William Dear, PI
William Dear is not your average 76- year- old. Stop by the Florida- born longhorn cows and a one- armed dummy swinging from a gallows. Step into head will be on hand to greet you. In one of the adjoining rooms: a fully museum. But it’s not Bill Dear’s eccentric furnishings that sets him apart
He may not sound like Connery, he certainly doesn’t look like Craig, Craig but William Dear’s decorated status as a PI, ash gadgetry and gritty determination to get his man by any means necessary has seen the media routinely align him with Britain’s B ’ most f famous spy. Not that he minds all that much. “I have a great respect for England and huge respect for the character of James Bond,” Dear smiles, sat on the deck of his ranch in Waco, Texas. “I’ve had the same kind of fantastic gadgets. My limousine had a button where guns would come down on both sides, I had a lot of listening equipment and tracking devices – people didn’t have those things during those days.
So when people gave me that name, well, I’m not going to disagree. The only difference between me and Bond is that I wear cowboy boots and he wore Bally shoes.”
Yet despite his opulent home, extensive income and eet of limousines and private planes recently sold to make room for cattle), self- made millionaire Dear came from particular humble beginnings. Starting his law enforcement career days after graduating high school at 18, Dear traded in his paper round in order to become Florida Highway Patrol’s youngest ever recruit.
When applying for a job in the Sheriff’s Of ce three years later, Dear was a lofty 6’ 2” yet still weighed a measly nine and a half stone, sporting a 27 inch waist. Even the smallest uniform available needed altering by tailor, and Dear only scraped through the statuary medical by way of another recruit resting their foot on the scale and adding a few vital pounds.
For all his efforts, Bill Dear’s police career was relatively short- lived. After growing up idolising State Troopers like rock stars, Dear’s devotion to law enforcement made him plenty of enemies, amid the institutional corruption in the force. His refusal to turn a blind eye to local mobsters, take payments on the side or outright steal from crime scenes often saw Dear banished to Miami airport for parking duty, as way of punishment. Eventually, Dear gured he’d be best served delivering justice on his own terms.
“I could see what was happening to the men and women – they put in 20, 30 years and would end up as a security guard, I didn’t want to end up like that” Dear admits. “Some of them would take money on the side,
“The only difference between me and Bond is that I wear cowboy boots and he wore Bally shoes”
because they couldn’t afford to pay their rent. Police of cers were paid very little at that time, some of them had wives and children and were great people, but there was no excuse for that. I made a point of not riding with a lot of those people, I had a bigger goal for myself.”
Since establishing William C Dear & Associates, Inc in 1961, Dear has made a habit of investigating some of the world’s most newsworthy homicides. In Dallas on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Dear was due to attend the ill- fated luncheon that the President never made. But, instead of heading straight there, the doe- eyed sleuth thought he’d soak up the atmosphere kerbside rst.
“I was very young at that time, and I wanted to see Kennedy,” remembers Dear. “But just the presidential motorcade was approaching I saw – and it’s not even in the of cial report – this Lincoln convertible pull out. It had a wagon on top with an outhouse that said, ‘ Impeach Earl Warren’ [ then Chief Justice of the United States].
“That vehicle pulled right out in beside the presidential car – they all jumped on him and got him very quickly – and moments later Kennedy passed. I remember thinking, ‘ Thank God he wasn’t killed’. And then next thing you know, ve minutes later he was.”
With conspiracy theories abound regarding who was behind the hit and their motive for doing so, Dear is convinced of the oft- stated theory of a second shooter. Reason being, he claims to not simply know the identity of the perpetrator, but to actually possess the bullet casing red from the gun some 50 years ago.
“About 20 years ago I got a call from a man who was in Dallas looking at the knoll where the shooting apparently took effect,” Dear recalls. “It had been raining a lot and it uncovered a clod of dirt and when they went through it there was a bullet casing. So they called me in, I took a statement from him and I came into possession of it. I had it checked and it t around the timeframe of when the President was killed – and it’s in my safe. He’s now deceased, but my understanding is that [ the second shooter was a Dallas police of cer. He supposedly left the house with a large trench coat on, he’d been practising with a ri e and wasn’t even supposed to be on duty that day, but he was supposedly spotted by the knoll, behind that brick wall.”
Nearly two decades on, Dear once again found himself at the heart of the case – appointed to oversee the exhumation of Kennedy’s killer, Lee Harvey Oswald. Brought in to put paid to rumours that the man shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby wasn’t Oswald but in fact a Soviet spy, Dear was all too aware he could become a footnote in history by being targeted himself.
