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From Fighter To Felon, Still A Wanted Man

Abner Aust is a decorated 30-year veteran who flew fighter jets in two wars. The Air Force wants him to speak at a pilots reunion in May, but Aust culd be back in state prison by then.

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By BILLY TOWNSEND, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 16, 2007

LAKELAND - Collectors advertise images from Col. Abner Aust on the Internet - $35 for a picture of him standing on a P-51 Mustang during World War II, $100 for an autographed letter.

'I hear I'm one of the most sought-after,' the 86-year-old retired colonel says, grinning.

The Air Force considers Aust the only ace from his World War II fighter group and one of only 1,142 in U.S. history. The bookends of his three-decade career were shooting down Zeros over Tokyo as a young fighter jock and commanding the 31st Tactical Fighter Wing in Vietnam.

Aust is, in the words of Air Force Lt. Col. Bruce R. Cox, 'a heroic and legendary American.' Cox hopes Aust will be guest of honor at a fighter-pilot reunion in May.

But that may present a problem.

Aust is also a felon. He has been convicted of solicitation of arson and solicitation of murder. In both cases, police say he was lashing out at his ex-wife, who was still living in a Polk County house he built. He was in state prison for the first crime when he committed the second. He served his time, but may go back to prison for 15 years if it is determined the second attempt violated his probation. A hearing is set Monday.

In addition, Aust has been arrested in Polk County at least four other times on unrelated charges. He wasn't convicted, but local authorities saw him as a general pain in the neck.

'Abner Aust simply cannot follow society's rules,' Polk State Attorney Jerry Hill said. 'He has gone out of his way to run into the system, and it's continued into old age.'

Aust and some of his supporters say he's paying now for those years of aggravating authorities. They say the retired fighter ace should be allowed to live out his days in freedom and honor.

'I'm not a threat to anybody,' Aust insists.

For now, Aust is the oldest inmate in the Polk County jail. You can download his mug shot there for free.

They Call Him Colonel

Aust is tiny, standing 5-foot-3.

Nearby inmates towered over him during a recent interview over a visitation phone at the Polk County jail in Frostproof. Looking at him through the Plexiglas, you wonder whether this little old man can cope behind bars.

Don't, he says.

'I feel fine. I keep myself in good condition,' Aust said. 'I walk 2 miles around the dorm each day. I do 540 push-ups each day. I do leg lifts.'

He claims to have set a record for the most push-ups ever done at one time in the prison yard at Apalachee Correctional Institution in the Panhandle.

Other than some difficulty hearing and arthritis in his left hip and right big toe, Aust shows little sign of wear. His hair is close-cropped and neatly trimmed, just as it was in the black-and-white photos of his past. He laughs often and seems to remember everything, especially friends and grievances.

The other inmates don't bother him. 'Sometimes, if they find out about my history, they call me colonel.'

Aust recorded his military history in his own words. In an undated, typewritten account, he said he'd always wanted to be a fighter pilot and started flying in his second year of college, earning a civilian's pilot's license in 1942.

He entered a military flying program and was sent to the Far East near the end of World War II. He flew his most important combat missions from the captured island of Iwo Jima.

'Fighting was still going on when we landed, so dead Japanese men were scattered all over our parking area,' Aust wrote.

He secured his ace status on two of the 14 missions he flew from Iwo Jima to Japan, destroying five Japanese aircraft and damaging three others. The last two were Zeros shot down over Tokyo.

He recalled the last Zero vividly.

'When my bullets hit the engine and the cockpit area, I saw him throw up his hands. He flew into the ground and blew up.'

House Of Conflict

Aust did not fly in the Korean War. He moved around often during that time, according to his account, helping support the Berlin airlift, flying the experimental aircraft that became the F-101 and F-104, and even working with the Danish Air Force.

He made colonel in 1963, gaining command of the 31st Tactical Fighter Wing in Vietnam five years later. During Aust's nine months in command, the wing provided forward air control, a mission that involves observation and placement of ground forces. Aust, then 47, said he often flew early in the morning then spent the day running the wing.

Aust retired in 1972 after 30 years of active duty. He blames personality conflicts with superior officers for his decision to leave. In his career, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star and Legion of Merit, among other honors.

Shortly before retiring, Aust was sent to the Pentagon as a staff officer and planner. It was there he met Brenda, a secretary much younger than he was. She would become his second wife, the woman whose house he tried to burn down.

Abner and Brenda Aust were married from 1972 to 1986. It ended badly.

In the complicated legal fallout of the divorce, Brenda Aust got the 3,900-square-foot home Aust had built on the shores of Lake Garfield, east of Bartow. She still owns the house, which is secluded behind an orange grove.

'I just hate to see her living in my house down there,' Aust told a 1999 visitor to his Polk City home - a visitor who turned out to be a confidential informant on a sheriff's office sting operation.

Aust had a proposition for the man: Torch the Lake Garfield house, and Aust would pay $10,000 in cash and a Peterbilt dump truck.

'It really, it really, if she went up with it, it wouldn't bother me at all,' Aust told the man at one point, according to the transcript of the sting.

The informant was wearing a recording device. Soon after, Aust was wearing a prison uniform.

In 2000, he pleaded no contest to a solicitation of arson charge and received 23 months in prison. A murder solicitation charge was dropped.

