In Search of the Sleuth

It was Pankau, he says, who brought the private investigation business into the information age by going high-tech. Sleuthing in the shadows was becoming a thing of the past. Today's gumshoe is more apt to be a computer geek.

In the foreword to 1992's Check It Out!, Thomas wrote that during the height of the savings and loan scandal, Pankau developed a "Henry Ford system of searching public records" to ferret out hidden assets. Today Thomas is unable to explain any details of how that system works. Nor does Pankau's book deliver any clues on how to access this amazing assembly line of data. However, the book does point to various public records that anyone can access with a little digging.

I played along and waded through various databases, scraping whatever facts I could from such things as driver's license records, real estate holdings and marriage licenses. I learned our hero was born on the fourth of July in 1945, and has a house on a five-acre spread in Conroe and scattered tracts in the Tomball area. He was married twice in Harris County in the 1980s and apparently is not registered to vote.

A hazy portrait was emerging, but of what? Per Pankau, I next turned to a place where I might add some depth to this one-dimensional sketch. On page 57, he writes, "In the civil suit records, you can discover, recorded for posterity, the true feelings of ex-spouses, business associates, and those dirty bastards who owe us money -- or to whom we owe money."

The air in the old civil courthouse on San Jacinto was nursing-home fresh. The usual crazies darted about on their appointed missions. For all the success I was having navigating the geriatric computer system, I might as well have been translating the Rosetta stone. Behind me at the Plexiglas windows, some clown was clamoring for a clerk to hurry up and help him. When someone told him to learn some patience, the joker barked, "Patience?! I'm ready to shoot somebody."

The whole room burst out laughing.

I knew from researching the news archives that Pankau was no stranger to Lawyer Land. Still, I was surprised when I punched his name into the mainframe and some 60 records came up. This guy litigated more than some people move their bowels. He had mixed it up more than once with Tomball over property taxes, duked it out with two wives in bare-knuckle divorces, even sued the phone company for a quarter-mil for God knows what.

I was particularly interested in the $5 million defamation suit he had filed against fellow scribe Robert Pack in December 1993. The complaint says that following the Times's new-breed-of-Sam-Spade puff piece in 1992, Pankau was a hot property and signed a contract to write an autobiography tentatively titled Presumed Guilty: Confessions of a Private Eye.

Pankau's agent put him in touch with Pack, a Maryland-based writer who had co-authored a best-seller on the Reagan presidency with former White House spokesman Larry Speakes. According to the lawsuit, Pankau forked over written materials that were both nonfictional and fictional "since Ed Pankau had often entertained the idea of writing a fictional work." The two appeared on track to write a classic.

However, relations turned sour as the duo neared completion. The suit says that "Pack became argumentative, demanding, and openly hostile to Ed Pankau." For his part, Pankau "was dumfounded at this turn of events, did not know how to focus Pack onto the project and became as conciliatory as possible to try to appease Pack and to calm him down."

The petition makes reference to letters in which Pack allegedly called Pankau a liar and questioned his integrity. However, Pankau succeeded in getting District Court Judge Michael Schneider to seal those damning missives and other materials, arguing that they contained information that not only was embarrassing to the detective but also compromised U.S. Senators John Carey [sic], Edward M. Kennedy, Gary Hart and Orrin Hatch, evangelist Pat Robertson, Noriega, jewel thief Murph the Surf and local attorneys Dick DeGuerin and John O'Quinn, among others.

Fortunately for posterity, the suit generated news stories at the time, including a hard-hitting piece by The Wall Street Journal, which put Pankau under the microscope. The January 1994 Journal piece, titled "Is P.I. Pankau Less than Meets the Eye?" quoted a letter Pack had written to Pankau the previous year.

"I do not believe it is possible to produce a true, libel-free, original book about your life and career," Pack wrote.

Pankau eventually dropped his suit against Pack. I called the writer at his D.C.-area home, hoping to sound him out on his experiences with the glib private eye. Pack seemed spooked by the memory.

"I wish you luck on your story," he said. "I can't tell you anything."

I tried again with another man who had slugged it out with the shamus. Attorney Michael Von Blon represented Pankau's wife Linda in their 1996 divorce. Court records show that the matter had gotten ugly indeed. Linda had in her possession certain pictures of Pankau that Von Blon thought were relevant to the proceedings. Pankau's attorney George Neely was determined that they never see the light of day.