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DALLAS — A former aide to House Speaker Jim Wright made a substantial profit by selling his house to a businessman who had benefited from Wright’s work on behalf of a new Ft. Worth airport, a Dallas newspaper reported Sunday.

John P. Mack, who resigned last week as an aide to Wright, sold the house in May, 1987, for $13,000 above market value to Rex Ball, chairman of HTB Inc. of Oklahoma City, which was working on an airport project in Ft. Worth backed by Wright, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Deed records obtained by the newspaper showed that Ball paid Mack and his wife, Kim, $170,000 in cash for the house in Dumfries, Va. The same records showed that Ball sold the house six months later for $153,000–a $17,000 loss–and that a Virginia property appraiser valued the house at $156,000.

Bought Home for $259,000

Fifteen days after selling the Dumfries house, Mack and his wife purchased a new home in Annandale, Va., for $259,000 with a $200,000 mortgage.

The transaction came after Mack had asked House Appropriations Committee members in 1987 to guarantee $25 million in federal funding for Alliance Airport, which is being built in Ft. Worth by H. Ross Perot Jr., son of the billionaire founder of Electronic Data Systems.

Perot said Ball’s company handled some review work for the architectural plans at Alliance Airport, which is owned by the city of Ft. Worth and built on land donated by the Perot family. The Perot family hopes the airport will attract industries to build on nearby Perot-owned land.

The airport has received at least $31 million in federal funds for construction with the assistance of Wright, who is from Ft. Worth.

Refused to Pay Bill

The Morning News said Alliance Airport officials submitted a $60,000 bill in May, 1988, for work done by HTB, but Ft. Worth and Federal Aviation Administration officials refused to pay the bill because much of the work involved private property owned by the Perots.

City officials eventually authorized a $16,466 payment out of federal funds to the Oklahoma City firm.

A spokesman for Wright, who was accused by the House Ethics Committee of more than 60 violations of House ethics rules, said the Speaker had no knowledge of the transactions between Ball and Mack, who resigned from Wright’s office in the wake of renewed publicity over a conviction on a 1973 assault charge.

In the second violent crime in this country connected with the ATF’s failed Fast and Furious program, two Arizona undercover police officers were allegedly assaulted last year when they attempted to stop two men in a stolen vehicle with two of the program’s weapons in a confrontation south of Phoenix.

The officers, members of an elite Arizona Department of Public Safety law enforcement unit, said the driver rammed their cars and threatened them with the firearms, and then fled into the Arizona desert. The driver was caught and arrested, and two firearms –- a Beretta pistol and AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifle — were found in the stolen Ford truck, the police said.

The suspect, Angel Hernandez-Diaz, 48, believed to be a Mexican national, was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, driving the stolen vehicle and illegal possession of the weapons. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial in Pinal County, Ariz., next month.

Also arrested in the incident was the passenger, Rosario Zavala, 30, of Mexico, who was charged with possession of narcotics and the stolen vehicle.

The encounter came five months after the Fast and Furious program began, in which ATF agents allowed the illegal purchase of weapons to try to track the firearms to Mexican drug cartels. And it occurred nine months before the fatal slaying in December of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, killed in a separate assault in which two Fast and Furious firearms were discovered at the scene south of Tucson.

Sources said this is the first case so far of Fast and Furious weapons found at the scene of another violent crime other than Terry’s. Officials at ATF headquarters and the Justice Department are sifting through records to see whether there are more. About 2,000 weapons were allowed to be illegally purchased in the Phoenix area, and the vast majority were lost track of by ATF agents.

“There is bound to be a lot of them,” said one source close to case.

The new incident outside Phoenix, in the suburb of Maricopa, is the crime that the Justice Department alluded to last week in a report to congressional investigators reviewing Fast and Furious. They did not, however, provide any details. The Justice Department originally told Congress there were 11 sites in the U.S. with Fast and Furious guns, but last week revised the number to two identified so far.

Information about the crime surfaced Thursday after officials at the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives at Washington headquarters contacted Arizona law enforcement officials, and they agreed to discuss it.

The weapons found in the vehicle were the 9-millimeter Beretta, hidden under the front console, and the AK-47 in the back seat. Authorities in Arizona said they were told both weapons were illegally purchased under the Fast and Furious program that began in November 2009. Also in the truck were four boxes of ammunition for the AK-47, a box of 23 9-mm bullets for the Beretta, and four cases of Bud Light beer.

According to police reports, indictments and Officer Carrick Cook, the truck was stopped on the night of March 4, 2010, when the undercover unit realized the vehicle was stolen. Rather than exit, the driver revved the car and repeatedly rammed the two unmarked police vehicles.

Inside the truck, the driver removed the Beretta from his waistband, flashed it at the officers, and then bolted from the truck. He then turned in a crouched position as though he was pointing another weapon. At that point, Officer Mike Ruiz fired several times because “he felt his life was in danger and that of the other officer.”

Ruiz missed, and Hernandez-Diaz surrendered.

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A WOMAN’S body has been found chained by the neck and tied underwater with two concrete dumbbells at a popular fishing pier in Thailand.

The horror discovery was made after stunned locals spotted the corpse floating close to shore.

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The body was found on Friday near Ban Tha Yai pier in Phang Nga’s Mueang district.

Police Lieutenant Pheerawit Chaichanyut of Khok Kloi Police Station said officers rushed to the scene with Kusoltham Foundation rescue workers after receiving an emergency call.

The victim – whose identity, address, and nationality are still unknown – was wearing grey shorts and a brown round-neck T-shirt.

Police believe she had been dead for around two days before being found in the murky waters.

A heavy chain had been wrapped tightly around her neck and secured to two concrete dumbbells in what investigators believe was a calculated attempt to keep the body hidden on the seabed.

But despite the grim effort, currents carried her to the surface and she drifted close to land.

“This is a serious case, and we are treating it as a possible murder,” Pol. Lt. Pheerawit said.

“The way the body was weighted down points towards an attempt to conceal it.”

The body has been sent for a full autopsy to determine the cause of death and whether the woman was alive before entering the water.

Local leaders and neighbouring districts have been told to check missing persons reports for anyone matching her description.

Cops will meanwhile scour CCTV from the pier and surrounding waterways for suspicious movements in the days before the grim find.

Anyone with information – particularly those who may have noticed unusual activity near Ban Tha Yai pier – is urged to contact police immediately.

The case echoes a similar discovery in February when a fisherman in Rayong found a woman’s decomposed body inside a locked suitcase weighted with two 10kg dumbbells.

Her identity also remains unknown.

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