THE STATE

MAN LEAVES TRAIL OF FRAUD VIETNAM WAR HERO HE ISN'T; SECRET SPY HE ISN'T; MISSING HE IS

Thursday, March 3, 1994

Section: LIVING Page: 2D

By MICHAEL E. RUANE, Knight-Ridder Newspapers

To a lawyer, John M. Iannone wrote that he was going on his final secret mission, the one he feared he would not survive.

To his wife and three children, he sent Vietnam mementos and tape-recorded messages of farewell that were received via Federal Express the morning after he vanished.

To a pal in Virginia, an old 'Nam vet he knew would understand, he wrote cryptically that the enemy was "in the wire, buddy, and I'm down to my last magazine" of ammunition.

Iannone, possessor of a Medal of Honor, a Silver Star and the credentials of one of the finest soldiers ever in uniform, seemed to hope people would accept that he was serving his country one last, heroic time.

But when Allegheny County homicide Detective Tom Fitzgerald spotted the blood running the wrong way on the back console of Iannone's van last month, he suspected that the hero was a fraud.

The detective turned out to be right.

Investigators say the pipe-smoking local energy executive who vanished Jan. 11 not only tried to fake his own demise, but had also masqueraded for years as a Vietnam War hero and probably used that pose to help funnel thousands of dollars worth of investments through his now apparently defunct oil and gas speculating business.

Although no criminal charges have been lodged against him and Iannone is listed only as a missing person, the FBI is investigating his business dealings, a civil suit has been filed accusing him of fraud, and Allegheny County police said they suspect that he may owe investors almost $1 million.

But the most bizarre aspect of Iannone's disappearance has been the revelation of the Vietnam hero impersonation by a man who had a family, success, expensive cars, and a big house in the country, but who police say had never been in the Army.

The deception, which officials say he had foisted on family and friends, included Iannone's possession of both a Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor, and the Silver Star, its third-highest award.

Police say Iannone's fakery began to unravel Jan. 12, the morning after he left his large, modern house on several acres in rural Marshall Township, north of Pittsburgh, to catch a plane at the Pittsburgh airport, supposedly for a business trip to Houston.

Iannone, 49, was the chief operating officer and reportedly the sole employee of Horizon Natural Resources, an energy exploration concern based in nearby Wexford. Investigators said he had previously worked as an energy lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute in Washington and later for an energy company in the Pittsburgh area called Consolidated Natural Gas.

But Horizon appears to have gone bad. The civil suit accusing him of fraud says that 10 days before he vanished he sold the owners of a local car dealership a $34,000 interest in a Kansas oil-drilling project with which he had no connection and then used the money to pay off his credit-card bills.

Just before 10 a.m. the day after he departed, a Federal Express package was delivered to his wife, Donna, at home.

The package contained four audiocassettes, for each member of his immediate family, bearing the same goodbye message. The tape indicated that he was on a secret mission for one of the government's "alphabet" agencies, that he feared he might not be back, and that if the family received this package ess they wanted to believe it."

Investigators are not sure why Iannone undertook his Vietnam masquerade.

Detective Fitzgerald, who was awarded the Silver Star for bravery during an ambush in the Dong Ha Valley in 1969, said Iannone may have envied his father, who had been in the Marine Corps for 30 years.

The detective also pointed out that Iannone's impersonation began during the mid-1980s at the height of the nation's belated honoring of Vietnam veterans. "It was the thing to do in the mid-'80s, to be a Vietnam vet," Fitzgerald said. "Everybody wanted to be one. . . . So that's when this story started."

It is unclear where Iannone might be now, but police have said he loved the outdoors, attended re-enactments of 19th-century mountain-man encampments and talked about living in Montana or Wyoming.

His wife declined to be interviewed, saying at her front door, "Everything we've said so far has been twisted."

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

FAKING A DEATH AND A LIFE?

A PUZZLING TRAIL: DID A WAR HERO FAKE HIS DEATH, AND LIFE?

Sunday, February 20, 1994

Section: LOCAL Page: A01

By Michael E. Ruane, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

To a lawyer, John M. Iannone wrote that he was going on his final secret mission, the one he feared he would not survive.

To his wife and three children, he sent Vietnam mementos and tape-recorded messages of farewell that were received via Federal Express the morning after he vanished.

To a pal in Virginia, an old Nam vet he knew would understand, he wrote cryptically that the enemy was "in the wire, buddy, and I'm down to my last magazine" of ammunition.

Iannone, possessor of a Medal of Honor, a Silver Star and the credentials of one of the finest soldiers ever in uniform, seemed to hope people would accept that he was serving his country one last, heroic time.

But when Allegheny County Homicide Detective Tom Fitzgerald spotted the blood running the wrong way on the back console of Iannone's van last month, he suspected that the hero was a fraud.

The detective turned out to be right.

