A brief history

Palmyra may be remembered by some primarily for the notoriety it gained in the 1980 s as the site of a gruesome double murder. Buck Duane Walker was convicted in 1981 for the murder of Mr and Mrs Malcolm Graham on the atoll. Walker and his girlfriend, Stephanie Steams, were on Palmyra in the summer of 1974 when the Grahams arrived on their luxury sailboat, the Sea Wind.

Walker and Stems arrived in Honolulu on the Sea Wind in October, 1974, claming no knowledge of the Graham’s whereabouts.

Steams was later acquitted in a high ly publicised trial in which she was defended by the well-known American attorney Vincent Bugliosi (who had gained fame for his prosecution of the Manson Family). Bugliosi later chroni cled the Palmyra case in And the Sea Will Tell , which became a US made-for-TV movie. Mrs Graham’s remains were found on Palmyra in 1981, but Mr Graham’s body was never recovered.

Palmyra became a US territory by way of its annexation to the Hawaiian Kingdom under Kamehameha IV. The Hawaiian monarch commissioned Captain Zenas Bent and Johnson B Wilkinson in 1862 to take possession of Palmyra to increase “the trade and com merce of [the] kingdom as well as offer ing protection to the interests of its sub ject”.

Bent deposited a declaration in a boL tie buried at the foot of a pole wrapped in the Hawaiian flag, planted some crops, and built a house and a curing shed for the preparation of beche de mer.

When the Republic of Hawaii was annexed to the United States in 1898, Palmyra was included.

On February 21, 1912, the US Navy cruiser West Virginia, under the com mand of Rear Admiral WHH Southerland, formally took possession of Palmyra in the name of the US. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, the Hawaii Statehood Act excluded Palmyra from the state’s territory and jurisdiction, vesting all executive and legislative authority for the civil administration of Palmyra in the Secretary of the Interior.

Palmyra received its name from a Captain Sawle, who christened it after his vessel, which stopped there on November 7, 1802. ■