For those of you who are interested in such things, this week John Billings touched down in his Cessna Cutlass 172RG at Southern California Logistics Airport. This would be no big thing, except that John is 91 years old. More than that, he is who he is, which is a remarkable individual. He last landed in Victorville on November 15, 1945 while piloting a B-24 Liberator Bomber when the facility where the landing strip is located was then known as the Victorville Army Airfield…
John Billings occupies a somewhat obscure if nonetheless significant spot in history. In addition to being an Army Air Corps flyer during World War II, in which capacity he flew 14 bombing missions, he was simultaneously a pilot for the Office of Special Services, the forerunner of the CIA. His most noteworthy accomplishment that we know about is that he was the pilot who delivered the three-man operating team that carried out Operation Greenup during the latter stage of the war in Europe…
Billings, when he was just 20 years old, on the night of February 26, 1945 piloted a small craft over German-occupied Austria, and three Office of Strategic Service operatives, Friedrich Mayer, Hans Wynberg and Franz Weber bailed out of the plane into a relatively remote valley not too distant from Innsbruck. “If they are crazy enough to jump there, I will be crazy enough to take them there,” Billings is said to have remarked before the mission…
In the course of Operation Greenup, Mayer, who happened to be a German Jew who had moved to the United States in 1938, was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. Mayer’s captors never quite put together that he was Jewish, though. As it turned out, the Gauleiter of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, Franz Hofer, had come to the conclusion that Germany was going to lose the war. When he heard that an American spy – Mayer – was in the custody of the Gestapo, he ordered Mayer to be brought to him. Hofer desperately wanted to have the Americans rather than the Russians occupy Austria, so he worked with Mayer to tender a surrender to the Americans. He arranged to have a message from Mayer delivered to Allen Dulles, an Office of Strategic Services agent (and later head of the CIA), who was stationed in Bern, Switzerland…
On the morning of May 3, 1945, as the American 103rd Infantry Division of the Seventh Army was descending on Innsbruck, its soldiers were met with an approaching car flying a white flag. In the car was Mayer, who took the division’s commanding officer, Major Bland West, with him to accept the German surrender, thus avoiding tremendous bloodshed…
John Billings is a remarkable fellow. Right now he and his copilot Nevin Showman are engaged in what they call their “Flight Around America” tour, which is intended to make people aware of the charitable services offered by the nonprofit group Angel Flights…
Do you ever see some sort of cosmic connection between random events? Life, someone once said, is a succession of one sensation or experience after another after another after another upon another. Some are profane. Some are profound. Some are full of meaning. Others less so. Is there a connection between everyone of them? No connection at all? We of course perceive a causal connection between some of them, and I am myself convinced of such causality and relation. But are there connections impossible for any of us, or most of us, to discern? I have heard, though I have not really looked into it, that whenever the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series, the stock market goes up significantly over the next 12 months. Somehow, as long as the Cardinals are the world champions, again based on what I was told, it is the bulls as opposed to the bears who are loose on Wall Street. I never checked it out. It seems possible that such a pattern might hold true for a while, but it seems doubtful to me that there is some cosmic dictate that links the fortunes of the St. Louis ball club, the second most successful team in modern Major League Baseball in terms of World Series victories, with national prosperity, decade in and decade out for more than a century. But what do I know? Maybe there is some cosmic relationship between seemingly random and ostensibly unrelated events…
I offer the following…
On Thursday and Friday of last week, July 23 & 24, Michael Hearn of Hesperia made appearances in Bakersfield I am quite certain he would rather not have made. On those days he came before Judge Charles Brehmer in Bakersfield Superior Court for a preliminary hearing on charges that he murdered Robert Limon of Helendale/Silver Lakes. Kern County Deputy District Attorney David McKillop plied Brehmer with 40 separate pieces of evidence to suggest that Hearn is guilty as charged…
The case against Hearn is largely circumstantial, which is something that Brehmer remarked upon before he bound Hearn, who is now 25, over for trial. McKillop’s evidence in part consisted of photos, videos, recorded phone conversations and text messages, letters and a motorcycle McKillop suggested played a part in Limon’s killing. McKillop’s theory, which he will yet need to prove to a jury, is that Hearn was having an affair with Limon’s wife, Sabrina…
A letter to one of Limon’s friends, Jason Bernatene, from Hearn was obtained by the prosecution. In it, Hearn essentially expresses remorse to Bernatene for having manipulated him to get close to Sabrina. In the letter, Hearn, who was a Redlands firefighter before things went awry, refers to “my mistakes… having such horrible and dangerous consequences.” McKillop suggested this came very close to being an admission that Hearn was responsible for Limon’s death…
Hearn’s attorney, Clayton Campbell, however, did get one of the investigators on the case, Randall Meyer, to acknowledge the letter does not explicitly mention Limon’s death and contains no direct apology…
The evidence perhaps most suggestive of guilt consisted of recorded phone conversations and text messages between Sabrina Limon and Hearn. At one point in one of the exchanges, Hearn stated, “You and I will be in eternity together and all this will seem like nothing. And hopefully in two or three years all of this will be done and over with…”
Timestamped surveillance videos taken on August 17 of last year at the railroad yard in Tehachapi where Limon worked were among the evidence McKillop presented. Limon was gunned down inside a maintenance shop at the rail yard that day. The video shows an individual believed to be Limon’s assailant in the yard. The image on video could have been Hearn. There was also photographic and videographic evidence of a motorcycle in the area of the rail yard near the time of the murders. That motorcycle in all particulars is similar to one Hearn possessed…
Sabrina Limon was arrested in connection with her husband’s murder but she has not been charged…
Brehmer made a finding that there was a relationship between Sabrina Limon and Hearn. “It does appear that there’s sufficient evidence to hold the defendant to answer,” Brehmer said in binding him over to trial on a charge of murder, lying in wait and discharging a firearm causing death. He is scheduled for a post-hearing arraignment on August 5…
Three days after Hearn was bound over for trial, the High Desert Mavericks on July 27 made an appearance in Bakersfield they would rather have avoided. On that day, the last place Bakersfield Blaze, which had routinely lost to the Mavericks previously this season, having won only one of the eight games the two teams had played, obliterated the Mavericks, 11-5…
Is there some cosmic relationship between random events?