Multimillionaire Pleads Guilty To Wiretapping His Wife's Home

Gary Allan Bandy, multimillionaire inventor of a commercial airplane hinge and Olympic Peninsula resident, pleaded guilty yesterday to wiretapping his wife's home to gain information during a bitter divorce case.

The FBI began investigating Bandy and others in July after Bandy's divorce attorney, Steven Fields, failed to hang up his speaker phone after leaving a message with the attorney representing Bandy's wife, Eva.

A conversation among Fields, Bandy and Bandy's corporate attorney, which outlined details of the wiretapping scheme, was then accidentally recorded on the voice-mail machine of Eva Bandy's attorney, according to court documents.

The couple had fought over custody of their only son, and Bandy told investigators he had hoped to use the wiretapped information to prove Eva Bandy was an unfit mother.

Court records from the divorce case outline a volatile marriage for Gary and Eva Bandy, who wed on Valentine's Day 1990.

Gary Bandy, 54, alleged that his 30-year-old wife had only married him as a means to get to his millions of dollars. Eva Bandy drank and often turned nasty, court documents allege, and Bandy feared for the safety of the couple's 3-year-old son.

Eva Bandy alleged that her husband had a drinking problem as well, and turned violent toward her. During one event, at a house the couple owned in Oxnard, Calif., a police SWAT team was called after a domestic dispute.

According to a transcript of the conversation accidentally recorded from Fields' office, Bandy had hired a man to place audio devices in Eva Bandy's home in Gardiner, just east of Sequim, Clallam County.

Equipment had been placed on a phone line, a bookcase inside the house and in Eva Bandy's Cadillac.

As part of the plea agreement entered in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Bandy will attend an alcohol treatment facility in Arizona.

He was released on his own recognizance pending a Dec. 22 sentencing. He could face 5 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

James Wilburn, the Gig Harbor, Pierce County, man Bandy paid $18,000 to place the wiretap, has pleaded guilty in the case.

Wilburn also pleaded guilty Sept. 8 to four firearms violations, after a shortened shotgun, shortened rifle and other firearms were found in his home during a July search. He had earlier been convicted of making illegal firearms.

Wilburn is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 17.

During the conversation about the wiretapping scheme, the three men talked about the need to have Wilburn leave the area in case Eva Bandy discovered him monitoring her.

"There's a major felony rap here if he's (Wilburn) caught. . . . He is going underground," Fields said, according to the transcript. "Because if he's caught at all . . . he's going down."

Fields has not been charged. Federal authorities, who searched his office earlier, would not say whether he is still being investigated.

The divorce case was dismissed Sept. 5.