Finding Gary, Part 1

And there seemed to be only one place left to turn: Congress. In 1985, Donna typed a pleading letter to U.S. Sen. Frank Pallone of her home state of New Jersey. "I am in need of trusted counsel in this matter as it is becoming increasingly confusing and frightening to me," she wrote, "but I am equally determined to follow it through and settle it once and for all. I will not give up."

"My children and I have not committed any crimes and are in fact victims of these people...," she wrote. "Please, I hope you will agree to help me. I have to find someone who will."

The letter wound up in the hands of Pallone staffer Lisa Sevier, who also worked as an investigator for the Senate Public Works and Transportation Committee. Intrigued, Sevier began looking into the matter.

During the next three years, Donna remembers that the congressional aide regularly told her that her life was in danger. Sevier set out numerous rules. For instance, she forbade Donna from allowing anyone she didn't know from taking photographs of her or the girls. Nor should she speak to strangers on the phone.

Donna started sleeping with the lights on, a habit she has yet to break, and bought a .38 revolver. One night, Sevier told her to get the children out of the house after Donna called her about an unidentified telemarketer. Donna phoned the police, and her mother whisked the girls away.

The congressional investigation, meanwhile, dragged on for about three years and ended with hearings on Capitol Hill. Donna wasn't invited, and Gary was all but forgotten in the end. Ultimately, Congress passed new legislation concerning aircraft registration, pilot certification, and criminal penalties for altering aircraft fuel systems.

Sevier, who is now retired in the Washington, D.C., area, wrote a report about Gary's disappearance and turned it over to the Social Security Administration in 1988. Based on that report, SSA declared that Gary had died and gave Donna death benefits that included a lump sum of about $60,000 and $1,200 a month until her girls, then about to start kindergarten, turned 18. But neither Sevier nor Social Security would allow Donna to see the report, claiming it was classified.

To this day, Sevier says Donna's pursuit of her husband's killer may be putting her life in danger. The former congressional investigator believes Gary either fell from an airplane or was pushed.

"I don't know what happened to him," Sevier says, "and I wonder if anybody will ever know."

The report remains classified. "It will never in our lifetime be in the best national interest to release those documents," says Sevier, who also claims she has the only remaining copy of the report, which she keeps among boxes of government records in her garage.

For Donna, the investigation was a jarring, contradictory experience. She was filled with fear and devoid of answers. She was grateful to be financially secure, but Donna couldn't shake the feeling that the government was trying to buy her silence.

And she felt the same way that she did when she wrote the letter to Pallone, which repeated a single sentence three times: "I will not give up."

Donna still meant it.

Next week: Operation Airlift takes off.