(2 of 6) Disappearance of John Iverson
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(C) 1994 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Not one word of this article may be reprinted without the written
permission of the publisher.
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PART 2 OF 6
TAS Journal
Special Report
The Strange Life and
Bizarre Disappearance of
John Iverson
But instead of Iverson, she says, the person behind the
flashlight turned out to be Jack Weber, wearing a pair of green
gloves and brandishing a pistol in his other hand. He claimed to have
Iverson tied up in his van, and demanded money, she says. "The first
thing I thought was 'Oh my god, this is what the LaBiancas [Charles
Manson's victims] went through. This is what they must have felt
when they knew they were going to die.'"
Munro says she handed over $4000 in cash she had in the
house, but he wanted me to go in there and write out another check.
He wanted to know how much money John had in his checking
account. She went to the office to write him a check for $2500. But
she feared for her life, she said, and pretended to make mistakes in
drafting the check, purposely writing three stubs with Weber's name
on them as a clue to police before handing over the final draft.
Weber then led her down a hallway toward the kitchen.
As she followed him, she said, she quickly ducked into the family
room, locking the door behind her, and escaped through another door
to the driveway. She ran screaming down the steep driveway, right
past the van where Iverson was supposedly being held, and called
police from a neighbor's home. They arrived to find Weber, the van,
and Iverson all missing.
Later, when police looked in Iverson's motor home-the one
parked in the driveway-they found a damaged table and a spot on
the carpet of what appeared to be fresh household cleaner. The spot
had been covered with a small throw rug. Doug Iverson, John's
brother, who makes his living as a veterinarian, was convinced the
spot contained blood. After arguing with police, he says, he proved
his point by performing a common laboratory test he uses to check
for blood in animal stools. But while the police did confirm a very
minute amount of blood in the otherwise large spot of Simple Green
spray cleaner, they were never able to get a usable hair sample from
Munro to perform DNA matching to establish if the blood was
Iverson's, or even human. Nor was it clear whether the blood was
fresh.
What is clear, however, is that Munro had been in the motor
home a day or two before to tidy it for a trip to CES they had
scheduled for the very day after Iverson disappeared. She told this
reporter she left a new, unused bottle of Simple Green spray cleaner
in the RV, which had presumably been used by persons unknown to
cover the blood, though the police, who took the bottle for evidence,
suggest it had been there for awhile and was partially used.
Meanwhile, on the night of the disappearance, Jack Weber had
vanished along with Iverson, and on Munro's word, police put out an
APB for Weber on suspicion of kidnapping and armed robbery. One
day passed, then two. The Las Vegas FBI office was brought in, but
was of no help in locating the fugitive Weber or his silver, 1985
custom Ford van. His phone calls to his wife in the days immediately
following the disappearance provided no clues. Nor did the
authorities learn anything from Weber's attempt to deposit, by mail,
the check Munro had written into an account he held at a Colorado
bank.
On February 1, about a month after the disappearance, Weber's
van mysteriously turned up in a parking lot in a light industrial area
10 miles from his home in Las Vegas. Vegas police had acted on a
letter he'd written to his wife pinpointing the van's location, and
requesting it be returned to the bank so she would not have to
continue payments on it. The postmark on the letter was illegible.
Nor was there useful evidence or any signs of struggle found inside
the van. Indeed, the van was so clean that it led the LHPD's Funder to
largely dismiss the tiny blood spot found in Iverson's RV. "If there
had been a struggle [in the motor home], there should have been
blood in Weber's van," he says, "and there was absolutely nothing to
indicate that anyone had been in there but Weber."
Finally, on April 23, with Iverson missing for nearly four
months, a tired Jack Weber turned himself in to the FBI in Las Vegas
at the urging of his wife. He was extradited to Mohave County,
Arizona to face the kidnapping and armed robbery charges, and
remained behind bars, unable to make his $140,000 bail.