Brenda Aust stayed on her ex-husband's mind, police say. In 2001, he and a fellow inmate began to talk about killing her. The inmate quickly turned on Aust and told investigators about the plans. At first, it was to be arson, then Aust changed his mind. He decided he wanted Brenda dead and his house intact.

He talked about hiring the inmate's brother to poison her, court records show. Aust was arrested April 5, 2002, on a solicitation of murder charge. He was tried and convicted in Wakulla County in early 2003. He was sentenced to six additional years in prison.

Brenda Aust did not return numerous phone messages for this story.

He Says They're Out To Get Him

As his sentence, shortened by gain time, neared its end this year, Aust was sent back to the Polk County jail, where he remains. His second solicitation conviction violated the probation he received for his first conviction in 2000, his probation officer says.

'If the defendant is allowed to be on the street, his odds of finding someone to actually carry out the murder may be far greater than if he is locked up in prison where he does not have access to the funds to finance it,' wrote the officer, J.P Jones.

Aust's supporters say that's not true. They point out that Brenda Aust wasn't harmed and her house wasn't damaged. They don't dispute Aust's crimes or his sentences, but they call them the products of an irrational old man angered by divorce.

Aust says investigators and prosecutors are out to get him and he blames his attorneys. He said he doesn't think he deserved prison.

Asked during a jailhouse interview last week whether he wanted the house burned or his ex-wife dead, Aust never answered yes or no. Instead, he suggested the informant had bad blood of his own toward Brenda Aust.

'It wasn't my house,' Aust said, so he didn't try to stop the man. He dismisses the second conviction as the work of a career criminal who set him up and another incompetent lawyer who allowed him to be convicted.

Should his ex-wife fear him now? Aust said no.

'I'm not mad at her.'

Tire Piles And Theft Rings

To authorities in Polk County, the schemes against his wife were part of a pattern for Aust.

Aust settled in Polk City after leaving the Air Force and began to deal in heavy equipment. By the late 1980s, in the middle of the Green Swamp, he was collecting used rubber tires he meant one day to recycle.

Aust accumulated more than 4.5 million tires in a stack that spread across 25 acres and stood 15 feet high in some places. It was a mosquito palace that drew the ire of state and local government officials and environmentalists. They feared it might catch fire and burn, polluting both the air and the groundwater in the Green Swamp.

The state won control of the pile in court in 1989 and paid $1.8 million for a Polk County cleanup plan that finally removed the rubber.

Aust's take on this? The government was wrong. 'You can't take people's property without compensation,' he said.

In the middle of the tire dispute, state and federal agents arrested Aust and linked him to a heavy equipment theft ring in Central Florida. He was charged with dealing in stolen property, specifically a truck trailer and pressure washer. The charges were dropped several months later.

Aust was arrested at least three other times between 1985 and 1998, on charges including dealing in stolen property and trespassing. None led to convictions.

'In every one of these deals, I've been set up,' Aust said.

Aust speculates that the state is coming down on him in the probation violation case because he avoided conviction in the 1980s and 90s.

Hill, who was state attorney in all of those cases, dismisses that. 'It's just another case. I don't dream about Abner Aust.'

Guest Of Honor?

Lt. Col. Bruce Cox is deputy commander of a squadron of F-16 Falcon fighter planes. In World War II, the squadron was part of the 506th fighter group, as was Aust's squadron. Aust is the only fighter ace to emerge from the 506th, Cox says.

He wants Aust to serve as guest of honor at a reunion Cox is organizing for the pioneering pilots in May.

Cox knows generally about Aust's legal problems, but the invitation stands. He said, 'While I have not yet met the man, it is my gut feeling that he deserves patriotic support from all those around him.'

Aust's friends don't dispute that he can be a difficult man.

'He likes to push and push,' said Janie Nicholson. She and her husband are longtime Aust friends. 'I think he was used to command,' Nicholson added.

Aust disagreed. He said he's easy to get along with, mostly because he leaves people alone. He cites his prison experience as an example. 'I don't associate with many people,' he said. 'I don't even tell people I was a colonel in the Air Force.'

At the time of his arrest and confinement in 1999, Aust said he became a far more religious man and an avid Bible reader. 'I'm on the 16th time of reading it now,' he said. 'I do like talking with God.'

Asked about atonement, Aust said, 'I've asked God to forgive me for all those things.'

But it's not clear what he seeks forgiveness for. Aust doesn't specifically admit to doing anything wrong. He denies that he violated probation and maintains he has been railroaded all these years.

And Aust has no time for anyone's sympathy over his age. He said state corrections officials offered to move him to a facility that houses elderly inmates. He refused.

'I don't associate with old people,' Aust said. 'Age is a state of mind. I won't ever be old.'

He's not asking for mercy in the upcoming hearing. He's demanding justice.

And the state sounds more than willing to deliver its version of it.

'He's a dangerous person,' Hill said, made even more so by his willingness 'to do all his dirty work by proxy.'

Asked about Aust's age and military history, Hill said: 'If he gets consideration, it won't be from this office.'

One has the sense that might be fine with Aust. In 15 years, he'd walk out of prison at 101, still a fighter ace.

Said Aust, 'I've got the patience of Job. I'm going to outlive all of them.'

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at (863) 284-1409 or wtownsend@tampatrib.com.

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