The Palmyra Atoll Murders: Conviction, Acquittal, and Aftermath

The Palmyra Atoll murders were the 1974 killings of San Diego sailors Malcolm “Mac” Graham and his wife Eleanor “Muff” Graham on a remote, uninhabited Pacific atoll roughly 960 miles south of Honolulu. The Grahams disappeared after weeks of tension with the only other people on the island, ex-convict Wesley “Buck” Walker and his girlfriend Stephanie Stearns, who were later caught in Hawaii sailing the Grahams’ repainted and renamed yacht. Muff Graham’s charred remains washed ashore on Palmyra in 1981, inside a burned aluminum container, and federal prosecutors charged both Walker and Stearns with murder. Walker was convicted of first-degree murder in 1985. Stearns, defended by Vincent Bugliosi, was acquitted in 1986.

Two Couples on an Uninhabited Atoll

Mac Graham, 43, and Muff Graham, 41, were experienced sailors from a marina on Shelter Island in San Diego. They had spent two years planning and provisioning their 37.5-foot ketch, the Sea Wind, for an extended stay at Palmyra. They arrived in July 1974 intending to live on the atoll for up to two years.¹

Walker and Stearns were already there. They had sailed from Hawaii aboard the Iola, a barely seaworthy 30-foot sloop they had bought in Maui. What they expected to be a week-long voyage from Kauai stretched to nearly three weeks after they got lost, and they burned through most of their six-month store of provisions before they even arrived. The Iola had to be towed into the lagoon because of a broken motor.¹

Palmyra is a horseshoe of about 50 small islands ringing two lagoons, altogether about 1.5 square miles of land barely rising above the sea.² In 1974 it was uninhabited. For practical purposes, the four of them were the only people there.

The contrast between the couples was stark. The Grahams were comfortable and well supplied aboard a solid boat. Walker and Stearns were running out of food. At some point in July 1974, Walker’s pit bull attacked Muff Graham.¹ That imbalance would later shape the prosecution’s theory of motive.

The Last Radio Call

The final known contact with the Grahams was on August 28, 1974, when Mac radioed a contact in Hawaii. According to that contact, Mac said, “There is a dinghy coming over to the boat, I guess they’ve made a truce.” The radio operator heard laughter and a woman’s voice before Mac signed off.¹ The Grahams were never heard from again. A flyover of Palmyra in September 1974 spotted no vessels.

The Stolen Yacht in Honolulu

In October 1974, the Sea Wind turned up in a Honolulu yacht harbor. It had been repainted and renamed Lokahi. Walker and Stearns were aboard. Their story was that the Grahams had given them the boat and that the Iola had sunk on a reef. Photographs taken by Walker from the Sea Wind undercut that account: they showed the damaged Iola sailing away on the open ocean, not sinking.¹

Both were convicted of stealing the Sea Wind. Stearns served a prison term for the theft. Walker was also imprisoned for it, but in July 1979 he escaped from McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary in Washington State.³ At that point, murder charges had not been brought. There was no body.

The Remains on the Beach

That changed in January 1981. A South African yachtswoman named Sharon Jordan was walking a beach on Palmyra when she noticed a gold-crowned tooth glinting in the sand on a coral shelf. The tooth was attached to a human skull. Nearby, an aluminum chest lay on its side, partially buried, with skeletal remains spilling out of it.⁴ Investigators concluded the chest had washed up from the lagoon, likely floated to the surface by decomposition gases.

Dental records identified the remains as Muff Graham’s. The forensic findings were brutal. Her jawbone had been smashed in three places, and there was a hole in the side of her skull above the temple. Forensic experts testified the hole was consistent with a gunshot wound inflicted with the muzzle pressed directly against the head. Both the skull and the container showed signs of extreme heat. Experts estimated the chest had been exposed to temperatures around 1,100 degrees, consistent with an accelerant such as gasoline. The outside of the chest, however, was not heat-damaged, which led investigators to conclude the container had been submerged in water while the fire burned inside it.⁵

The chest itself was traced to a supply box from a World War II-era U.S. Air Force rescue boat that had been left on Palmyra.⁵ The prosecution’s theory: the body was placed in the container, set on fire, and dumped in the lagoon, where it stayed submerged for years before drifting to the beach.