Investigators say that the pipe-smoking local energy executive who vanished Jan. 11 not only tried to fake his own demise, but had masqueraded for years as a Vietnam War hero, and probably used that pose to help funnel thousands of dollars worth of investments through his now apparently defunct oil and gas speculating business.

Although no criminal charges have been lodged against him and Iannone is listed only as a missing person, the FBI is investigating his business dealings, one civil suit has been filed accusing him of fraud, and Allegheny County police said they suspect he may owe investors almost $1 million.

But the most bizarre aspect of Iannone's disappearance has been the revelation of the Vietnam hero impersonation by a man who had a family, success, expensive cars, and a big house in the country, but who police say had never been in the Army.

The deception - which officials say he had foisted on family and friends - included Iannone's possession of both a Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor, and the Silver Star, its third-highest award.

Detectives said he had at home the star-shaped Medal of Honor with his name engraved on the back, a framed but forged certificate that went with it, and an accompanying, detailed citation that he apparently concocted from war movies. An Army official said last week that he was not sure if the medal, which often is awarded posthumously, was real.

The deception also included a military discharge document that later was found to be a copy of a good friend's, on which Iannone had entered his own name, fictitious rank, phony assignments, and the indication that his other files had been shipped to the CIA.

And it included such active participation in the Pittsburgh Vietnam veterans community that his name appears on the metal plaque honoring those who helped create the city's towering Vietnam War monument beside Three Rivers Stadium.

In his impersonation, which was complete with Vietnam War decals, bumper stickers and a commemorative veteran's plate on the front on his GMC van, he was Capt. John M. Iannone, Fifth Special Forces, Airborne, an intrepid man of secret missions whose country had often called, and still might, at almost any moment.

UNRAVELING

Police say that Iannone's fakery began to unravel Jan. 12, the morning after he left his large, modern house on several acres in rural Marshall Township, north of here, to catch a plane at the Pittsburgh airport, supposedly for a business trip to Houston.

Iannone, 49, was the chief operating officer and reportedly the sole employee of Horizon Natural Resources, an energy exploration concern based in nearby Wexford. Investigators said he had previously worked as an energy lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, and later for an energy firm in the Pittsburgh area called Consolidated Natural Gas.

But Horizon appears to have gone bad. The civil suit accusing him of fraud says that 10 days before he vanished he sold the owners of a local car dealership a $34,000 interest in a Kansas oil-drilling project with which he had no connection, and then used the money to pay off his credit-card bills.

Just before 10 a.m. the day after he departed, a Federal Express package was delivered to his wife, Donna, at home.

The package contained four audiocassettes, for each member of his immediate family, bearing the same goodbye message. The tape indicated that he was on a secret mission for one of the government's "alphabet" agencies, that he feared he might not be back, and that if the family received this package before hearing from him, he'd be dead.

The package also contained his wedding ring, a Special Forces ring, commemorative Special Forces coins, a rosary and copies of a farewell poem that police believe he probably found in a veterans magazine. "Know that I live on," the poem said, "vibrating to a different measure, behind a veil you cannot see through. . . . I wait for the time when we can soar together again . . . until then . . ."

'JAMES BONDISH'

The package also contained information about a $1 million life insurance policy and a large mortgage insurance policy he had.

Police said Iannone also had written at about the same time to a local lawyer and to a friend in Virginia, both of whom were Vietnam veterans.

The lawyer, Joel P. Aaronson, who had met with Iannone only once a few weeks before, also received his letter the day after the disappearance.

"You are aware from your time in Nam that some guys just knew when they wouldn't return from a patrol," the letter said. "Joel, I have that same feeling right now. . . . If I don't survive tomorrow morning's meeting, you will be reading this letter; if I do, I will have contacted you and asked you to destroy this letter."

Aaronson, who was an Army platoon leader in 1969, said that the letter was ''so sort of cryptic and James Bondish that it didn't seem believable."

To his Virginia friend, Ted Flood, Iannone wrote: "I'm sorry it has to come to this. . . . They're in the wire, buddy, and I'm down to my last magazine." Investigators said this refers to a soldier almost out of ammunition as the enemy is coming through the protective barbed wire surrounding the camp.

Flood, 47, who served in the field artillery in Vietnam in 1970, said he was "totally surprised" by the letter. "I've known the guy since 1973," Flood said. "We hunted together, camped together, and what I'm hearing now . . . is not the guy I knew." Flood said he never questioned Iannone's war story because his friend "talked the talk."

After receiving the Federal Express package, Iannone's wife called the police.

Officials quickly found the van abandoned at the airport. The next day Detective Fitzgerald, himself decorated for valor as a 19-year-old medic in Vietnam, was sent to examine the vehicle.

Fitzgerald, 45, already suspicious after interviewing Iannone's family, became even more so going over the van. Things were too pat, too "set-up," he said. "I wish that every scene could be as easy as this scene."

There was blood smeared on the driver's seat, but the .22-caliber bullet casing found on the front console was standing upright so you couldn't miss it, the detective said.

