Troubled Waters

0:00Music

0:13That's the Wind Dancer. That's my uncle's boat.

0:21You can see on the bow, that used to say Wind Dancer. The boat is just trashed. Something really bad happened there.

0:38I'm Ezra North and Don North is my uncle. Don decided that he was going to go do what everyone dreams to do. He sailed the entire Caribbean and found absolute paradise.

0:54It is breathtaking.

1:00We understand why Don loved it so much there. My uncle lived on this boat for 22 years. This was his life. Don just wanted to live his life in nature. He was a beautiful person.

1:25Don knew that bad things did happen, that there were pirates.

1:34He did have a gun. He bought a taser, just in case something did happen. In mid-January, we started asking each other around the family, have you heard from Don? And all of us said no. We sent an email to him. I said, Don, hey, what's up, buddy? People are looking for you. Where are you? But, you know, Don didn't write back. It was as if he had sailed into a black hole. I remember just thinking, I don't think this looks very good. Time was of the essence. We knew there was one person who could make things happen, and that was Don Winter. I can't walk away from something like this. If I can get involved and help, I'm done.

2:26There's a lot of moving pieces in this thing. Different physical locations. People using aliases. There's all kinds of opportunities for bad things to happen. Oh my God. I gave him this hat. This isn't good. This was Don's worst nightmare. Our friend Don was missing. Something terribly evil penetrated this utopia.

3:05Dark Side of Paradise, tonight's 48 Hours Mystery.

3:35Michael was an absolute free spirit. Loved people, loved animals, loved plants. He was just a lover of life. When Don North and his sailboat, the Wind Dancer, disappeared in the waters off Panama in January 2011, his nephew Ezra was sick with worry. It's hard to work. It's hard to eat. It's hard to sleep. You're thousands of miles away from someone you love and you've got a million scenarios playing out. Ezra, an engineer for an oil company, was determined to unravel the mystery of what had become of his uncle. Friends recommended the one American in Panama who might be able to find Don North.

4:26All they said to me was, call Don Winner. This man can help you. Don Winner is a former intelligence officer with the U.S. Air Force and an investigative journalist who runs a website for expats. He's also a CBS News consultant. When I get involved in something like this, I drop all the other stuff and I go focus on the most important thing. What is it about you and who you are that makes you want to get involved? Why not? Wouldn't you? If you knew that there was a family member that was asking for help, wouldn't you drop what you were doing to go help that guy? I mean, it's just the right thing to do.

5:09Winner told Ezra that he needed to file a missing persons report. This should do it. I love you. Keep in touch, okay? Ezra abruptly said goodbye to his wife in Houston, Texas, and headed for Panama. What was it like for you to arrive here in Panama City that first time? Overwhelming.

5:37Ezra and Winter hit the ground running.

5:43Searching for any information about Don North. For Ezra, being in the Caribbean brought back memories of happier times with his Uncle Don. My uncle was like one of my best friends. He taught me how to scuba dive, he taught me how to hunt. It's everything that you want from an uncle. Look at the life he lived. And what a life it was.

6:13Back in the 1990s, Don North sold his stateside gardening business, bought a boat and set sail. Cruising from Florida to Curacao to Columbia, kicking back and just enjoying life. Every day of his life he did what he wanted to do and he was a beautiful person. Don was a member of a tight-knit cruiser community, people who choose to live their lives on the water. Tell me about the cruising lifestyle. For a lot of people who live their life on a couch with a remote in their hand, it is extraordinary what you do. I think we cruisers enjoy the freedom of being out there and being self-sufficient. Glenn Tuttle and his wife, Eddie, are friends of Don North.

7:01Both are retired FBI agents who've been cruising the Caribbean for years.

7:10You can literally catch dinner under the boat. You can snorkel and spear fish and and catch lobsters, and it's a paradise. He loved life. I know he loved me. We had a lot of fun together. Becky Reynolds, Dawn's former girlfriend, recalls the first time she set eyes on Dawn. And I just remember just seeing the yellow dinghy with a pink motor, and I just thought, oh my gosh, who's this character? And he just struck me as just a very kind of funny guy and interesting character. and we exchanged numbers. Becky and Don wound up living together for five years. Their sailing days were idyllic, even though Don didn't actually do much sailing.

8:03In the five years that I've known Don North, we sailed probably seven times. Wait a minute, wait a minute. He lived on his boat. It's on the water. He liked to be on his boat, but that was his home. He liked his boat, he liked his radio, he liked his dog Kuna, he liked his plants. That was Don. Captain Jack Von Olin and Dennis Morris were fellow cruisers who knew Don well. Oh, Don was a classic. His claim to fame was that he never went anywhere fast, and if there was any wind, he wouldn't go.

