesee was
convicted of attempting to bilk a company out of 643,000 pounds of
copper and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
He was supposed to go to a halfway house five years later but violated
his parole, went to California and took on the alias William J.
Jamerson. He began posing as an official with the Federal Emergency
Management Agency and entered negotiations to buy a plane, which he said
would be used for FEMA flights to disaster areas.
A suspicious businessman called the FBI, but Keesee fled before agents
could arrest him. He next surfaced in Toluca, Mexico, where, posing as a
State Department and CIA agent, he persuaded a New Jersey aviation
company to fly in a plane.
Doubtless calling upon skills learned in prison, he supplied false
government documents that he said would cover the purchase price.
Keesee went to Germany, where he later was arrested and extradited to
New Jersey. He was sentenced to 57 months in prison for the CIA caper in
Mexico. Keesee was returned to California in late 1995 and convicted of
the FEMA scam.
"I'm simply amazed he was out of prison now, given his background,"
Newhouse said.
Soon to follow was the fateful meeting with Christensen, a major figure
in the national boat-racing scene and president of a company called
Advantage Boats.
According to an FBI affidavit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in
Albuquerque, Christensen's plane was seen flying erratically above the
Lake Havasu City airport at 9:15 on the morning of Jan. 6. Christensen's
flight equipment, which family members said he always took, had been
left in his vehicle at the airport.
That night in Albuquerque, airport personnel said Keesee exited the
plane alone.
Keesee was found in possession of Christensen property, including credit
cards and Arizona driver's license.
FBI agents said they could find no trace of Christensen's blood at the
airport. But, in a fittingly odd note, the affidavit says that Keesee
claimed to have been with Christensen at the Lake Havasu airport when
Christensen was shot two times -- without saying by whom.
------------------------------------
War hero indicted in air piracy case
Tied to Lake Havasu man's disappearance
By Mark Shaffer
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 13, 1999
A former Korean War hero who turned to a life of bizarre international crime
was indicted Friday on air-piracy and related charges in the theft of a
plane owned by a Lake Havasu City businessman who disappeared last month.
Bobby Joe Keesee, 64, who is in federal custody in Albuquerque, is also
charged with discharge of a firearm in a crime of violence, interstate
transportation of stolen aircraft and being a felon in possession of a
firearm.
Keesee had responded to an Internet ad placed by Harry Christensen, 48, in
which he sought to sell his Cessna twin-engine aircraft.
The two took off from Lake Havasu City's airport on the morning of Jan. 6,
and a witness said he saw the plane flying erratically near the airport.
Airport personnel in Albuquerque said they saw Keesee get out of the plane
alone that night and a large pool of what is believed to be blood was found
in the back of the plane. Keesee was arrested the next day in Las Cruces,
N.M.
But the investigation has been hindered because Christensen's body has not
been found.
Frederick Battista, an assistant U.S. attorney in Phoenix who is prosecuting
the case, said FBI agents are trying to determine if Christensen's body was
dumped from the air, disposed of after landing somewhere between Lake Havasu
City and Albuquerque or disposed of after the landing in Albuquerque.
Airplane experts who examined the plane, however, said there was no damage
to the door, which would have been the case had it been opened during
flight.
According to an FBI affidavit, Keesee told agents that he was with
Christensen at the Lake Havasu City airport when Christensen was shot two
times. Keesee denied involvement in the shooting. Keesee said he flew
Christensen to Albuquerque and made arrangements for the man to be taken to
Juarez, Mexico, for medical treatment.
When police arrested Keesee, he had credit cards and a ruby ring and diamond
ring belonging to Christensen in his possession. Keesee also had placed his
photo over the top of Christensen's on the Havasu man's driver's license.
Keesee, who had been a career military man stationed at Fort Huachuca in the
1960s, hijacked a plane and flew to Cuba but was denied asylum by Fidel
Castro's government. He later hijacked a charter jet in Thailand and ordered
it to fly to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He was imprisoned with
U.S. military prisoners of war in a Hanoi hotel.
After his release, Keesee was convicted of conspiracy in the kidnapping of a
U.S. diplomat in Hermosillo, Mexico, whose body was later found in the
Sonoran Desert near the city.
============================
In March 2000, Bobby Jo Keese was sentenced to two "life" sentences -- one
for murder, one for air piracy.
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