After securing an attorney, Weber gave his version of what
happened the night of Iverson's disappearance. Through his attorney,
Bill Porter of Kingman, Arizona, he declined to be interviewed for
this article. "He's been through an awful lot with this thing," Porter
says, noting that Weber still runs the risk of being brought up on
new charges at any time. "All he wants is a little peace."
In his lengthy, handwritten statement to police, Weber
described an elaborate sequence of events by which he claimed
Iverson had actually played him for a patsy, setting him up to take
the fall on bogus kidnapping charges before giving him the slip a few
days later.
But there was more. At the same time he disappeared, Weber
added, Iverson also made off with that special project: an exotic and
deadly gun he had designed and commissioned Weber to build, and
which Weber had delivered the night of the disappearance. The plans
had vanished along with Iverson, though Weber did claim to have his
own shop drawings.
The gun Weber described was the same one Iverson had
bragged about to several people in the days prior to his
disappearance. It was supposed to be a rapid-fire weapon that used
no live ammunition. Instead, Weber wrote in his statement, "it
worked more like a slingshot that would fire projectiles at a rate of
12,000 per minute with the velocity close to a .45 caliber bullet."
Friends and family to whom Iverson explained the design say it was
basically a kind of "rotoblaster," in which pellets from a holding bin
would encounter a paddle-wheel device being spun at high speed.
The pellets would be thrust through a series of interwoven barrels,
which eventually joined into a single barrel and exit point.
According to Weber, Iverson had fallen behind in his payments
for cabinet work. So when Iverson approached him in November of
1990 to build a prototype for his weapon, the machinist refused to
touch it without payment up front. But Iverson convinced him that
he'd settle up when the gun was delivered, and said he had a
customer waiting for it. Weber said he finally called Iverson on
Wednesday, January 2, 1991 to tell him it was complete, and
Iverson agreed to square up with him that Friday on $8400 in
current and back payments due.
On Friday afternoon, Weber arrived around 4 pm, and Kathy
greeted him in her pajamas. This was not unusual, he told police. In
each of his five or six visits, he wrote, "no matter what time of day,
she always stayed in bed and in pajamas while I was there."
It was true, Weber said, that Iverson was not available when he
arrived at the house, and that Kathy, in her role as Iverson's
bookkeeper-issued him a check for $1,000 from Iverson's business
account. But when Weber deemed the amount inadequate, Munro
grew visibly nervous, and began pacing back and forth between her
bedroom and the kitchen, Weber said. "Finally, after about one and a
half hours I told her maybe I should leave and go eat and come back
in an hour, but she said no, that he should be home anytime," Weber
wrote.
When Iverson finally showed up at around 6:30 pm, Weber
said Munro walked straight to her bedroom without acknowledging
his arrival. Iverson simply apologized to Weber for being late, and
after about an hour of small talk, asked if he'd brought the gun.
Weber said that he had, but refused to leave it unless Iverson paid
up. While they were there in Iverson's kitchen, Weber said Iverson
received a call from someone inquiring about the gun. He "told
whomever he was talking to that I was there and that yes, I had
brought the prototype of the gun with me, and that Tuesday or
Wednesday would be a good time."
Weber's statement describes how the two then went out to the
bottom of the driveway where Weber's van was parked, and
swiveled the front seats to examine the weapon, which was laid out
on the back seat. Iverson repeated that he had a customer for it, and
offered Weber $2,500 in good faith, promising to pay the balance he
was owed the following week-after he'd had a chance to
demonstrate it to the would-be buyer.
Weber finally agreed, and Iverson sent him back to the now
dark house (using the flashlight they had used to make their way
down) to ask Munro for another check. He left Iverson in the van, he
said, studying the gun.
Weber made his way to Munro's bedroom door, he wrote, and
she emerged at his call. She led him into an office, he says, where she
made some calculations and asked him to return the $1,000 check
she'd written earlier to help cover the $2,500 she was about to issue.
He complied, and she handed over the new check. When she asked
for a receipt, he reminded her that the invoice he had left on the
kitchen table had been marked paid-on-account, and suggested that
he could change the number and initial it.
