Two stuntmen, one kidnap, one murder and a missing jetpack. The true

KIDNAPPING, extortion, double-crossing, jail, death and murder. An average day for most mafiosi, but hardly run of the mill for stuntmen and inventors, especially when the cause of all this violence, mayhem and misery isn't gold bullion, a femme fatale or settling a score with a copper's nark but a jetpack.

Next month, two stuntmen are facing possible life terms for kidnapping a rival and trying to force him to hand over the rights to his "rocket-belt" - a gizmo that is strapped on the back and then propels the pilot into the air with jet thrusters.

The rival - a fellow stuntman-cum-inventor - is a police suspect in the bludgeoning murder of another man, who was involved in complex business deals over the same cursed jetpack.

Few people believe rocket-belts or jetpacks exist. Most consider them the work of the fertile imaginations of scriptwriters, who have brought them to movie screens in such films as Thunderball, with Sean Connery as 007, and Minority Report, where future-cop Tom Cruise zoomed around mega-cities.

But they are real, and were first developed by the US army in the 1950s. When the generals decided they were pretty useless on the battlefield, the few prototypes left fell into the hands of keen amateurs.

One of those was Howard "Kinnie" Gibson, and it is with him that the brutal battle for control of the world's best rocket-belt begins. Gibson was a daredevil stuntman who acquired the patent for an essential part of rocket-belt design.

By the mid-1980s Gibson, a one-time stunt-double for action hero Chuck Norris, was running a lucrative business exhibiting rocket- belts around the world. He had two sidekicks working with him - Brad Barker and Thomas "Larry" Stanley. These two struck out on their own in the early 1990s after a row with Gibson.

Barker says he has been captivated by rocket-belts ever since he saw one in Thunderball when he was nine. And after he saw how much Gibson was earning for each show - up to $25,000 - he found a new reason to love the rocket-belt. "Everyone wants to be wealthy," he said. "And that was pretty much it: build the belt, go out and make a lot of money."

Barker and Stanley set up the American Rocket Belt Corp, with Stanley putting up most of the $100,000 needed to build a new, improved version of the device over four years. The work took place in a car audio studio in Houston, Texas, owned by Joe Wright, a friend of Barker's, who got a 5% share of the enterprise.

By January 1995 the new rocket-belt - the RB-2000 - was ready for its test flight. The partners hired Bill Suitor, who tested the first military prototypes, and the trials were a huge success. Suitor hit speeds of 70mph and got to an altitude of 150ft. He also stayed airborne for 30 seconds - nine seconds longer than the earlier military versions.

But by now Stanley and Barker were at each other's throats. Stanley believed Barker was stealing from him by claiming the company bills were twice as high as they really were, meaning Stanley was shouldering all the costs and Barker none.

The row turned physical and a full-scale fight broke out. "Stanley got in my face," Barker recalls. "I grabbed a five-pound, dead-blow, lead-filled hammer off the table. I hit Stanley short blows twice to the back of the head. That pretty much ended the partnership."

Barker was convicted of assault and got probation. Stanley filed a lawsuit against Barker and his friend Wright, and was declared the lawful owner of the new, lucrative rocket-belt. But when he went to Wright's store to collect the belt, it was gone and so was Barker.

Stanley's lawyers are sure Barker took the belt. Michael von Blon, one of his attorneys, said: "He liked to polish it every day, caress it. He wanted to see it and feel like it was his baby. He would never let it be out of his sight."

In June 1995, Stanley spotted the RB-2000 - and Barker - on TV at a basketball game in Houston. Believing that Wright could lead him to Barker, Stanley offered to drop his lawsuit against Wright in return for help. Wright was unsure - but by 1999, when the lawsuit was due to go to trial, he had agreed.

Wright was afraid of Barker's reaction, so Stanley lent him some money to lie low. But Wright failed to show up at a meeting with Stanley's lawyers - and four days later, on July 16, 1999, his body was found so badly beaten at his home that dental records were needed to identify the corpse. Houston police took Barker into custody, questioned him for three days, then released him, despite being unable to confirm his alibis. To this day Wright's murder is unsolved.

By now Stanley had won his lawsuit, had sole ownership of the RB- 2000 and had been granted more than $10 million in damages - but he still didn't have the actual rocket-belt.

A few months later, says Barker, he got a call from an old skydiving buddy, Chris Wentzel. He offered Barker a Hollywood job on a film shoot in the desert at $400 a day.

When Barker showed up at Wentzel's bungalow in November 1999, there were two unknown men waiting with him. One of them put Barker in a headlock, and Wentzel pulled a pistol and pointed it at his head. Barker was wrestled to the ground and questioned over the RB- 2000. He refused to answer them, he says, believing if he told them where it was he'd be "as dead as a doornail".

The men held him captive for seven days but he still refused to talk. So they packed him tightly into a wooden box. Then they began drilling holes in the side, with Wentzel saying: "The more holes, the faster it'll sink."

Later that night, Barker was pulled out of the box. Stanley was standing in the room with a gun in his hand. "I've got a notary," he said. "She's coming by and you're going to sign some papers." Barker says the document would have turned over all rights to the RB-2000. He refused to sign and later slipped his cuffs, forced a window and escaped.

Stanley and Wentzel were convicted in April of kidnapping and extortion. They will be sentenced in November and face possible life sentences. Barker, meanwhile, is still cagey over the whereabouts of the RB-2000. But it is possible it will show up again some day. "You just never know," he said.

Copyright 2002
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