Let’s add one thing to Gerald Ford’s legacy: the greatest scandal in Peace Corps history, the freeing of a murderer to save the image of the agency, and to try to preserve Pres. Ford’s reelection hopes in ’76.
Ford never learned of the scandal, that’s what his office told me when Read More
Having spent months in Tonga, I’m not entirely surprised by the latest videos of Nuku’alofa in flames. It’s a sleepy South Pacific capital, and there’s always a lot of feeling rumbling underneath the placidity.
My main Tonga interest is the Peace Corps murder of 1976, and there’s news: the publication of former Peace Read More
Deb Gardner in Tonga, photo by Frank Bevacqua
Thirty years ago tomorrow Deborah Ann Gardner, a 23-year-old Peace Corps Volunteer from Washington state serving on a remote island in the South Pacific, was murdered by a man who had become obsessed with her, a fellow volunteer, Dennis Priven, 24, who turned himself into the Read More
