| Notes |
- Orlando Sentinel,August 31, 2001
By Sean Mussenden, Sentinel Staff Writer
Lure Of Women, Sea Fuels Mystery Of Missing Sailor
Boating Buddies Described The New Smyrna Man's Rocky Relationships, Clandestine Trips To Cuba And Debts.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Something about Jacques Pierre Gamache made him a babe magnet.
The French Canadian accent helped, as did tales of his jaunts to Cuba on his 37-foot sailboat Consessions.
But it was his generous nature, his weathered good looks despite his age -- 66 -- and his quick wit that truly made him a Don Juan, members of his close-knit sailing community say.
"He loved all women, from 9 to 99. If they couldn't walk, he'd carry them," said Steve Szabo, who had been a crew member on Gamache's boat for almost two decades, including a Cuban voyage earlier this year.
Now Gamache has vanished, as if swallowed by some ancient sea monster.
Before he disappeared last week, Gamache tacked his treasured sailboat directly into an international mystery. A fisherman found Consessions abandoned, sails down and out of gas, 20 miles off the Volusia County coast a week ago today.
If someone had to wind up in the middle of a mystery worthy of Graham Greene, Gamache seemed the perfect candidate.
With his clandestine trips to communist Cuba, felony arrest for dumping fish guts in the car of a man he suspected of having an affair with his wife, women friends from Latin American countries, rocky marriages with divorces and debts -- and few close friends -- his sailing buddies say he is puzzling.
"He never really gives you a straight answer. . . . He was very mysterious, and I'm no psychologist, but maybe even a bit paranoid," said Frank Ambrose, the third crew member on the six-week sail to Cuba with Gamache and Szabo in February and March.
Did he commit suicide? Was he kidnapped? Did he stage his disappearance, as some friends suspect?
FBI agents spearheading the search for Gamache have said little about their investigation.
FISH GUTS, SLASHED RAGTOP
What happened to Jacques Pierre Gamache?
Retired, Gamache spent much of his time working on his boat at Smyrna Marina in New Smyrna Beach.
The native of Quebec also traveled extensively, friends and neighbors said, financing his adventures with income from three rental properties he owns, as well as a disability check stemming from a construction accident in California several decades ago.
In 1987, he rented a Cadillac and drove from California to Mexico and married Connie DeAndrade, a woman 17 years his junior. It was not his first marriage. Though friends said Gamache was crazy about his young bride, the marriage went sour after a decade. Divorce proceedings began in September.
"The whole neighborhood could hear them screaming at each other in French," said Gamache's neighbor and friend of nearly 10 years, Carlton Frost.
According to court records, Gamache thought that his wife was having an affair with his good friend, Thomas Jamieson, and he slashed the convertible top on Jamieson's car and dumped in a bucket of reeking fish guts.
Gamache also threatened his wife's life, according to court records.
Reached at Jamieson's apartment, DeAndrade would not talk about her husband.
"I'm not talking about this case to any media, anyone. I've been advised, well, that's it. I'm just not talking," she said.
Jamieson did not return phone calls.
Gamache's wife and Jamieson "made verbal statement that they will kill me," Gamache scrawled in a handwritten note contained in his divorce file. But the feeling was mutual, according to Szabo.
Szabo wrote in an affidavit, also in court files, that Gamache told him "that he will end his wife's life personally."
"Actually, what he said was, `She'll never live to spend a dime of my money,' " Szabo said in an interview on Thursday.
Gamache's disappearance came just weeks before a scheduled mediation hearing for his near-final divorce in which he has been ordered to pay more than $500 a month in alimony to DeAndrade, about one-quarter of his monthly income.
A pretrial hearing is also scheduled for next week in the convertible-slashing incident, which could land Gamache in jail for five years if convicted. And if found.
DEBTS AND ALIMONY
Szabo said that Gamache amassed debts -- including $3,000 to him for fixing Consessions' mast when a sudden rainstorm snapped it.
Court records show he did not make the first temporary alimony payment to DeAndrade, and officials recently garnished his disability check for payment.
Szabo's theory: Gamache is lying low.
