Justice Then, Justice Now
This podcast explores the American criminal justice system from all angles, including perspectives from: law enforcement, prosecution, inmates, fugitives and everything in between.
Justice Then, Justice Now
Ep 18: Billy Dekle - Navigating Danger and Redemption
Billy Dekle, famously known as Gringo Billy, takes us on an exhilarating and heart-wrenching ride through his life, from a humble farm boy to an infamous drug smuggler and now an author. In this episode, Billy reveals his journey, recounting his early years in Union County, his passionate pursuit of flying, and the moral dilemmas he faced when he first encountered the world of airborne smuggling. He shares not only his thrilling adventures but also the dangerous reality of the trade, including run-ins with severe weather, mechanical failures, and tense moments of low visibility.
Billy's captivating anecdotes transport us to the perilous 1970s, where he navigated the treacherous logistics of smuggling, encountered notorious figures like Fabio Ochoa and Carlos Lehder, and faced the inevitable law enforcement scrutiny. He doesn't shy away from discussing the complex legal battles that followed, detailing strategic maneuvers that led to reduced sentences and his eventual clemency release. His narrative also explores the emotional and ethical struggles of living as a fugitive and the personal toll of such a high-risk lifestyle.
In a poignant conclusion, Billy opens up about family, the joys of grand-parenting, and his aspirations for the future. Sharing stories about his grandchildren and reflecting on the happiness they bring, he offers a glimpse into the more personal side of his life. Through continuous learning and storytelling, Billy finds a path to redemption, providing a powerful reminder of the resilience and strength it takes to rebuild one's life. Join us for a remarkable episode that blends thrilling escapades with heartfelt reflections, showcasing the man behind the moniker Gringo Billy.
Produced by: Citrustream, LLC
We have another session of Justice, then Justice Now, okay, and this is going to be a very interesting one. It's going to be a time capsule, but it's a very interesting person. Billy Deckley's here in studio today to talk to us about his life back with the drug smuggling days, his incarceration and his book. It's called Flying High with Gringo Billy. Okay, and it's available. You can buy this book on Amazon and through other outlets. He's going to talk about that. I enjoyed it. It's good reading for anybody interested in criminal justice, and tells it like it is here. We've talked prior to this in full disclosure about that, and we both came to an agreement that it would be very productive for the listeners to hear his life story on this. So I'm going to turn it over to Billy, known as Gringo Billy, and first the question I'd like you to answer for the viewers is how'd you get that name?
Speaker 2:how'd you get that name? Well, this is how it came about. On my very first trip to columbia, I went down uh I don't know if you know where value depart is went over rio hacha down to value depart uh, about 20, 30 miles south of value depart and landed in a cow pasture to pick up my first load and a fella comes out and he walks up to me you could tell he was the one barking out the orders, he was the heffy. He walks over to me and he pounds on his chest and he goes, coach ann. And so I looked and I pounded on mine back at him and I said Billy, he goes, gringo Billy. And then he puts in avion loco.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Speaking of that, before we start on how you got started in that, give us a background of where you're from and how you got involved in this, and we've chatted about this, but I think it's really, really interesting how this came about.
Speaker 2:Well, as a kid, up until I was 13 years old, I lived on a farm in Union County on New River and Dad he worked for the phone company company and he got a big promotion to go to Lake City and be the plant manager. So he had to live there and to me that was like going to New York City. I didn't want to go, but when I got there I liked it. It was a lot of things to do there, a lot more girls in school and what have you. And uh, that's how I wound up in lake city and what happened? I started learning.
Speaker 2:My cousin came up to see us and he's telling me about he's flying, he's, he's going to miami-dade junior college and burnside ought. Uh, he's from miami and I that's the first time I realized that. Just I said I thought you had to have a college education or be in the service or something like that. To fly an airplane. You have to be, you know, super smart. And he's telling me, no, he says just got to be 16 years old and find a flight instructor and have some money. It's got to be 16 years old and find a flight instructor and have some money.
Speaker 2:And so I was going to be a cowboy up until then and he's telling me all about flying. In fact he didn't come up. I went down to Miami and he took me out for a flight at night and I was sold. And so when I get back to home I tell Daddy I said he wasn't real big on the cowboy deal. I told him I said, look, I've changed my mind. I want to be a pilot. And that really made him happy. He gets on the phone, finds the flight instructor and I go down and people nowadays taking flying lessons will think I paid $9 an hour for a Cessna 150.
Speaker 1:What year was this? This is 1966.
