Missing Rocket Belt Inspired Greed, Envy--Possibly Even Murder

In 1995, a test pilot with a rocket contraption strapped to his back shot into the air and flew over the Houston Ship Channel like Buck Rogers for 28 seconds. The crowd went wild.

After the demonstration, one of the developers of the rocket belt put it in his trailer and drove off.

The rocket belt hasn’t been seen since.

The demonstration was the first and last public flight of the RB-2000 rocket belt, one of only three such devices operational in the world.

Four years later, accusations of murder and assault envelop the three men who collaborated to build the device.

One is dead, while another is a suspect in his slaying and under judicial order to pay a third partner $10 million for absconding with their invention to keep the profits to himself.

In the midst of it all, the question remains: What happened to the rocket belt?

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In the 1965 movie “Thunderball,” James Bond straps on a rocket belt and quips that “no well-dressed man should be without one.” It was the entertainment world’s first glimpse of a real such gadget, which later appeared in dozens of commercials, movies and special events such as the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

It’s the size of a bulky backpack and weighs 120 pounds when fueled. Two of its tanks are filled with hydrogen peroxide, and a third contains nitrogen. When the throttle is opened, a high-pressure stream blasts out two nozzles, providing the lifting thrust.

Bell Aircraft first developed the device in the early 1960s for the Defense Department, which wanted a rocket to improve soldiers’ mobility. But its fuel capacity allowed for only a 20-second flight, making it impractical.

But others were intrigued and dreamed of building their own rocket machine. One such person was Brad Barker.

In 1991, Barker was working in Florida helping to maintain a rocket belt owned by a stunt man who flew the contraption at Disney World. Later that year, he contacted an old acquaintance, pilot and aeronautics buff Larry Stanley, about teaming up to build a belt.

As Stanley tells it, both men borrowed thousands from their mothers to buy the parts. Barker, he says, purchased the machinery, while Stanley worked to put it all together. Joe Wright, a friend of Barker who owned a car audio shop in Houston, offered them space at his business to build the belt. The rent was to be paid later, according to Stanley, after the belt was operational and making money.

In November 1994, that moment was near. The belt was ready for test flights. But suspicion already hung over the project.

Stanley believed Barker had been charging him at least twice what the parts and machinery cost and pocketing whatever money was left over.

Stanley confronted Barker. A fight broke out, and Barker beat his partner with a 4-pound hammer. Both men were charged with assault, though the charges against Stanley were dropped. Barker was convicted and placed on probation.

The partnership was over.

Wright quickly placed a lien on the rocket belt, claiming Stanley owed him back rent. Stanley never saw the belt again, and the last time anyone saw it publicly was at a 1995 National Basketball Assn. event in Houston, when Barker put it in his trailer and drove away.

In 1995, Stanley sued Barker and Wright, accusing them of conspiring to seize the belt “for their own personal use, benefit and monetary gain.”

The case finally was set for trial last July. In a last-ditch effort to settle his part of the case, Wright agreed a few weeks before trial to contact Barker and try to learn the whereabouts of the rocket belt, according to Wright’s former attorney, Ronald Bass.

A few days later, Wright was bludgeoned to death in his home.

Authorities questioned Barker but never charged him. Harris County sheriff’s officials say he remains a suspect along with one other unidentified person.

Barker maintains his innocence and insists he has phone records proving he was out of state when Wright was killed.

“The sheriff’s department has gone out of its way to try to associate the rocket belt with this murder,” Barker says, “and it’s got nothing to do with it whatsoever.”

As for the rocket belt, Barker refuses to discuss its whereabouts. Before the civil suit against him went to trial, he was asked if he had it. He replied: “I could tell you yes, I could tell you no.”

But, after losing the suit by default last month--he says he did not know of it until he read about the judgment in the paper--Barker denied he had the belt. “Even if I had it,” he said, “I would smash it into a million . . . pieces with a road grader.”

The judge awarded Stanley more than three times the $3 million he had requested. But Stanley says all he really wants is the rocket belt back.

“The only things that carry you through life are persistence and determination. So if I’m persistent and determined, I will recover that rocket belt,” he says. “It has been four years, and I’m not anywhere close to giving up on it.”