Alone - 9780982000977

A tanker steaming through the deep Northwest Providence Channel of the Bahamas comes across a shocking sight: a lone dinghy carrying Captain Julian Harvey and the body of a young girl. They are all that remain of the ketch Bluebelle, a handsome 60-foot sailing yacht chartered by the Duperrault family of Green Bay, Wisconsin. But their happy family vacation went terribly wrong when, accroding to Harvey, a violent and unexpected squall smashed the giant main mast, killed Harvey's wife and the other, and sank the boat. Harvey found the child floating dead and, as far as he knows, he is the Only survivor. Or is he?

Four days later, just as Captain Harvey is testifying at a Coast Guard hearing about the tragic accident, amazing news of another survivor arrives. Eleven-year-old Terry Jo Duperrault has been found barely alive on a flimsy cork-and-canvas float, with no food or water. Harvey takes the news calmly, finishes his testimony, and leaves...to commit bloddy suicide.

This is the chillingly detailed inside story of what really happened during that trip and the decades-long courage of the sole survivor of a murderous crime.

World War II Navy veteran Arthur Duperrault always dreamed of taking his family sailing in the tropics an appealing change from the cold winters of Green Bay, Wisconsin. By the time he could afford the once-in-a-lifetime trip, he had a wife, Jean, and three children: 14-year-old Brian, 11-year-old Terry Jo, and 7-year-old Rene.

The family chartered the two-masted ketch Bluebelle out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Its hired captain was the Hollywood-hansome Julian Harvey, accompanined by his new wife, Mary Dene.

Although Arthur Duperrault and Julian Harvey shared a military background and a love of the sea, the two men could not have been more different, Duperrault was a devoted famlly man; Harvey's checkered past included a succession of wives, of which Mary Dene was the sixth. Obsessed with body-building and the Women it attracted, Harvey, it was rumored, also had money difficulties.

For the Duperraults, what started out as a wonderful vacation suddenly went terribly wrong. Afterward, at a Coast Guard hearing, Captain Harvey would testify that a violent squall had snapped the yacht's huge main mast, which pierced the ship like a knife. Amid the destruction, chaos, and ensuing fire, Harvey was the only one to reach the lifeboat.

Then came the amazing announcement that Terry Jo Duperrault had been found alive after four days on a tiny cork float with no food or water. She was the only person who could corroborate or refute Harvey's story. That news triggered a chain of events that included a grisly suicide and revelations that would suggest the sinking of the Bluebelle was no accident.

It took Tere Duperrault nearly 20 years (and a name change) before she could talk about those terrible events---not to family, friends, husbands...not even to a therapist. In fact she needed a sodium amytal (truth serum) Injection in order to remember intimate details of the traumatic crime.

Her Story is a true testament to the human spirit.