Speaker 2:Okay $13 an hour, with the instructor getting taught you know. And so I did that and I got my flight instructor rating, I got my commercial license, I got my instrument rating, I got my multi-engine rating and all that, and I took over the Lake City Airport as the airport manager and all the facilities there and I had a Part 135 air taxi certificate. How old were you when this was happening? I was 16 whenever I started. I had a Part 135 air taxi certificate.
Speaker 1:How old were you when this was happening?
Speaker 2:I was 16 whenever I started and whenever I took over the airport I was in my early 20s, okay, and this must have been in 1974, 75., there was a fellow there that had a Beach 18, and he was suspected of smuggling. I'd known the fellow for quite a while and I knew, you know, when the airborne smuggling started I knew all the area pilots and then you could tell who was doing and who wasn't, and I always felt like you know, they were good people before and just because they were doing that I didn't, they didn't change anything with me. You know, going down and getting the marijuana and coming back and, um, this fella's beach 18, his pilot, it. It crashed down in Columbia so he lost his airplane.
Speaker 2:And a fellow with the customs and FBI and a lot of people out of Jacksonville came to the airport and they started telling me about this fellow and what a bad guy he was. Well, I never thought he was that bad of a guy, fella, and what a bad guy he was. Well, I never thought he was that bad of a guy and what a good service I'd be doing for the country and everybody and they'd even pay me if I set him up help them because he had lost his airplane. I had an aztec, a twin aztec, and they wanted me to offer him my services and my airplane and get him to mark a place on the map. I'm going to wear a wire and all this stuff and I'm thinking the whole time I'm not going to do this, but I don't tell them that I said, look, I've got to talk to my wife about this, I've got to think about this and I'll let you know.
Speaker 2:And I warned the guy the next day and told him. I said, look, whatever, I don't know what you're doing, don't care what you're doing, but this is what they say you're doing and if you are, you probably need to quit because they're getting ready to bust you. And he said, well, thanks and all that. And he says if you do ever want to do that, let me know.
Speaker 1:So you had two offers at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one set the guy up and then the guy that I was supposed to set up he's offering me hey, you want to try this? And I'm thinking you know well, if I do, probably not with you. And things rocked on. Dad's company went bankrupt. I wasn't making enough money at the airport. I'm flying my butt off and I'm paying insurance companies and airplane payments and risking my life because I'm flying overloaded, because you're having to compete with airlines. They'll call you hey, well, I've got six people who need to go somewhere. Can you compete with the airline on this? You know, for six tickets, and so I've got to get a little under them. And that's overloading the airplane, which is not safe. If you lose an engine, you know the airplane handled it all right on both engines, but if you have a malfunction, you're going down. A malfunction, you're going down.
Speaker 2:And after everything, I was in such bad financial shape that we were turning the piggy bank upside down to go to grocery store and I said I said to myself, I'm a pilot, I know these people that are doing this. They're making money, all of them driving Lincolns and things like that real nice cars. And we're using my mother-in-law's old car. She's loaned it to us. So I go to Tom and tell him. I said, look, you know what we talked about before. He says, yeah. I said, well, I'm ready, I need to make some money. And I felt like to me I had never smoked no pot, never, you know, done any of that, and I actually felt like I was doing something wrong. But to me it was the least wrong thing I could do to get my butt out of the financial jam. I was in jam, I was in, so I went ahead. I went to tom and I made my first first trip was tried in a dc7, a four-engine dc7. That's the only first one I'd ever been inside of so what was your first trip?
Speaker 2:like, obviously you were nervous because, well, the first attempt was in the dc7 and I told tom, I said I don't think the biggest thing I'd flew up to then was like an aero commander, a queen air or something like that. And this dc7 is four engines, 3 700 horsepower an engine. And I said tom, do you think I can fly this? He says you fly it like any airplane you've flown before, from the front seat up. He said all that out there and all that behind you. He said it's coming right along. He says you.
Speaker 2:He says you can do it with the type experience you got, you'll have no problem so he knew how to crank it up, he knew how to change the fuel and all that and set the engines. And here we go, almost, uh, we go all the way down the runway before we take off, get up, climb out and I'm trying to figure out how to tune in. Uh, bimini, on the adf get, because all this equipment, avionics are new. You know, they don't have them in the 5150s, like that, and it was out of the 50s. And so I'm trying to tune in Bimini, and Tom and the fellow sitting in the right seat, they're tapping on something, a gauge, and they're talking and they're tapping and I can tell something's up. And I said, tom, what's going on? And he says there's four gauges up there and it said all quantity gauges, three of them were full and one of them was empty, like on the number three engine. And he said it's the gauge. He said because if it wasn't a gauge she had already blew by now.