8:43After cruising the Caribbean for 20 years, Don North finally found his little piece of paradise and he dropped anchor here in the beautiful San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama.

9:04Don spent most of his time on the island of Chichime. where he had a special bond with the Kuna Indians.

9:16Tell me about your uncle's relationship with the indigenous people here, the Kuna. He loved them. He respected them. He helped them garden. He helped them dig a water well. And what did they think of your uncle? They loved him. But by mid-January 2011, 2011, no one, not the Kunas or any of Don's friends, had seen or heard from him in weeks. December 20th, 2010. Hola, this will be the last email for a while as my phone modem broke. In one of Don Norse's last emails to his nephew, he told of a series of terrible storms ravaging the San Blas Islands. Don did his best to help out, rescuing this man, Javier Martin, whose boat had sunk after hitting a reef.

10:17As Ezra and Winner tried to pick up Don's trail, all they had to go on was a handful of clues. When we started looking for him, we were told by other cruisers that, yeah, he's sailing to Colombia, he's sailing with Captain Martin.

10:35Supposedly, Don was making the five-day trip to Cartagena to renew his visa and took along Javier Martin for company. When he was missing, at first I thought, no, Don will show up. I just kept thinking Don will show up. One of the last times I spoke to him, he said, please don't forget me. And I said, Don, how could I ever forget you? So.

11:08But then came the worst news imaginable. A man's body was discovered floating near the San Blas Islands.

11:38Don North With Don North missing for more than three weeks and a body discovered floating off the Caribbean coast of Panama Don's former girlfriend Becky Reynolds got a horrible feeling. I called Ezra and he just said pray as hard as you can and that scared me that if their concern was like that this just doesn't happen. Fortunately the body was not Don Norse but friends and family remained deeply worried. I felt sick at that point I realized that there's something very wrong going on and something bad must have happened. The bullet-ridden body was identified as a Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Bouhard, captain of a large catamaran.

12:28He'd been shot in the head, tied to an anchor, and thrown overboard. Don's friend, Glenn Tuttle. We knew immediately it was more than a coincidence that this Frenchman had been found murdered and our friend Don North was missing. But what was the connection? Working his sources, Winner learned that the dead Frenchman was last seen with Javier Martin, the same man Don North was with when he set sail for Columbia. It instantly became, alright, everybody focus, find Javier Martin. Winner was convinced Javier Martin would lead them to Don North. What was going through my mind was we got business to do.

13:18Their first stop, the headquarters of the National Police Force. We went to the office of the chief of operations, and I sat Ezra down in his office and said, here's the deal, this is what happened, this is what we think is going on, and we want to get the ball rolling on it. And when Winner talked, the Panamanian police listened. Just months earlier, he had helped them catch accused serial killer Wild Bill Holbert, an American who preyed on retired expats. How many murder cases have you solved here in Panama? Four. And that's in a year, year and a half. Don't mess with Don Winner. Don't kill anybody.

14:00Winner convinced Panamanian authorities to form a special task force to look for Don North. They also enlisted the FBI, which has agents stationed in Panama City. So because of all that, then the investigation went from zero to 100 percent, literally in a matter of two or three hours. Ezra and Winter joined the task force as it began the hunt for Javier Martin. The biggest fear was that he might split and be gone and be on the run for years before he finally turns up. I consider him as a pirate. A pirate because he was committing crimes during his travel. A pirate who became the focus of a manhunt overseen by this man, Gustavo Perez.

14:51National director of police at the time. He leads thousands of officers like these commandos and personally oversaw the pursuit of Javier Martin. So you have people like this officer ready to move. You got a task force together in this case and off you went. Exactly. Using all that manpower, the police quickly picked up Martine's trail. It led to Captain Jack's, where Don Norris' friends were told the lead suspect had stayed in their hostel. So the hair would stand up on my arms and my back. The more Ezra learned, the scarier Javier Martin became. One lady at one of the hostels had said, that guy is a psychopath.

15:40He caught a snake one time and cut the head off and ran around shaking the snake everywhere. Javier Martin? Yes, yes. Where are we right now and where are we going? Okay, we're on the road to a town called Puerto Lindo. Retracing Winner's investigation, we head to a sleepy port village near the San Blas Islands. When you come into a little village like this, I mean, what are your instincts? What are you trying to do as an investigator? Well, it was all related to tracking the movements of Javier Martin, trying to find out where he went, what he was doing. He stayed in this room. And this is the bed that he would always stay in.

