Walter Shaw, Are You Out There Somewhere? -- Elderly Man Vanishes Into Thin Air On Cruise To Alaska

JUNEAU, Alaska - Walter Burns Shaw is missing, but by no means forgotten.

Not by Margaret Quinn and Stacy Matson, operators of the Western Union office in Juneau. They have nightmares about him.

Not by Betty Wagner, who manages a homeless shelter 235 miles down the coast in Ketchikan. She keeps photographs of him on her desk.

Not by Ron Forneris, a Juneau police lieutenant. He says not a day goes by when he doesn't ponder the mystery of the missing man.

And not by the people who gather over coffee every morning at the City Cafe, just across from Juneau's ferry dock.

"Every time my wife and I walk along the waterfront, you wonder if he's going to float up," said Fred G. Baxter Sr., a retired airport manager.

Eight months ago, Walter Shaw, 72, the retired chairman of one of the nation's largest construction companies, The Turner Corp., arrived here aboard the luxury cruise ship Sagafjord - and then disappeared from the face of the Earth.

There are more than 77,000 names on the roll of missing Americans right now, but few of their disappearances can rival the mystery of Walter Shaw.

Did he fall into the icy waters of Gastaneau Channel as the ship pulled out of Juneau last July 20? If so, was it an accident or was he pushed?

Did he miss the departing ship and meet some mysterious fate in Juneau? Or maybe in Ketchikan? Or even Seattle?

Could Shaw, bedeviled by a failing memory, have grown so despondent that he took his own life?

Could he simply have slipped off to start life anew elsewhere?

Or is he wandering the streets of some distant city, another in the sea of homeless faces, trapped in the confusion of his own dementia?

His wife and son reject that notion and are seeking to have him declared legally dead. But the police, who continue to list Shaw as missing under suspicious circumstances, rule nothing out.

"Any scenario you choose to build would fit, because we cannot show anything that would limit the possibilities," said Juneau Police Capt. Mel Personett.

A degree in engineering from Cornell University. Three years as a Navy Seabee in the South Pacific during World War II. A rise to the top of the giant Turner Corp. A marriage of more than 47 years, and then a comfortable retirement in one of Florida's most exclusive island communities.

He and his wife, Jean, 68, lived in New York in an elegant Park Avenue apartment decorated with Oriental artwork collected during trips to Asia. They had a weekend getaway home in the Poconos and a Florida apartment near Vero Beach.

Shaw was so well off financially - one friend said he had "barrels of money" - that he never saw a need for life insurance.

After retiring in 1985, Shaw, still trim and athletic, relaxed by playing golf, building a vintage model car, and quietly solving crossword puzzles while puffing on his pipe. He stayed active in the business world as well, remaining on the Turner board until 1991.

"He was the quintessential guy who never really retired," said his only child, Peter, 45, a lawyer in Houston.

But for two years, Shaw's health had been deteriorating. He suffered high blood pressure and a worsening case of dementia - a type of senility that caused him to lose concentration and become forgetful.

But Jean Shaw's husband was not troubled by the worsening condition.

"We talked about it. To him, it was trivial," she said.

So, they set off for Alaska last July for a 10-day cruise down the coast from Anchorage to Vancouver, B.C., aboard the Cunard Line's Sagafjord, a highly rated cruise ship with white-glove service.

When the ship pulled into Juneau on the morning of July 20, they strolled through town, stopping at a museum, browsing in art galleries and shops, and telephoning their son.

They returned to the ship for a buffet lunch. Afterward, as Jean Shaw was settling in for her afternoon nap, her husband left their stateroom with three postcards she had written to friends. Though she suggested he go ashore to mail them, he returned a few minutes later to say that he had given the cards to a purser aboard the ship, she said. It was about 2:30 p.m.

"He said, `All right, I'm going to go walk, be out on deck or wandering around. I will see you when the ship sails,"' she said. "He knew I was going to have a rest.

"So he left and that was the last time I saw him."

Shortly before the ship was to depart, Jean Shaw awoke and went on deck. She said she took some photographs and then she began combing the departing Sagafjord in search of her husband.

By the time she reported her husband missing - about 90 minutes later - the ship was cruising to Ketchikan. Shaw's name was broadcast repeatedly over the loudspeaker system, and the vessel was searched extensively.

The ship radioed Cunard's agent in Juneau, who notified police at 8:35 p.m. and then the agent combed the downtown streets.

Jean Shaw, her son and their attorney, Marian S. Rosen, now say they believe that Walter Shaw remained on the ship and somehow fell overboard and drowned.

But Juneau police and a private detective who investigated the matter are not so certain.

If Walter Shaw accidentally fell overboard, then the metal railings that ring the Sagafjord's nine decks would likely be suspect.

But Juneau Police Lt. Forneris and Bryan Krezanoski, a detective with Kroll Associates Inc., inspected those railings and independently determined they were safe.

Which raises the possibility of foul play.

The Shaws' family lawyer declined to discuss why she thinks Shaw may have been murdered. But Forneris said the evidence does not suggest foul play aboard the ship.

Which leads Forneris to conclude that when the Sagafjord pulled out of Juneau on that midsummer afternoon, Walter Shaw was not on board.

Stacy Matson was working behind the desk at the Western Union office in Juneau about 5 p.m. on July 20 - about an hour after the ship pulled out - when two men walked in. One asked the way to Ketchikan.

In an interview, Matson said she explained that Ketchikan was inaccessible by land and suggested he buy an airplane ticket or seek information from a visitor's center up the street.

As the two men walked outside, they ran into Margaret Quinn, the office's owner. One of the men asked her how to get to Ketchikan.

"He said, `I need to get there today. I missed my boat,"' she said. "And he said he had stepped out to mail something - a letter, a postcard. He said, `I got disoriented.' "

When Quinn learned several days later that a cruise line passenger who suffered memory lapses was missing, she and Matson contacted police.

After seeing photographs of Shaw, Matson and Quinn said they were certain they had seen him, and that his companion probably was a good Samaritan.

Next, Krezanoski traveled to Ketchikan. There, he located two other solid witnesses who maintained they saw Shaw.

Betty Wagner, manager of Ketchikan's Park Avenue homeless shelter, said a man showed up on the evening of July 31, saying he had missed his ship. The man appeared intoxicated.

Wagner said the man "begged" her to let him stay, but she turned him away because the shelter's rules forbid drinking.

The second witness was Tom Leslie, a motel van driver, who told Krezanoski that he saw a man matching Shaw's description standing outside a hotel in downtown Ketchikan.

Leslie, who declined to be interviewed, told the investigator that the man appeared disoriented, and said he had missed his ship in Ketchikan and was heading north. But the man had an Alaska Airlines ticket jacket in his shirt pocket, and went on to say he was planning to fly to Seattle.

Based on the tip, Krezanoski traveled to Seattle, but his limited search was unsuccessful.

Frustrated after weeks of fruitless search, Krezanoski said, "We did uncover some interesting leads but, unfortunately, they were just not able to take us any further."

A prominent and wealthy business executive disappears without explanation. Could he have been kidnapped?

Krezanoski, whose firm specializes in corporate security and has investigated kidnapping cases, said he found no evidence.

Could Shaw have staged his own disappearance?

"There's a whole world of reasons or possibilities," said Forneris. "But nothing points to that. I would emphasize that. But it is another possibility."

In Juneau, meanwhile, a poster for Walter Shaw still adorns the plate-glass window in front of the reception desk at the police station. Upstairs, Ron Forneris, sitting behind a desk in a small office that overlooks Juneau's cruise ship dock, expresses hope that some new information will turn up and solve the mystery of what really happened to Walter Shaw.