Speaker 2:And when he said, now that's when she blew. And oh, I'll tell you, when you blow a catastrophic engine failure, that big of an engine, it's like an earthquake in that airplane. It shook it and rocked it. And then, when she was finally winding down, we're going back and forth and we secured the engine. You know, turn off the fuel, close the cow flaps, trim it out for three-engine flight, and all that. And then, tom, he goes, unbuckling the seat belt and getting up and I'm thinking, does he have a parachute?
Speaker 1:in him anywhere. That's what I would have thought too, yeah.
Speaker 2:I said where are you going? And he says, well, I'm going to check the engine for damage and fire. That's the first time I thought of that. I said, oh my, yeah, go ahead. And then I'm picturing us a big roman candle going through there. He comes back, says everything's good, it's all good, and he says we got a decision to make. I said what's that? He says we can go on down on three engines and come back with a piece of a load, or we can go get the engine fixed. I said well, tom, no further than we've got it. I said could we fly on two engines? He said loaded two going on the same side. He said we're swimming. I said I think we probably ought to get this thing worked on. We came side. He says we're swimming.
Speaker 2:I said I think we probably ought to get this thing worked on, and and so we came back and I made a good landing. I mean, I got about an hour and something time in a dc7 without ever being checked out. So uh, next I got a friend of mine that I had confided with, a real good friend, telling him what I was doing and he was wanting to know, as soon as I get back. How'd it go? How'd it go? I told him. I said, man, we lost an engine.
Speaker 2:We're on hold, we ain't got no airplane. He says, well, tell them, I'll buy one. So I went from a four-engine airplane to a one-engine airplane, went and bought a Cessna 210, rigged it out with a bladder. This is my next attempt because they said when they put the bladder in, they said all right, it's going to gravity feed, down to the fuel selector and the engine-driven fuel pump is going to pick it up and take it to the engine. And you're good. So I'm almost a great inaugural.
Speaker 2:When the engine quits and so I turn it to the other uh thing, it fires back up and I said I can't be out of gas and I turn it back on. She quits again. I turn it back two or three times. Then I get up on my hands and knees, turn around backwards and look down in the bladder and and I see plenty of gas in there. So I said you know, the engine-driven pump's probably not doing what Charlie told me it'd do. So I turn around and come back and we put a fuel pump on it. It's what an inline fuel pump. So I'd pump the fuel up to the tank and then burn it from the tank down gravity feed all the way. And so I'm head down on this trip.
Speaker 2:This is a couple days later, after we'd put the pump on, and, uh, I get in a lot of weather. It's, it's bad weather, and we didn't have weather channel back then and things, and you couldn't call the flight service. Hey, I'm going to Columbia today. How is it down there, and all that? So what? I looked at Florida Times Union had a radar shot down in the right-hand corner of the front page every day, and as long as there wasn't a hurricane right there, I'm going. And so I could tell you know, with the radar shot, and as long as there wasn't a hurricane right there, I'm going. And so I could tell you know, with the radar shot. And I fought the weather all the way down there.
Speaker 2:And I landed and got my name, gringo Billy, and I was given to Coach Ann the heffy. I was supposed to give him a pistol. It had a cowboy belt, you know, and it must have been a 357. It was large caliber, smith and wesson. He takes the gun out, the pistol out of the belt, drops the belt on the ground, sticks the pistol in his pants, come over here, I walk over with him and he pulls it out and he starts target practice and it piles the cow manure where Holy cow it shoots away.
Speaker 1:Where was this in Columbia? Yeah, oh, geez.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this was down on this farm, down below Valle de Par in the valley Right.
Speaker 2:So it gets dark before I take off and there's a lot of lightning and all Valle de Par was. Whenever I went over Value Depart Airport it was almost flooded. But I'm coming back now. I load up and Coach Ann's trying to tell me to spend the night, which we don't have. I couldn't speak much Spanish then and still can't a little bit, and he couldn't speak any English, but I could tell he was telling me that I was crazy ivy on loco and all that. But I knew the people was waiting on me and I didn't want to get off playing. So I took off, heading back and, uh, going through the lightning actually was a help because you know that's a valley but it's a big valley. You've got Venezuela on the right and then Santa Madre or whatever Nevada's on the left, snow-capped mountains I thought that was sand on top of the mountain. I flew over to look at it.
