John Paul Sr. (racing driver)
After his racing career he served a fifteen-year prison sentence for a variety of crimes including drug trafficking and shooting a Federal witness.
[3][4] Paul started club-level sportscar road racing in the late 1960s, winning the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Northeast Regional Championship in 1968.
He appeared at 1978 24 Hours of Le Mans for the Dick Barbour Racing team, taking a class win in IMSA GTX class – partnered by fellow American, Dick Barbour, and English driver, Brian Redman – in his first attempt at the French classic.
He competed mainly in his specially modified Porsche 935s prepared by his own team, JLP Racing, operating out of Lawrenceville, Georgia.
[14] Chalice Alford Barnett, then 32, wed professional race car driver John Paul Sr. on May 26, 1980, at Lime Rock Park in Salisbury, Connecticut.
She went to Palm Beach, Florida at the end of 1980, leaving John behind in Roswell, Georgia, and the two split up within a year.
John paid her a visit in Atlanta and persuaded her to accompany him on a quick second honeymoon to Key West, Florida, before her filming.
In 1982, when John Paul could be reached in Atlanta by phone, he claimed that he had left Chalice in Key West.
In Atlanta, Georgia, she initially filed for divorce, then ten days later she withdrew it and re-filed for alimony.
Chalice Paul was last seen alive boarding a plane to go to Florida from Atlanta, Georgia and she remains missing.
On April 19, 1983, an individual named Stephen Carson was shot in the chest, abdomen and leg in Crescent Beach, Florida.
He testified that Paul Sr. had approached him, ordered him into the trunk of his car, and shot at him five times when he fled rather than comply.
[2][16] Paul was apprehended by Swiss authorities in January 1985, served a six-month sentence in Switzerland for using a false passport, and was extradited back to the United States in March 1986.
On March 10, 1987, Paul and another inmate unsuccessfully attempted to escape from prison by spraying a mixture of hot sauce and Pine Sol in a guard's face, then scaling a 12-foot fence.
[22] Shortly following release from prison in 1999, Paul met an office manager named Colleen Wood.
She would shortly leave her job, sell her condominium and move in with Paul on his 55-foot schooner to embark on a planned five-year around-the-world boating trip.
[23] Paul reportedly departed from the Fort Lauderdale area during the summer of 2001 on his boat and disappeared, likely in violation of his parole.
But, then "the old man showed up with his bride-to-be... (and) started screaming and yelling and chewed the kid up and down and sideways for something that had happened earlier.
After receiving information that John was initially in Montego Bay, Jamaica, detectives tried to question him, but he disappeared.
Shortly afterward, Paul Sr. was spotted by a passerby in the Fiji Islands who recognized him from an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
Having sailed back to Europe, he allegedly sold his sailboat, Diamond Girl, in 2011, via a magazine classified advertisement in Italy.