16:21Did you sense something right away? Did you sense this man was trouble? He said, I didn't think he was a drug trafficker. I thought he was more like just crazy. Just somebody that's out of control. In late January 2011, after Don North went missing, locals reported that Javier Martin, who had always lived hand to mouth, suddenly was living large. They said that he had bought, he went out and bought a large screen plasma TV, brand new. He bought a sound system, he bought a guitar. And he may have bought all that stuff using Don's ATM card. I believe that these are the ATM machines that were used by either Javier Martin himself or people that were helping him to pull money out of the bank accounts of the victims using their ATM.

17:12He got their cards, he got their PIN numbers. Taking into account the dead Frenchman, the missing money, and Javier Martin's spending spree, Winter knew in his gut it wasn't looking good for Don North. No doubt in your mind that Javier Martin is the man responsible for the disappearance of Don North. I got no doubt. I've got no doubt whatsoever. Ezra realized he had to face the hard truth. His uncle was most likely murdered by Javier Martin. This bastard killed my uncle and we need to make sure he's in jail.

18:06Javier Martin, the man at the center of this manhunt, had spent years ferrying backpackers between Panama and Colombia. He came into contact with a lot of Americans, like Garrett Paul and Jessica Stout. We were at the start of a six-month backpacking trip, and we needed to get from Colombia to Panama. And along the way, they were looking for adventure. We usually like to think outside the box and do things that are a little different and unique. He's not kidding. Garrett and Jessica were contestants on the CBS program The Amazing Race in 2009, a year after they happened to meet Javier Martin. I came across a pamphlet for Javier Martin with a number of recommendations and called him up to see if we could meet him and see the boat.

18:58The couple signed on with Martin and spent the next five days aboard his boat, the Twyla. Javier was a little salty in that he just, you know, you could tell he'd been spending some time out on the ocean. He was, you know, flirtatious, fun, captain, hanging out with all of us. He even had a barbecue on one of the islands. So it was social. They liked Javier well enough to later recommend him, never suspecting he might be dangerous. It was shocking to us, but you never know what people are capable of. I think there were two sides to Javier Martin. The side that could have the persona of a businessman, and hang out with the passengers and sail them and cook for them.

19:43and the side that obviously Don eventually found out. Becky can imagine how the two men became friends after Don rescued Javier from his sinking ship. I think that they probably broke bread, probably had a drink together, hung out. I'm speculating, but Don, you know, was a friendly guy. A friendly guy who investigators now believe had been killed at the hands of Javier Martin. Do you believe this was a calculated murder, a spur of the moment, killing? What do you think? I think it was calculated. Determined to bring Martin to justice, Ezra went all in with Don Winner. I trusted him with my whole heart.

20:34And whenever he asked me to do something, I was going to do it. Not only had Winner convinced the Panamanian police to form a task force. He's a big believer of putting things out there. He also corralled a group of local reporters to begin spreading the word that a man who allegedly killed Don North and Jean-Pierre Buhard was at large. I said, hey guys, you know, huddle up. I got one for you. Here's the deal.

21:06I said, apparently there's another serial killer on the loose, and we're looking for this man. When you tell these reporters there's a potential serial killer out there, are they interested? Oh, absolutely. That night, the story about Ezra and his missing uncle went national. My tío estaba en su barco en Chichime, en San Blas. That clip aired on the primetime news that night, and it was headline news. Winner kept digging. He got a tip that a Spaniard named Luis once had Don Norris' ATM card, the same card used to drain his bank account. Tell me where we're going and why. All right, we're going to go take a look at this yellow trimaran right here.

21:55This is a boat that's owned by Luis. Luis was the guy who's associated with Javier Martín. Winner suspects Luis may have played a role in draining Don Norris' bank account. Hello! Hola! Yeah, someone's head just popped up there and went down. I saw him through the window. Winner warns us to be alert that Luis might be armed and dangerous. You saw somebody here pop up? Yep, I saw someone's head. They popped up there and they looked right back down. It was on this right window here. Long-haired guy? That's Luis. Luis! Buenas! Luis! Okay, there he is. Hola, Luis! Luis. Yes, good afternoon. We're with CBS News.

22:42We're doing a story about the death of Don North, the murder of Don North. I was a friend of Don. You were a friend of Don North, but you were also a friend of Javier Martins? Yes, I wasn't a friend of him. I know that guy. I know that guy. I talked with this guy, but he wasn't a friend of me. I was a friend of Don, me and my wife. Luis admits he did have one of Don's bank cards, but insists Don gave it to him.