Agents seize JFK's old sailboat
A 22-foot sailboat that a teenage John F. Kennedy raced in regattas off Cape Cod was seized yesterday by federal agents who allege that its current owner bought and refurbished it with marijuana profits.
The Flash II -- a Star Class sloop that the late president owned for six years and sold in 1942, before shipping out to the Pacific during World War II -- was hauled away from its storage spot at the Marblehead Trading Co. in Marblehead by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
"Crime doesn't pay," said US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan. "The seizure and forfeiture of assets allegedly gained from drug proceeds is critically important and sends a deterrent message to those who want to get involved in the illegal drug business."
If the government wins its forfeiture case, then it will probably sell the boat to the highest bidder, Sullivan said.
In 1998, the sloop drew an $800,000 offer during an auction of Kennedy memorabilia, but the owner turned it down, saying at the time that he hoped it would fetch up to $1.2 million.
In an affidavit released yesterday, the DEA asserted that Gregory "Ole" Anderson of Florida was the sole or primary owner of the Flash II and had bought and refurbished it with drug profits.
Anderson, who spent a year in an Arizona state prison for transporting marijuana, was contacted in February by a former drug-dealing associate who was secretly cooperating with the DEA and helped agents build a forfeiture case, according to the affidavit.
The drug dealer said that he gave Anderson between $12,000 and $15,000 toward refurbishing the boat and that Anderson used other money he obtained from transporting drugs.
But in a telephone interview last night, Anderson insisted that the boat's primary owner is a doctor, whom he would not identify, and that drug profits were never used to buy the boat or restore it.
Anderson said that after helping someone else buy the boat in 1996 for $18,500, he has invested years of "sweat equity" restoring the boat, with the understanding that he would get a percentage of the sale, possibly as much as a third. He said he was storing the boat in Marblehead so that he could sell it close to the boat's history.
"This boat has nothing to do with a mistake I made which I paid for," Anderson said, adding that the boat was bought long before his involvement in drugs.
"They do this and bring this up to put some sort of pallor over the name of the boat, which should not be, because it's a magnificent, historic artifact," he said.
Kennedy, then 17, and his older brother, Joe, bought the Olympic-style Star Class vessel in 1934. Two years later, Kennedy, a member of the Nantucket Sound Star Fleet, raced the boat to an Atlantic Coast Championship.
The boat -- built in 1930 on Long Island, N.Y. -- originally sold for about $900. Kennedy paid between $400 and $600 for it and sold it six years later for $300 to a man who owned it for 27 years before the 1996 sale.
Shelley Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com.