Speaker 2:I said you know, that's not sand, that's, you know, old country boy, you know, and that was on my second trip, because I couldn't see him on my first trip. The second trip it was clear and I seen it's clear all the way down. I seen, uh, I said, well, there's some clouds, finally gonna get into a little weather. And I got there wasn't clouds, it was a snow-capped mountains. But back to. So I'm coming out of the valley heading home and the lightning lit up the mountains a lot so I could stay in the valley. And then whenever I got over Rio Hacha out in the Caribbean Sea, it cleared up for probably 100, 150 miles and I get back in a whole bunch of weather again and the airplane starts backfiring and it's raining so hard.
Speaker 2:I don't see how the windshields can stay in the plane. I'm bouncing all over the place. My instrument panel's blurred. You can't focus on the instrument panel and I found out what that is is you're getting so violent that it's just your eyeballs are bouncing up and down in the socket and it's distorting them, and that's why you it gets, everything gets blurry. And I found out one thing then that an airplane is a lot stronger than what you think it is, as long as you keep it right side up and at the right speed. It'll take a lot of punishment. I hadn't tore one up in the air yet and I went through a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you this, though so you were hooked up with the guy that you had originally been approached by the feds, and he gave you, let's say, an offer you couldn't refuse, right, okay, so how did I mean? Had you flown out of the country before?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'd been to the Bahamas and Nassau, All right so you had taken other trips?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I flew gamblers down there.
Speaker 2:I was several thousand hours at the time I started. Oh, okay, all right. I was several thousand hours at the time I started. Oh okay, All right.
Speaker 1:I'd been—. But this was your first time to Columbia right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So obviously you encountered the elements on flying and you just described well and that Were you nervous about going into— I mean, columbia wasn't as known as it is now, or was Now. It's Mexico, yeah, back then. So was there any apprehension like in your mind, like who's the big boss down there? Who am I working for? Or are you just strictly?
Speaker 2:dealing with the guy. You didn't deal with them at all. I'm going on what my partners told me to do up here and I was apprehensive and all that and concerned. But I knew, if I was going to do it, that that didn't help being concerned or apprehensive and all that. But I've told people before I said panic will kill you, but being concerned or a little scared.
Speaker 1:Keep you alert, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's your friend.
Speaker 1:So when you did this, obviously there was no money laundering laws or anything in the United States back in the mid-'70s. How did you get paid for doing this? What was the procedure for? Would you bring back money from Colombia or would you get paid here in the States? Paid?
Speaker 2:here in the States. Okay, In fact, on that first trip I made almost $10,000. Okay.
Speaker 1:Which was quite a amount of money in the 70s.
Speaker 2:That's probably— that's almost a year from where I was salary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's like probably over $100,000 today with the inflation.
Speaker 2:I was paying my bills and everything getting caught up and all I had to borrow $300 from my friend, mike that bought the airplane. To get me through to our next deal. I took my wife on a little vacation. She was working for the school system and so we bought a Buick Riviera, bought her a car down payment and she got it financed. I was off and running. I couldn't wait to do it again.
Speaker 2:But getting back to that first one, if anything was going to discourage me it would have been that one, because now I'm coming back, it's backfiring. I'm in all that weather and I'm thinking well, this is it. They're going to wonder what happened to me. It's going to, you know, it's going to be hard on my family and blah, blah, blah. And that I kept going, it kept backfiring and I kept going. And then my next thing after I passed and I'd often wondered about this when I was flying the gamblers is the smugglers at nighttime. How did they see the water on these dark nights? How did they know they're not too low or too high or whatever? And so I figured out how to do that.
Speaker 2:When I got to Freeport, I stayed off the coast heading towards West End, off the coast heading towards West End, and I used the lights of Freeport and along that road going to West End to judge my height above the water. And I'm going down, I'm getting lower, getting lower, getting lower and the airplane backfired real big and it flashed back off of the ocean, the water. You know. I got a flashback and so I said I'm a little too low with the reflecting back off the water like that. So I pulled the airplane up to like 50 more feet, set my altimeter at zero, set the trim tab a little nose up In case I relaxed it would go up instead of set it down.
Speaker 2:And when I got back to the place that I was supposed to land, which was a field, it was foggy, it was daylight, it took like 20-something hours, 24, 25 hours to round-trip that and I was fogged out. But you could look straight down. The fog wasn't that thick, you could look straight down and see the ground. So I knew our little airstrip reform was due south of Live Oak Airport. Our little airstrip reform was due south of Live Oak Airport and I looked over at I could see off of US-90, it goes east and west a microwave tower. I could see the top of that tower sticking out of the fog. So I knew where I was at. I got to that tower, I knew where I was at.
