| Dennis ‘Lee’ Lafferty’s death exposes his sordid double life |
TO THE folks of the Daintree, Dennis “Lee” Lafferty was one of their own.
He ran a crocodile cruise company and ferried tourists from Cairns to Cape Tribulation daily.
If you speak to his friends, they’ll tell you he was a quiet contributor. No fuss.
When he did speak, he spoke in a heavy American accent, a throwback to a former life he’d rather not talk about.
Lafferty died in a car accident on May 26. The 78-year-old was driving his ute along tropical Mossman Daintree Rd when he lost control around a bend and slid into a tree.
His death was a significant loss for the local community.
The local mayor called him a “pioneer” in the Daintree tourism industry. Friend Bruce Belcher, who operated a rival river cruise business, said Lafferty was “very popular” despite their early differences.
But he was hiding a secret, one that would be revealed in the weeks after his death. It would turn upside-down the tight-knit community’s idea of the man they thought they knew.
On June 19, more than three weeks after Lafferty’s death, an article by the Tampa Bay Times began dropping into inboxes in far north Queensland. The mayor got a copy, so did Mr Belcher.
It revealed Lafferty’s real name was Raymond Grady Stansel and his past was like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster.
The article opened with: “Death comes to everyone, even those who have been dead for 40 years.”
It detailed how, in 1974, Stansel was indicted for smuggling more than 11 tonnes of marijuana. Then 37, he was arrested with $25,000 in cash, receipts for two $25,000 Rolex watches, signed blank tourist visas and unused cheques linked to a Swiss bank account.
He posted bail, surrendered his passport then “disappeared” during a scuba accident near Honduras, the Times reported.
Janet Wood, who married Stansel in 1975, told the Times this week that Stansel’s disappearance was textbook. He vanished. She knew where he was all along but authorities lost the trace early.
The sheriff of Florida’s Pinella County Lt Michael Hawkins was quoted at the time as saying: “It’s like chasing a phantom”.
Upon hearing the story for the first time, 20 years after she first met the man known locally as “Lee”, Douglas Shire Mayor Julia Leu said it was “the stuff of movies”.
“He was more of a legend than we realised,” she told news.com.au.
When Stansel landed in Australia, he settled in quickly. He wanted to live near the Great Barrier Reef and would later forge a life working on it.
He operated the Daintree River Cruise Centre for 28 years and quickly made a name for himself as a “gentleman” and a hard worker.
Mr Belcher, who owns rival company Bruce Belcher’s Daintree River Cruises, said Lee turned up on his doorstep in 1983.
“He was a very nice fellow, a quiet man,” Mr Belcher told news.com.au.
“He kept to himself and we were actually rivals. We had some difficulties in our earlier years but eventually worked everything out.”
Mr Belcher, who lived less than 500m from Stansel at a ferry turn-off in the Lower Daintree, said he had no idea the man he knew was living a double life.
“He had a thick accent but he never talked about his past. We had no inkling about his background,” he said.
He said there was a rumour in the 80s but it was dismissed as just that.
“People talked about how he was running drugs in the Caribbean, but to me that was just scuttlebutt. I wrote it off and didn’t think anything more of it.”
Stansel carried on with life despite the rumours. He built a 50-foot boat and named it the Jessie Ray armed with long range fuel capacity and a freezer for his catch. He spent years on that boat, according to good friend Walter Starck.
Mr Starck, who read the eulogy at Lee’s funeral, said there was nobody more dedicated to conservation in the Daintree than Dennis Lafferty.
“Lee Lafferty was a prime specimen of a threatened and fast disappearing species, the free white male,” Mr Starck said at the funeral.
“He is going to be sadly missed both personally and for what he stood for.”
Stansel’s life in the US included four children and his first wife, all of whom he left behind to flee and start again. Sadly, two of his children followed in their father’s footsteps, but never escaped the clutches of the law.
Ronald Stansel, 56, and Raymond Stansel, 57, pleaded guilty to importing cocaine and were indicted in 1991,” according to the Times.
Stansel and Wood divorced a few years ago for reasons unknown. He was believed to have been suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The pair have two daughters and a number of grandchildren who plan on carrying on the family business in the crocodile-filled waters and tropical rainforests of the Daintree.
Their family name, despite everything, is still held in high esteem.
Mayor Leu said she has been fascinated by the development’s in the story but that her opinion of Lee had not changed.
“He was a lovely man, a great conservationist and a true gentleman. He’s not here to tell his story but everyone will remember him for the kind caring man that we all knew,” she said.
| HAVE YOUR SAY!!! - What do you think about this story? Tell us here. |
|