“We did it at a preposterous hour on a Sunday, so we thought we could be in and out before people really got up,” says Dear. “But by the time we came up out of the ground there were thousands of people lined around the cemetery behind the chain link fence. They were being kept at bay, but as soon as we pulled out that’s when they broke the fence down and went crazy.
" Next thing we were headed back to the hospital – four police of cers on motorcycles in front, the hearse and myself – and there was a storage van parked at the side. As we approached, all of a sudden the door goes up from the back and I thought, Oh my God, somebody’s gonna pull out a machine gun and shoot us all,’ but it was the press, and instead they took our picture.”
Inducted into the Police Of cers Hall Of Fame in 1988 one of a select few private investigators to receive such an honour), Dear is indisputably a lawman like no other. Indeed, due to the bureaucratic roadblocks faced by modern law enforcers, he is often hired to pursue the cases that police forces are legally prohibited from doing so themselves. And, unlike your regular beat cop, Dear is fully prepared to go beyond the call of duty, which includes – though is not limited to – sleeping in a dead man’s clothes.
“In that particular case I slept in his bed, wore his clothes and walked around his house,” recalls Dear, on his investigation of the death of millionaire businessman Dean Milo, which led to a US record 11 murder convictions. “I became, according to his two best friends that told me, an individual who knew the deceased better than they did, and they went to school with him.”
Seemingly more Daniel Day Lewis than 007, Dear’s dedication to the cause doesn’t end there. “My methods have always been a lot different than most,” he says. People have looked at me very strangely because I’ve worn make up. I’ve stood next to people where I knew I could get hurt, but they
did not know who I really was. Hair, moustache, scarf, different clothes, eye glasses my appearance would be entirely different than what I would normally look like. So I’m a man of many disguises.”
Alongside a raft of other landmark cases, such as the mysterious disappearance of 16- year- old student and avid Dungeons And Dragons player James Dallas Egbert III, the Roswell alien autopsy video hoax of the early 1990s and countless child abductions – whereby the PI often waives his fee – Dear is most widely known for his two decade long investigation of the Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman murders.
Even today, the universal view is that former American football star OJ Simpson is guilty for killing his ex- wife and her friend, despite his acquittal in 1995, but Dear is so convinced of Simpson’s innocence that he’s invested more than $ 1 million of his own savings and collected a gluttony of evidence – including an eyewitness, getaway vehicle and what Dear believes to be the murder weapon – in hope of truly absolving him.
Currently dwelling in a Nevada prison for robbery and kidnap offences committed in 2007, after confronting sports memorabilia salesmen who Simpson claimed had his belongings, many venture that OJ Simpson is reaping what he sows after getting away with murder in the rst instance. However, Dear believes the recent 33- year sentence given to Simpson is both harsh and fuelled by revenge, as the police were left red- faced when OJ walked free in ’ 95.
“Even murderers don’t get that,” Dear exclaims. “I mean, they don’t! A lot of people don’t know this, but a judge looked at the evidence and gave OJ back the items that were his, and yet he’s still prison for 33 years. So to me it was politics out there – one of the police of cers even said on tape in the hearing, ‘ They couldn’t get him in California, but we can sure get his ass here.’”
Dear’s sizeable investment of time and money may have proven fruitless so far, but it has led to many people to reconsider their condemnation of Simpson, not to mention a bizarre friendship with Hollywood actor and self- proclaimed ‘ winner’, Charlie Sheen, who Dear once took to view the crime scene.
“I met Charlie was when my rst OJ book came out,” says Dear. “He said, ‘ I wanted to tell you I bought 12 of your books, this case has fascinated me since the very beginning’. We jumped in his Mercedes, went over there and were walking right up front when this lady came up and said, ‘ Y’all are looking at where Nicole was killed’, would you like to see the adjoining unit?’. So we went in and a little girl with braces on her teeth turned around, saw Charlie and just screamed.
“That became a relationship with [ Sheen] and I, although I haven’t spoke to him since he had that episode a few years ago. The last email I had from him said ‘ You’ve been a better friend to me than I have of you, sorry I didn’t appreciate it.’”
A private eye, gumshoe, sleuth – and a friend to the stars. William Dear is a unique paradox, in that he is both a celebrity while also a private investigator, a master of disguise, the real James Bond. Dear turns 77 in August, but still works seven days a week, and will only retire on the day he’s put in a casket.
And, just in case you’re still not sold on the OAP’s hunger, his passion for justice, Dear has a nal message for anyone daring enough to question him.
“I’m not afraid to die, but I’ll tell you this… if you come at me, I will hurt you.” William Dear stops, unable to sti e a grin. “And I’m still a very good shot, too.”
Dear is so convinced of Simpson’s innocence that he’s invested more than $ 1 million in hope of truly absolving him