"I guess he thinks he'll have time to sort things out. He doesn't like stress. He'll go to extreme means to avoid it," he said.
VOYAGES TO CUBA
It's unclear how or whether the FBI is checking to see whether Gamache may be in Cuba, where he has taken several recent trips -- by plane and on Consessions.
Trips to the communist country are common for people at the Smyrna Marina, dockmaster Tom Richards said. "It's a different place to go," he said.
In February, Gamache set sail with Szabo and Ambrose for Cuba. Though the trip should have taken a little more than a week, rough seas broke a mast and almost smashed the boat against a reef near Miami.
- Mystery Encircles Empty Sailboat
A New Smyrna Beach Man's Legal Troubles Fueled Questions About His Disappearance.
August 29, 2001|By Ludmilla Lelis, Sentinel Staff Writer
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- It was a mystery from the start: The 37-foot sailboat Concessions was found drifting 25 miles offshore on Friday, apparently abandoned.
Because no one locally has seen the boat's owner, Jacques Pierre Gamache, since Thursday, the mystery has gained intrigue, leaving some to wonder:
Where is Gamache, and does the disappearance of the 66-year-old Quebec native have anything to do with his marital, financial or criminal troubles of the past year?
After a 1,700-square-mile search of the waters found nothing, Coast Guard officials can offer no answers. A review of his court records -- including a pending divorce and an upcoming criminal trial -- raised questions about the whereabouts of Gamache.
"It took us all at the marina by surprise that his boat was abandoned," said Kenny Ropp, president of the Smyrna Marina Management Inc., where Gamache kept the sailboat. "Our first concern was for his safety."
The Coast Guard mounted an extensive search over the weekend, dispatching a helicopter, two airplanes, a motorboat and the 87-foot cutter Kingfisher in case the boater had gone overboard, but the search ended Monday.
Lt. j.g. Shelby Harrington confirmed that Gamache owns the abandoned vessel but wouldn't comment further. The FBI has taken over the investigation. Volusia County deputy sheriffs checked Gamache's house Friday night at the FBI's request. A report was taken, but the Sheriff's Office would not release the report Tuesday afternoon, pending the FBI's approval, Sheriff's Office spokesman Gary Davidson said.
Witnesses say Gamache set sail on that boat from Smyrna Marina at noon on Thursday. He headed out toward Ponce de Leon Inlet and hasn't been seen since.
Volusia court records detail his troubles, which began a year ago, when his wife, Connie De Andrade, moved out of his New Smyrna Beach house. The couple had been living together since 1986 and got married during a vacation in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1987. They had a second wedding ceremony in Las Vegas in 1996, according to court records.
In a sworn statement, De Andrade described a rocky marriage and Gamache's love of sailing his pricey vessel. She filed for divorce in September.
New Smyrna Beach police think that shortly after she left, Gamache vandalized a car owned by Thomas Jamieson, a former friend he suspected of having an affair with his wife. On Sept. 1, 2000, Gamache is accused of tearing open Jamieson's convertible Camaro and dumping fish guts inside, according to an arrest report.
On Valentine's Day, 2001, De Andrade got a court order forcing Gamache to pay her $521 a month in alimony. In March 2001, Gamache set sail for Cuba, where he became sick with a parasite, as he described in a handwritten tome sent to Circuit Judge Patrick Kennedy, who is handling the couples' divorce.
During that Cuba trip, Gamache told a friend that he vandalized Jamieson's car because of the suspected affair, court records say. That witness passed the information along to police, who charged Gamache with criminal mischief, a third-degree felony.
Meanwhile, Gamache fell behind in alimony, and in July, part of his disability payments from Social Security was diverted to De Andrade, court records show.
He was scheduled to be in court for both cases next week.
There was a pre-trial hearing in the criminal case, scheduled for trial in November, and a mediation session scheduled for the pending divorce.
Knowing of some of his troubles, some at the marina and his neighborhood speculate that Gamache was trying to escape, possibly going back to Cuba.
"There are many rumors about what happened, but no one knows for certain what happened," Ropp said.
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1934 - 2008 (73 years)
