The Region - News from June 30, 1985

Buck Duane Walker, 47, was sentenced by a federal judge to life in prison for the murder of a San Diego woman whose bones were found on a remote Pacific atoll in 1981, 6 1/2 years after she vanished. The prosecution theorized that Walker and a girlfriend, Stephanie Stearns, who will be tried separately, killed Eleanor (Muff) Graham on Palmyra, about 1,000 miles south of Honolulu, in order to steal a luxury yacht owned by the woman and her husband, Malcolm, whose body has never been found.