The State - News from March 2, 1986
A woman once stranded on a remote Pacific atoll with a fugitive has been acquitted of charges she helped him kill a wealthy woman so they could steal her yacht and leave the island. Stephanie Stearns, acquitted in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, said, “My faith in the American judicial system has been restored.” Stearns, 39, was accused of helping Buck Walker kill Eleanor (Muff) Graham on Palmyra, an atoll 1,100 miles southwest of Hawaii, in 1974. The two were arrested when they arrived in Hawaii aboard the 38-foot ketch Sea Wind they stole from Eleanor Graham and her husband, Malcolm. They served prison terms in Hawaii before the woman’s burned and battered remains were found in a chest that floated into the Palmyra lagoon. Malcolm Graham’s remains have never been found.
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