The Disappearance and Death of Dave Walker:
A History
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INSIDE THE INVESTIGATION WEEK FOUR Part 12: Tori Green and Bradley Gordon - The Witness and the LawyerTori Green was the mystery woman "femme fatale" who was in attendance at a meeting along with two other individuals with Dave Walker two days before Walker vanished. According to Dave's business partner Sonny Chhoun, the two men Dave was meeting with, Salao Mao and Chandy "Andy" Long had reason to do Dave harm. Sonny stated that last calls to Dave's cell phone came from these two individuals and Sonny contacted Salao Mao about Dave's disappearance and alleged that Salao had reacted suspiciously. [See Page 3] Now that Tammy Madon on my explicit advice had finally retained an attorney in Cambodia who had first contacted me, Bradley Gordon, [See Page 12] I felt that the situation was coming under sufficient control to start reviewing loose ends left in Cambodia. And one of them was this lack of any statement from Tori Green (unless somebody was withholding her statement) as to what had transpired in that meeting that Dave had before his disappearance. It was important to confirm or probe Sonny Chhoun's version of events. Talking with the "mystery woman" Tori Green was going to be like trying to snake-charm a cobra with bipolar disorder:
Tori Green was afraid and angry that Nate Thayer from the safety of Washington had questioned her but left her unprotected in Cambodia. I immediately urged Tori to contact our recently retained attorney Bradley Gordon in Phnom Penh. I thought this would be the best thing I could do for her security from where I was in distant Toronto. One moment Tori was helpful and open and then the next she would suddenly become hostile and suspicious.
Tori Green and I now went on video Skype. It was straight out of Roman Polanski's Chinatown. She was reposing on a bed before her laptop camera, in an opium den-like silky robe, a skinny forty-something over-aged skateboard gurl, the side of her head buzz-cut short with a crazy curling ratty loose lock of hair, all paranoid, tweaky and as hissy as civet cat, rattling away into the camera on Skype five hundred words a minute once she got going. She and Dave were friends. Dave frequently dropped by the Karma Bar where she worked for coffee. She knew "Andy" Long as "Mr. Sok San", the same name as the road on which a strip of karaoke bars, nightclubs and hotels were located, some of which he owned. On Wednesday, February 12, Andy Long and Salao Mao had come by to meet with her in the Karma Bar to advise with her about a Western style wine bar that Long wanted to open and an event they wanted to stage there. Sonny and Dave happened to be in the coffee bar and joined Salao, Andy and Tori. It appeared to Tori that Dave and Sonny had other on-going business with Andy Long, but she did not know what it was about in any detail. She agree to see the venue for the wine bar and for the event planned there on the evening of Friday, February 14 and was under the impression that Dave was going to be there as well to be introduced to potential investors in his film. In the late afternoon of February 14 at around 5:00 P.M. Salao Mao appeared at the Karma Bar behind the wheel of Andy Long's vehicle. She remarked that this was unusual as Salao is usually on a moped. Tori stated that Salao drove her to the venue and that she was "annoyed" and "troubled" that Dave Walker had not accompanied them that evening. It made her "afraid" she said, without specifying why. After looking at the venue, Tori stated that she got out of there as fast as she could because she was feeling uncomfortable. Salao Mao drove her back to the Karma Bar at about 7:00 P.M. Shortly after that Tori stated that she received a call from Sonny Chhoun asking her if she had seen Dave. Tori Green stated that she had been recently interviewed by the Cambodian Immigration police and that a senior police officer warned her not to get involved in the search for Dave Walker; not to hang posters or ask questions. Green stated that the officer was wearing an expensive watch and jewelry -- all blinged out -- and appeared menacing toward her in his demeanour.
Deadmonton Tori Green was erratic and paranoid but she was right about one thing: the Cambodians were surprised that nobody from Dave's family had turned up in Cambodia. Dave was missing and in Cambodian perception the family did not appear to care enough to come to Cambodia. Tori would not be the last person to point this out. When I looked through the archive of news reports on people missing or found dead in Cambodia, indeed, in almost every case the family arrived on the scene within days and Cambodian police took notice of family presence and concern at the scene. That nobody from Dave's family took the trouble to come to Cambodia and oversee the police efforts personally on the ground in the way the families of other missing loved one have done, was a signal to the Cambodian authorities that they need not trouble themselves too much over Dave's disappearance. The truth of the matter was that Dave had not been close to his cousins in "Deadmonton" as he called Edmonton. They were his "relatives" by blood but were not really his family. His friends and Praiwan were Dave's family, but in Cambodian eyes that was not the same. The illness and death of his mother had brought Dave back to Edmonton for brief visits in recent years, but otherwise he rarely visited. Recently, after his mother's death Dave had complained to many of his friends that Tammy Madon had taken a large share of his inheritance by virtue of some familial lineage to his mother (a deceased brother if I am not mistaken.) Dave was bitter about it, as he felt this inheritance was the only thing he had coming. Tammy took half, he said, leaving him only $100,000. He described it as greed and obviously he told Tori the same thing.
I told Tori, that I believed Tammy saw Dave's disappearance as an affront to the family name, and that this was primarily motivating her, not any sense of warmth or love for Dave, but just family unity. None of this mattered, as long as Dave's cousin Tammy appeared to be doing her best to ensure that Dave's case got resolved, I did not care what her motives were. I summarized my conversation with Tori and described her fears, erratic demeanour in a report to the Edmonton Police and to our attorney in Cambodia, Bradley Gordon. I briefed Brad on the phone about my conversation with Tori and her fears and suggested that he give her a call and introduce himself and reassure her and get her statement directly rather than waiting for the Cambodian police to share theirs.
I had referred Bradley Gordon to Tammy Madon after he had contacted me on Facebook and upon his being retained by her to represent Dave's interests in Cambodia, Tammy gave Brad Gordon explicit written directions to share all investigative information with me. We were expecting for Dave's bank account information to be released to determine if there were any clues in the bank records as to whether Dave's accounts were being breached or whether there was any unusual movements or transactions.
During the first week Bradley Gordon and I talked frequently but something was not sitting right. Gordon was supposed to have been working on the release of Dave's banking records in Cambodia and I was awaiting for a copy, but every day the banking records according to Bradley Gordon were not ready. In the meantime I had some follow-up questions for Tori. When I contacted her again, she now suddenly refused to talk with me, stating that after I had directed her to contact Bradley Gordon, he told her not to speak with me any further and that she was aware of my "critique" of her (the reports I sent to Edmonton Police and Bradley Gordon.) Clearly either Gordon showed my report to Tori or shared it with Nate Thayer who then leaked its contents to her to drive a wedge between Tori and myself. She became useless to me as a witness.
I contacted Bradley Gordon about this, asking him if he had been in contact with Tori.
When I spoke on the phone, Bradley Gordon very persuasively convinced me that he had not talked with Tori Green nor was there any investigator working in the field that he was aware of. I believed him. Why would he lie? Now pissed off, I barked at Tori Green
I e-mailed the address Tori had given me and that was how I first came into contact with James An. I had been wrong. There was a private investigator working in Siem
Reap, and he was in contact with Bradley Gordon, who had lied to me, but
the investigator was not working
with or for Nate Thayer. He was reporting to the Cambodian Military
Police in Phnom Penh. In the ensuing week as Thayer had sandbagged
Peter Slade, the Edmonton Police and myself, Thayer would now become more obsessed with
investigating and stopping the investigator James An than looking for Dave Walker.
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