They started for the kitchen, Weber said, but when he got
there, she was no longer behind him. He started back for the office
when, suddenly, he heard Munro hollering outside in the driveway.
He made his way back to the van and asked Iverson "what the hell
she was doing, and he said he didn't know, and I asked him why he
didn't stop her if she went running by there, and he said he didn't
see her, that he only heard her just before I got there. So I asked him
why she would do that, and he said he didn't know, but let's just
leave and she will calm down and then I will talk to her" (sic).
Weber wrote that after picking up a box with unknown contents
from his garage, Iverson instructed him to drive to Bullhead City, a
gambling town on the Nevada border. Along the way, Weber said
Iverson told him that he and Munro "had been having problems."
Eventually, Iverson stopped and made a call, supposedly to Munro.
He came back to tell Weber that the police had come to the house at
Palo Verde, but she'd told them it was a mistake.
Weber said Iverson convinced him to sleep out that night in
the van so they could fire the gun in the morning, which, he told
police, he had not yet tested at this point. When Weber agreed and
suggested he needed to call his wife and tell her he wouldn't be
coming home, Iverson stopped him, saying he'd already told Munro
to call her for him. He told Weber that since he'd built the gun, he
just knew he would want to see it work. "It sounded logical, and
believe me, this guy was a very convincing talker," Weber wrote.
The next day, Weber said, they tested the gun in the desert, and
while it needed revision, it did work. Afterward, he claimed that the
two "went around and picked up as many ball bearings as we could,"
which might explain why the police found no evidence of the gun
being fired when Weber took them to the spot later.
Later that day, Weber said, he called his wife and found her
sobbing-the FBI and police had been looking for him, she said, and
there was a warrant out for his arrest. After assuring her that John
was fine and was with him, and that "I sure as hell didn't kidnap
him," he went back and complained to Iverson. So Iverson made
another call, Weber said, presumably to Munro, and came back to tell
him that the police had returned later the night before and took it
upon themselves to issue the warrant when Munro failed to confirm
Iverson's whereabouts.
Weber says he then insisted they go back to Lake Havasu
together to clear the matter up. But Iverson resisted, claiming that he
would surely be thrown in jail for "violating his parole."
In fact, Iverson was on probation after having been caught out
in the desert in March 1990 with Russ Sherwood, spooling up what
they thought was abandoned telegraph wire. It turned out to be the
property of the local utility company. According to Sherwood, he and
Iverson each paid a $2,400 fine, $2,400 retribution, and were placed
on probation. Since the conviction, Iverson had been visiting a
probation officer once a week.
Iverson apparently feared some kind of backlash over this new
incident, Weber said, and thought they should seek out an attorney
before going to the authorities. But when Weber suggested they find
one in Lake Havasu, Iverson resisted again, once more citing his
"parole" and suggesting that it was in Mohave County, where "the
sheriff was out to bust him for any reason." Instead, Weber wrote,
Iverson promised to call an attorney he knew in Phoenix the next
day, Sunday, January 6. To this Weber once again agreed, and they
again slept in the van. The next day, Weber said, he stood next to
Iverson as he made the call to the attorney. And when Iverson hung
up the phone, he told Weber the meeting was all set for the following
Friday morning-a full five days later.
At this point, Weber said, they hid the gun and the blueprints
at a nearby construction site near Laughlin, and drove to Phoenix,
arriving around 8 p.m. Sunday night. Weber wanted to go home to
see his wife, however, so he dropped Iverson off at a street corner
with several motels, where they agreed to meet the following Friday
morning. Weber said he drove back to Vegas, walked right up to his
home-despite the fact that the police were supposed to be looking
for him-packed some clothes, and lived out of his van on another
side of town until leaving for Phoenix on Thursday night. Of course,
Iverson never showed. Realizing he'd been taken for a fool, Weber
drove back to Laughlin, and was not surprised to find the gun and
blueprints missing from their hiding spot.
...continued...
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(C) 1994 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Not one word of this article may be reprinted without the written
permission of the publisher.