By DAPHNE DURET
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

STUART — Veteran detective Bill Pakonis recently retired from the Martin County Sheriff’s Office. In 35 years of law enforcement, he’s endured footraces, gunfights, watching children die, tough interrogations. “I leave here knowing there’s probably nothing else I could have done and had as rich a variety of experiences as I’ve had.”

Here’s a peek at a few of those moments:

A close call

In his third year, Pakonis, a road patrol deputy, took a domestic violence victim back to her house in Hobe Sound one night. They suspected her husband might be home, but the victim assured him the only weapon he owned was a Swiss Army knife. When Pakonis opened the door, her husband was sitting on the couch holding a double-barrel shotgun. “After that, everything went really slowly. It was like there was a slow-motion movie playing in my head.” Pakonis drew his weapon — fast — as the man started to raise his shotgun. If the gun gets to point at my head or chest, I’m going to have to take him out, Pakonis thought. His finger tensed on the trigger ready to pull, when suddenly the man dropped the gun.

Even now, he occasionally gets nightmares.

“I remember it like it was yesterday.”

But for the grace of God …

His name was Jim. Pakonis could never remember his last name.

He was an alcoholic, living on the streets when he was beaten almost to death by a man who had paid him to buy drugs, but the dealers robbed Jim. “I’m sure people looked at him and said he’s just a drunk living in the woods, but in the big picture, he was a victim of a crime.”

Other homeless men led him to the suspect. Pakonis encouraged the witnesses to attend depositions and told them about the nominal fee the court pays. “They were like ‘Wow, that’s enough for dinner and a six-pack!’ ” On deposition day, every witness showed up clean, sober and neatly dressed. They gave consistent testimony, and the suspect subsequently went to jail. Pakonis said the case came at a time in his life when he had decided to stop drinking. “Every time the case took a turn, I thought, ‘but for the grace of God go I.’ I’m very blessed to be where I am.”

Gunplay on the water

In South Florida’s “Cocaine ’80s,” Pakonis was one of just a few law enforcement officers patrolling Martin County waters. One morning, as Pakonis left home for a shift, a voice inside said his service revolver wouldn’t be enough that day. So he got another gun. He went to leave, then turned back again to get more ammunition. That day Pakonis and a marine patrol officer encountered drug smugglers trying to elude capture near the St. Lucie Inlet. He and the marine patrol officer tried to stop the boat, then shot at them to keep them from getting away. But the bullets one by one ricocheted off the boat and the marijuana bales, and the other officer quickly ran out of bullets. Pakonis, with a flare gun and the extra ammunition, pinned down the smugglers under a hail of fire until the boat stalled and they were captured with 10,000 pounds of marijuana. “Some of the experiences I’ve had you couldn’t find in the movies.”

Toe to Toe

In his first major case as a detective, Pakonis investigated a home invasion robbery where three men robbed and badly beat a prominent Sewall’s Point couple. Authorities eventually caught a man and woman on unrelated charges but had little to tie them to the robbery. Pakonis’ first coup was to get the girlfriend to confess her boyfriend’s involvement. That led to the arrest of an accomplice, but he needed more. Prosecutors told Pakonis he had 21 days to make his case or they’d have to set the accomplice free. He interrogated the boyfriend, “a huge guy with big, beefy hands,” inside a federal prison. “He asked me what he would get if he talked, and I told him the deal that the prosecutors were prepared to offer him. But then he asked what would happen if he changed his mind when it was time to testify.” No one had prepared Pakonis for a situation like that, but his instincts told him to tell the truth. “I told him we’re going to use your confession against you and go after you with everything we have.” After the two stared at one another, the man slowly stood up and extended his hand. “He said, ‘You’ve given me the first straight answer I’ve gotten in two weeks. Let’s go.’ ”

A case from hell

It was 1990, and Pakonis was called to investigate a possible case of child abuse in Port Salerno. There he found a 4-year-old girl with bruises on her face, a rash and two missing teeth. Her mother, Vicky Hedrick, and other family members said the girl had psychological problems and was hurting herself. After a psychiatrist gave the girl a preliminary diagnosis of either childhood schizophrenia or autism , Pakonis and child protection investigators concluded that there was no case for child abuse.

Weeks later, a social worker found the girl naked and tied to a board, her face and one knee bloody and most of her body covered with bruises and cuts. The investigation re-opened, and doctors and nurses told Pakonis that the girl showed no signs of mental illness and any symptoms were due to abuse and neglect. Authorities eventually arrested Hedrick as well as Rose and Wesley Miller, the girl’s aunt and uncle. Pakonis also became the center of a plot between the Millers, who planned to kill him and several others in a courtroom before killing themselves. When their plans fell through, Hedrick and Wesley Miller carried out the suicide pact in a parking lot across the street from the courthouse. Rose Miller died, but Wesley Miller survived a gunshot wound to his head. Pakonis was one of the first investigators on the scene. “I can’t say that I haven’t become jaded, because I have, but I used it as a learning experience. I made sure that it didn’t affect the way that I did my job.”

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