National Affairs: The Naturopath

In Los Angeles one day last November, an attorney read down a list of 42 victims of a National Airlines DC-7B crash in the Gulf of Mexico and spotted the name of a client. It was Robert Vernon Spears, 65, naturopath* of Dallas and Los Angeles. The attorney soon got a call from a Los Angeles homicide squad lieutenant who had read the same list. "I wouldn't be surprised," said the lieutenant, "if Spears blew the plane up." As the Los Angeles police well knew, Robert Spears, a barefaced quack and crook, had a record of seven jail terms for...

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