Gary Betzner’s Wife Is A Key Part Of His Story In The Invisible Pilot

HBO’s The Invisible Pilot follows the stranger-than-fiction story of Gary Betzner, a drug-smuggling pilot who faked his own suicide on Sept. 19, 1977 to escape from a prison sentence. Alongside his second wife Sally, he concocted an elaborate ruse to go on the lam. They took a hypnosis class for weeks, during which Betzner would put Sally under and tell her he jumped from a bridge in their hometown of Hazen, Arkansas. Sally’s hypnosis would activate to the sound of shoes hitting water, and she would start sobbing, truly believing he had died. This plan worked, and Betzner went on the run with the promise of contacting Sally every month by phone booth. “Being in love with a smuggler, it gets complicated,” Sally says in the series.

But as Sally reveals in the series, she’s no longer Gary Betzner’s wife. At first, they tried to make the relationship work. With their kids Travis and Sara Lee in tow, the couple briefly reunited in Hawaii, and then in Coconut Grove, Florida, where Betzner “lived like Scarface.” (His first wife, Claudia, and eldest daughter, Polly, were not included, which later caused a major rift when they found out he was alive.) But Sally and Betzner’s relationship started to fall apart around 1982, when Sally came to live with Betzner in Florida and found out he was already living with another woman and was keen for them to start a polyamorous relationship. Betzner and the woman got the master suite, while Sally and the kids were relegated to the small bedrooms.

From there, Sally said that Betzner became increasingly full of himself. While dodging the law under a fake name — Lucas Harmony — Betzner began running drugs for Pablo Escobar’s cartel. At the height of his fame, he had over five different ID cards, and he was smuggling up to 400 lbs. of cocaine. He said he had a “friendly bond” with Escobar, and that Escobar knew all about Sally and his children. Betzner would fly all over the world while spending money lavishly and using substances heavily. Sally, meanwhile, was always at home taking care of their kids. She left him by 1983. “He lived a life that he wanted to. A Fast and Furious of the ‘80s,” she said. “And I had had enough.” She said he’s still the love of her life to this day, but he was “too crazy, even for me ... he’s got seven personalities.”

Betzner was eventually arrested on Nov. 13, 1984 and was sentenced to 27 years and two months in federal prison for the importation of cocaine. Today, Betzner lives with his fifth wife in Bentonville, Arkansas. As Sally reveals in the series finale, by the time they were visiting Betzner in prison in 1987, he had already remarried to a woman named Cynthia and had a son named William. At some point he had a fourth wife, who is never discussed in the series. His fifth and current wife is named Julie, and they live in what appears to be her mother’s basement. He said that a typical night in involves the two of them just sitting around while “Julie smokes cigarettes and I smoke weed.” He admits the last ten years have been pretty hard, and he struggles with his health and making a living selling drugs.

It appears that Sally still lives in Arkansas as well, while Travis and Sara Lee said they are still working through the trauma that resulted from Betzner’s wild lifestyle and lies. “You now, there’s so many stories about crazy smugglers. But they never talk about the women in the family,” Sally says near the end of the series. “They never talk about those that were left behind who really carried the weight.”