Return to Media Excerpts Archive
Success is Elementary for Real-Life Detective
By Gregg Patton - Sun Staff Writer
Private Investigator Logan Clarke's life reads like a screenplay, but his exploits are true and Hollywood has called on more than one occasion.
Logan Clarke's life sounds made up. Born into a show business family. Running bars in Saigon and Manila. Working for the CIA. Building a world-renowned detective agency. A glamorous agency, to boot. Listening to the founder's stories, you might think that Clarke International Investigations (CII), based in Lake Arrowhead, won't take a case unless it involves phony passports, legions of armed bad guys, late-night escapes and life-endangering risks. Not true, but, still it seems inevitable that Clarke's screenplay life and Hollywood would find each other.
In 1997, at the same time that Clarke, 51, was named investigator of the year by the World Investigators Network, he was deal-making in the film industry. "Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt" is a made-for-TV movie based on one of his cases. Also, Clarke says, he has been asked to be technical advisor on a movie, based in the Middle East, for Mike Medavoy's Phoenix Pictures. And for good measure, to really blur the lines between real-life and celluloid, Clarke and his Australian partner, Keith Schafferius, were the subject of a recently completed documentary, "Missing: Presumed Alive". A team of Australian filmmakers spent two-and-a-half years following CII agents on a wild, continent-hopping child-stealing case involving a Swedish father and a Philipino mother.
Actually, Clarke and show business already had a history. As far back as 1981, he signed on as a script-fixing advisor for the long-running TV show "Simon and Simon". But "Simon" was fiction. Fact also earned him notoriety. A previous documentary about his work was seen at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991. There is a chapter on him in Graham Nown's book "Watching the Detectives." His high-profile rescues of abducted children and his expertise in international cases have gained attention with Larry King and Maury Povich. Magazines from Newsweek to the American Airlines in-flight publication have quoted and featured him.
Now, after 25 years of a life filled with intrigue, danger, and show business, Clarke would like to narrow it down. "Mostly I want to stop dodging bullets, looking over my shoulder, and feeling like I'm in the French Underground," says Clarke, a genial man whose ruddy good looks and strong, animated voice once landed him a few minor acting gigs. "I'd like to do more technical advising, make movies from some of my cases and spend more time with my family." His family- wife Dona Davis-Clarke (also a licensed private investigator) and 14-year-old daughter Darnell- will be appreciative.
Heck, Clarke shouldn't need any more excitement. His daughter was named for his mother, Dorothy Darnell, a singer, and his aunt, Linda Darnell, leading actress of the 1940s and 50s. Clarke traveled with them as a kid, even joining them in the United Services Organization (USO) to do shows as an emcee in Vietnam for American servicemen in the late 1960's. Clarke stayed in Asia, falling in with a group of expatriates and soldiers of fortune. He ran a bar in Saigon before South Vietname fell in 1975. Then he opened up another in Manila, the Philipines. His real work was for Air America, the notorious cover company of the CIA. His covert operations mostly involved aiding Vietnamese refugees.
Back in California in 1978, Clarke figured he had limited options. "How do you fill out an application when you've been a soldier of fortune and worked for Air America?" he says. His first job was with a Long Beach detective who specialized in recovering abducted children. He also did a lot of networking in the field, and still does. A member of numerous investigators' associations, he presides over the Inland Empire Chapter of the California Association of Licensed Investigators. Indeed, helping run a convention for detectives 17 years ago turned out to be his first show business break. Afterwards, a producer for a struggling TV pilot asked Clarke to look at a script. "I marked it up and wrote all over it," he says. "I came from a show business background, so I knew what they need and how to make it realistic, too." When "Simon and Simon" won a network spot, Clarke signed on.
In Hollywood, he met Dona Davis, a choreographer/dancer whose eclectic resume included stints on TV's "hullabaloo" and "Shindig," as well as with George Balanchine's New York City Ballet. They married in 1985 and she became an instrumental part of CII, which they formed in 1986. They have been in Lake Arrowhead since 1989.
Clarke's vision of CII was to fill a void in international investigatiing. "First, it's hard to find someone who'll go to some of these countries," says Clarke. "Then it's hard to find people you can trust, who are doing the work you pay for." Using former expatial friends and contacts from his international travels, he built a global agency. He and his "Task Force" of 26 agents have worked abduction and fraud cases in every corenr of the world, from Costa Rica to Lithuania to Zimbabwe. "I'm known as the guy who will go anywhere," he says. he doesn't go cheaply. Domestic cases open at $1500. Most international cases start at $10,000 and can rise dramtically.
Three years ago, Clarke was hired by a German judge to retrieve his 4-year-old niece. She had been kidnapped by her Sudanese father and taken to a remote Bedouin village. Clarke gathered his team, put together an elaborate ruse, feigned the arrest of half of the villagers and eventually spirited the girl out of the country through the German embassy. it cost the judge $85,000. No one was hurt, but Clarke says he talked and snuck his way around knives and automatic weapons every step of the way.
Sometimes they aren't so lucky. After a case in Yemen, Clarke says he urged a local man who had helped them rescue a child to leave the country with his team. The man stayed behind and was murdered, Clarke says.
Earlier this year, he rescued a 17-year-old girl who had been kidnapped by three bikers and taken from Florida to Philadelphia. "Baddest looking bunch of guys you ever want to see," says Clarke, who, understandably, is growing weary of putting himself in harm's way. He once had a partner in long Beach who got shot and stabbed to death.
These days, he's trying to cut down on the action hero stuff. Besides the movie work, he donates time to local schools, giving seminars to parents and kids on how to avoid abductions. But he doesn't see himself giving up field work completely. "Maybe three big cases a year for Dona and I," he says. And not just for movie ideas. "It's the adrenaline rush," he says. "It's the best."