HELENA STAR

An Epic Adventure through the Murky Underworld
of International Drug Smuggling

by Stewart Riley

ALSO AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE EBOOK ON AMAZON.

NOTE: This book has 38 reviews on Amazon!

This is the epic tale of the motor vessel Helena Star. On April 17, 1978, the U.S. Coast Guard seized the aging freighter 140 miles off Washington State’s coast with its hold loaded with 37 tons of marijuana—the west coast’s largest pot bust—worth an estimated street value of $74 million. Drug agents later seized the sleek Joli, a 61-foot sailboat, for its suspected role in the case. A past winner of the prestigious Victoria to Maui sailboat race, the Joli had been purchased from William Niemi, Jr., former president of Eddie Bauer, by champion freestyle skier Mike Lund.

The attorney for the captain of the Helena Star, author Stewart Riley, provides an insider’s unvarnished account of the case from the trenches. The freighter and the conspirators involved were in the news from its seizure in 1978 to its death by sinking in 2013. This drug bust and the ensuing events comprise a true saga about the inner workings of a Colombian-American drug cartel, smuggling on a massive scale, money laundering, the capture of fugitives in Bolivia, suspicious deaths, the lives of high-profile individuals, and courtroom battles in Seattle and San Francisco.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Stewart Riley lives in Seattle with his wife and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. After graduating from the University of Washington Law School in 1969, he began practicing law in Seattle as a Senior Deputy Prosecutor in the King County Prosecutor’s Office for three years before embarking on a lifetime career as a criminal defense attorney, specializing in cases having international aspects and implications. During his career he has represented individuals from over 40 countries. Mr. Riley has been admitted to practice law before the United States Supreme Court as well as three international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court in The Hague, located in the Netherlands, and is well known for his successful defense of a Blackwater security contractor investigated for the shooting and killing of a bodyguard for the Vice President of Iraq in 2006. He is an avid outdoorsman and tennis player.

Mr. Riley can be reached at stewriley@yahoo.com.

HELENA STAR 
An Epic Adventure through the Murky Underworld of International Drug Smuggling 

by Stewart Riley

HISTORY/TRUE CRIME

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-944297-82-4, 229 pages, $17.95
KINDLE eBook: 978-1-944297-83-1, $9.99