Mac Graham’s remains have never been found. He is presumed to have been disposed of at sea.⁶

Why the Case Was Federal

Palmyra is the only incorporated territory among the fourteen U.S. insular areas. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, the Hawaii Statehood Act specifically excluded Palmyra from the new state, keeping the atoll under the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii.² Any crime there was a federal matter, and the murder cases were prosecuted in federal court.

Walker’s Conviction

Both Walker and Stearns were indicted for murder after the remains were identified. Walker, recaptured after his 1979 escape, was tried first, in Honolulu in 1985.⁷

Alongside the forensic evidence, prosecutors called former prison inmate Noel Allen Ingman, who testified that Walker had boasted about robbing the Grahams, forcing Mac Graham to “walk the plank,” and “blowing away” the couple. Walker’s attorney, Earle Partington, argued that the forensic evidence showed “possibilities, not certainties,” and attacked Ingman as a “paid Judas.”⁵

On June 12, 1985, the jury found Walker guilty of the first-degree murder of Eleanor Graham. He was sentenced to life in prison.⁷

Stearns’ Acquittal

Stearns’ separate trial opened in early 1986 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. She was accused of plotting Muff Graham’s death and helping Walker carry it out.⁸ Her lawyer was Vincent Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor who had convicted Charles Manson, taking a rare turn on the defense side.

Bugliosi portrayed Walker as a domineering figure who controlled Stearns. She took the stand, said she had an “extreme aversion to guns,” denied harming anyone, and disputed the prosecution’s claim that she and Walker had been desperate for food on Palmyra.⁸ The defense argued that even if Walker had committed murder, the evidence did not prove Stearns took part in it or knew about it.

On February 28, 1986, the jury acquitted her of all charges. Afterward, she told reporters, “My faith in the American judicial system has been restored.”⁹

Walker’s Later Years

Walker was granted early parole in 2007 from a federal prison in Victorville, California, at age 69, on account of declining health. He lived briefly in a San Francisco motel and then settled in a 22-foot trailer outside Willits, California. He never admitted to the killings. After his release he self-published an 895-page book maintaining his innocence, calling himself “an old man who has been wrongly convicted of murder.”¹⁰ Partington, his former attorney, said that refusal to accept responsibility in the book had actually worked against Walker’s chances at parole.¹¹

Walker died on April 26, 2010, at age 72, in a nursing home after a stroke.¹⁰

Muff Graham’s Remains, Still Unburied

The FBI kept custody of Muff Graham’s remains for decades after the trials. In the spring of 2009, retired Los Angeles deputy public defender Tom Bucy discovered that an FBI agent had been using the remains as a classroom prop during a lecture at a law school in Hawaii. As of 2014, forty years after her death, her remains were still unclaimed in FBI storage and had never been given a proper burial.⁶

1
Willits News. Notorious Atoll Murderer Dies After Parole to Willits Area
2
U.S. Department of the Interior. Palmyra Atoll
3
The New York Times. Mystery on Pacific Atoll Leads to Murder Charge
4
Los Angeles Times. Mystery on Pacific Atoll Leads to Murder Charge
5
Los Angeles Times. Forensic and Trial Details in Walker Case
6
Cruising World. 1974 Murder Victim Still Awaits Burial
7
The New York Times. Jury Finds Boat Thief Guilty in 1974 Pacific Island Murder
8
Los Angeles Times. Stearns Trial Coverage
9
UPI. Piracy Murder Trial Ends in Acquittal
10
Honolulu Advertiser. Walker Obituary Coverage
11
Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Walker Parole Coverage