There was another shell casing and an empty gun case in the back of the van, and police had found a shoe outside the van's side door the day before. But what really caught Fitzgerald's eye was the blood on the rear console.

The console, a homemade wooden box that contained some of Iannone's expensive pipes and pipe tobacco, was sitting on a rear seat, slanting downward toward the back, like the angle of the seat bottom.

The problem was that the blood on the lid had oozed sideways toward the sliding door, rather than backward with the slant. "Blood can't do that," Fitzgerald said. Iannone had evidently lifted the box toward him to drip blood which tests showed was his type - on the lid, the detective said.

But when he set it back down again he left the blood running the wrong way. ''It's just a simple thing," Fitzgerald said, but one that "detectives will pick up right away. . . . I thought, 'Whoa.' "

Later, things got even stranger.

Police learned that the night he disappeared, leaving behind the bloody scene in his van, Iannone returned to his business office, where he was seen and spoken to by a cleaning crew.

Police later found a series of odd lists and notes in his office, one of which read: "Leave one shoe in van."

They also learned that he had recently bought a gun, a duffel bag and an expensive sleeping bag at a local sporting-goods shop; and in October, using a fake beard, cowboy garb, a fraudulent name and Social Security number, he had bought a car at a nearby dealership. The name he used - Wayne D. Hamilton - and the Social Security number turned out to be those of a Marine killed in 1968 during the Tet offensive.

Fitzgerald said that Iannone apparently began his masquerade suddenly only a few years ago. He had abruptly appeared before his family in uniform one night, saying he had been going on secret missions for the Army since he had been in college. But, until a recent declassification, he had been unable to talk about it.

His family bought the story "hook, line and sinker," Fitzgerald said. "I guess they wanted to believe it."

Iannone later indicated that because of the secret nature of his assignments he had not received the Medal of Honor until 1989, when he met with President Ronald Reagan in a private ceremony.

He also revealed the alleged deed for which he had been honored in the official-looking Medal of Honor citation that police said he had dreamed up. Fitzgerald said that several events in the citation seem to have been taken right out of the Vietnam movies Platoon and The Green Berets.

The date was Sept. 18, 1967, the citation claims; the place, deep in enemy territory west of Lang Vei, Vietnam. The assignment was to free four POWs who were critical to the American war effort. The typed citation goes on to describe Iannone leading a successful mission despite a crashed helicopter and enemy assaults, finally calling down an airstrike on his position after covering his men with the bodies of the dead.

It was, the citation reads, an "outstanding display of unparalleled bravery, decisive leadership, undaunted courage and selfless dedication to his men. . . ."

It was also sheer fantasy.

Investigators are not sure why Iannone undertook his Vietnam masquerade.

Detective Fitzgerald, who was awarded the Silver Star for bravery during an ambush in the Dong Ha Valley in 1969, said Iannone may have envied his father, who had been in the Marine Corps for 30 years.

The detective also pointed out that Iannone's impersonation began during the mid-1980s at the height of the nation's belated honoring of Vietnam veterans. "It was the thing to do in the mid-'80s, to be a Vietnam vet," Fitzgerald said. "Everybody wanted to be one. . . . So that's when this story started."

It is unclear where Iannone might be now, but police have said he loved the outdoors, attended re-enactments of 19th-century mountain-man encampments, and talked about living in Montana or Wyoming.

His wife declined to be interviewed, saying at her front door, "Everything we've said so far has been twisted."

For his part, Fitzgerald said that Iannone's charade made him mad.

There are only a handful of Silver Star recipients in the Pittsburgh area. ''Some lost parts of their bodies to get this medal," he said. "Many of us are scarred in many ways. . . . Then to have this jerk come along."

"The fact that he just wanted to be a Silver Star recipient, that was no big deal," Fitzgerald said. "But to use that to steal money from people, to give himself credibility - people believed in him - was giving us a black eye. Now people wonder . . . 'How do I know you really got yours?'"

Iannone's friends also are wondering. Is he really a fraud? Or has he come to some harm?

"I don't know which one to believe," said Ted Flood. "You don't want him to be a fraud, but you don't want him to be dead, either. . . . I'm waiting for the play to finish."

THE WICHITA EAGLE

NOTES INDICATE EXECUTIVE FLED

Monday, February 7, 1994

Section: CITY AND STATE,age: 3C

PITTSBURGH, Pa. New clues have developed in the unsolved disappearance of an oil executive accused of defrauding a Pennsylvania couple of $34,000 in a Kansas oil venture.

John Iannone, 51, was last seen by his family Jan. 11 as he left his suburban Pittsburgh house, supposedly to fly to Houston for a business meeting. He canceled his flight reservation, and authorities later found his van in a parking lot at Pittsburgh International Airport.

Police do not suspect foul play in the disappearance and have handed over information they have gathered to the FBI, which is investigating Iannone's business dealings.

Donald and Judy Bindas, also of suburban Pittsburgh, sued Iannone, claiming he defrauded them when they bought interest in eight Kansas oil wells.