Ex-Wife Talked to Regain Grandson : Bitter Custody Fight Led to Spy Ring Disclosures

It was a bitter custody dispute over the 5-year-old grandson of spy suspect John A. Walker Jr. that led Barbara Crowley Walker to call the FBI about her ex-husband and thus begin unraveling what authorities say is one of the most damaging espionage cases in U.S. history, principals in the case said Tuesday.

Family members and associates told a twisted tale of blackmail and abduction and of family rifts and guilt. They recounted a mother’s conversion to born-again Christianity and her regaining her son--whom she had not seen for three years--by spiriting him away from a group of children playing in the front yard of his father’s home.

At the center of the bizarre drama is Christopher Snyder, the young son of Laura Walker Snyder--John Walker’s daughter--and Mark Snyder, the husband from whom she has been separated for three years.

Laura Snyder charged in an interview broadcast Tuesday by the Christian Broadcasting Network that her estranged husband, with whom her son, Christopher, had been living, had threatened to disclose her father’s alleged spying to the FBI and “destroy the family” if she tried to take custody of the boy--whose whereabouts were unknown to her until late last week.

Snyder, although denying any knowledge that his father-in-law was a spy, acknowledged in an interview with The Times that he had once threatened to “disclose whatever I knew” about John Walker if his son were taken from him. He said he had delivered that warning last fall to Barbara Walker, his mother-in-law and John Walker’s former wife, after Barbara Walker had told him John Walker might try to kidnap his grandson.

It was Barbara Walker who went to the FBI last November. A lawyer for the Christian Broadcasting Network who is working with Laura Snyder said that her mother finally turned to the authorities, after more than 15 years of silence about her former husband’s alleged spying, for fear that she would never again see her grandson as long as Mark Snyder could threaten to expose the family.

Caused Son’s Arrest

Barbara Walker’s allegations led to the arrest of her former husband, a retired Navy communications specialist, on charges of spying for the Soviet Union. And the continuing investigation has resulted in the arrests of her son, seaman Michael Lance Walker; John Walker’s older brother, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Arthur J. Walker, and John Walker’s best Navy friend, Jerry A. Whitworth.

Barbara Walker told The Times on June 5 that she had had no idea that her son was involved in the alleged spy ring. And Laura Snyder pointed to the irony of that fact in her interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network:

“She turns my father in so that I can fight for my son,” Laura said, “and her own son is now a victim of it.”

According to FBI court filings, Laura Snyder has supported her mother’s allegations about her father by charging that her father tried to enlist her as a spy in 1979 when she was an Army communications specialist at Ft. Polk, La. Laura, describing her father in the interview as “arrogant, self-centered, egotistical,” admitted that she nearly succumbed to his entreaties.

Marriage Disintegrated

Instead, the Snyders moved first to Maine and then to the San Francisco Bay Area before their marriage disintegrated. Mark took little Christopher with him in 1982--Laura agreed with an interviewer’s statement that her son was “kidnaped”--and Laura said she did not see her son again until last Saturday.

“My husband was blackmailing me,” she said. “He told me that, if I tried to get the baby, he would turn my father in or tell what he knew and he would destroy the family.”

Mark Snyder, now a materials handler for Litton Systems, which makes communications equipment in College Park, Md., insisted in an interview with The Times that he was not specifically familiar with the alleged spying.

“I kind of knew something about it,” he said. “I was somewhat familiar with it, but not in so many words.”

Snyder said that John Walker “seemed to be living high with several businesses, a car, a boat and an airplane. I didn’t think he had that much income. I just got bad vibes from him.” But he said he suspected Walker only of “some illegal activity”--perhaps tax evasion.

Sought Help

After Laura and Mark Snyder separated, Laura became a born-again Christian. And, on at least two occasions, she turned to the 700 Club, a 90-minute daily news and information show produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. of Virginia Beach, Va., for help.

Guy C. Evans Jr., a lawyer with the Christian Broadcasting Network, said that Laura had asked her mother in 1982 or 1983 to divulge her father’s alleged spying activities. “Her mother would have nothing to do with it at the time,” Evans said, adding that mother and daughter did not speak for a year and a half.

“About a year ago,” Evans said, “she talked with her mother again, and her mother said something had to be done. Her mother realized she would never see her grandson again unless she did something.”

In her broadcast interview, Laura said: “The day after I called her, she called me and said: ‘I called the FBI. I turned your father in.’ Will you help me? Will you support me? And I said: ‘Absolutely.’ ”

Mark Snyder gave a different version. He said that Barbara Walker had called him last fall to alert him that “Laura might get her father to come down and grab Christopher. I interpreted it as a friendly call. I always got along well with Barbara.”

Retaliation Threatened

Snyder said he told Barbara Walker that, if John Walker made such an attempt: “I would disclose whatever I knew about him.” When asked what he would have told authorities, he said: “I didn’t know exactly what I’d tell them except perhaps to check out his finances.”

Even the breaking of the alleged Walker spy ring did not reunite Laura Snyder with her son because she did not know where her husband was living. Again she turned to the Christian Broadcasting Network: She drove last Friday from Canton, N.Y., where she had been living with friends, to Virginia Beach to tape a 700 Club interview in the hope that viewers would help her find Christopher.

Meanwhile, Evans learned her husband’s Laurel, Md., address from the U.S. attorney’s office in Baltimore, which had investigated John Walker’s alleged spying activities. So Laura and a friend, Marie Hammond, drove to Laurel with Hammond’s two young sons and parked in front of Mark Snyder’s apartment at 7 a.m. Saturday.

Laura said she saw Christopher at about 9:30 but he ran back inside the apartment building before she could make contact with him.

“I thought . . . I’ve missed my son,” she said. Soon afterward, when two other boys emerged from the building to play, Laura asked Jonathan Hammond, one of her friend’s sons, to go over and play with them and encourage them to get Christopher.

‘Acted Like a Movie Star’

“Jonathan went over there and he acted like a movie star,” she said. “He pulled it off like a charm.”

Mark Snyder said that he looked down from his apartment and saw Christopher being led across the street by a playmate. By the time he could get downstairs, he said, his son was gone.

He called Prince George’s County police. When Laura Snyder later called her husband to assure him that Christopher was safe, police called off their investigation, saying no crime had been committed because both parents had equal rights to the child.

When asked in the interview if Christopher, who had not seen his mother since he was 2, recognized her in front of his father’s apartment, Laura said: “Oh, he knew right away. He gave me a big hug, but then he stood back and he looked at me. I think he was a little startled.”

Gaylord Shaw in Virginia Beach, Va., contributed to this story.