Speaker 2:I followed 90, flying, looking straight out the window, straight down, and I get to Live Oak Airport. I turn 100th to Deuce All and I'm looking straight down and I make that circuit probably 15 times. And I said I was saying to myself well, I don't really know how I'm going because you can't see forward. All I could see was down. If I fly over the strip, I don't really know how I'm going to get in. And when I did finally fly over and look down and see it, I said I just don't know what. I can't lose this, I cannot take my eyes off of this field. And I did basically a barrel roll, loop, a loop and barrel roll. I said I'm going into that field. If I crash they'll get the pot, if I break out under the.
Speaker 2:you know I'll land, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2:But I know I'm going to be on the ground somewhere real soon because I'm running out of fuel. So luckily the Lord was with me, I guess you could say, because I've. When I came around, I'd go down in fog. I can't see nothing, and whenever I finally do break out and see the ground, I'm off to the right of the run where I was going to land that we had made, and so the thing I had to do was my biggest concern then was making the left turn to get back on the strip, was sticking my wing in the ground, because I was that low whenever I broke out, I mean, it was a perfect loop and barrel roll. Just you know, or I wouldn't be here right now.
Speaker 2:And so I unloaded, everybody's happy and all that, and then a few days later I get my money and start paying on. I can't wait to do it again. And the next trip was a complete opposite of that trip, because there wasn't a cloud in the sky the whole way down or back and I got there early because of that and there was nobody there at the strip.
Speaker 1:The coach in and then wasn't there.
Speaker 2:There was cows all over the strip and I'm ready to get out.
Speaker 1:Right, you get to wonder what's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm ready to get out and stretch my legs and what have you. And so I see the cows. I said there's a bunch of cows here here and there's a clearing between the next bunch. I said if I come in right over them I think I can get stopped before I get to the next ones. Well, I hit the this one cow and, uh, I hit a. Perfectly. I hit him just right on the back because it just went. Boom, I just skipped right off of him and it broke his back, killed the cow. So they got him some hamburgers down there on that and hit a cow on the way down. Boom, I just skipped right off of him and it broke his back, killed the cow so they got him some hamburgers down there on that.
Speaker 2:You hit a cow on the way down Landing, yeah. And so when they loaded that airplane they had a machete and paper. I took the right yoke off so I could could fill the co-pilot side up. I'd stowed the rudder paddles fill the tunnel up there. Field set on the uh dash, had it, it's completely full. I'm sitting in there like this. I got my seat all the way up with marijuana inside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just completely encased it's completely I didn't have. I took for survival equipment, I took a one gallon of water and for a flotation I took a ski vest that you use in the lake and for a bathroom I had a gatorade jar to relieve myself.
Speaker 1:Sounds like an agent on surveillance. You know, we had a pee jar because we couldn't get out. We had Gatorades, power bars, all these things with us and we never knew where you'd end up. Because we had a suitcase in the trunk with about three days' worth of supplies, Because we had people. They'd move it to Houston or take it to New York and you went with them. But it got more sophisticated because we got handoffs. You know, on the I-10 corridor, there we went from sack office or rack office to each one. But I can imagine that. So you started bringing these in. You did you get to know the people that were loading down there? Were they the same people?
Speaker 2:yes, okay, I loaded three times down there and and then, uh, a fella has got. Uh, he wants me to go, he's got his. Uh, we bought a twin, an old beach twin, bonanza, and a fellow wanted to use a hanger that we had in Moultrie and we told him, we said, look, the hanger's hot. I said they had an old. This is at Spenceville. They had an old tower there and you could see a tripod up there pointed at our hanger. And it said they're on us and they'd come by. The police would come by every now and then and just stop and chat with us. And so we told the fellow that wanted to use the hangar hey, you can use it, but it's hot. We got out of there.
Speaker 2:He comes in there with a 401 and blows a tire and by the time he gets his tire fixed and all that. He says man, you're right, I was wanting to use the hanger to bladder the 401. And all of a sudden he says I got Quaaludes down in Managua, nicaragua, I need picking up. He said you want to go get them? I said sure, I didn't even know what a Quaalude was, it was an Aurora 714s.
Speaker 2:And I asked Charlie. I said what are these things anyway. He said it's like drinking a fifth of whiskey you take one of them, that's all they are. He says he's going to give us 100 grand to go down there and do that and my part would be $25,000. So I'm tickled to death. I've done doubled my money. And so he says, just fly down there and go right into Managua International. He says they'll take you right through customs and immigrations. They won't stamp your passport, nothing. You go to the motel there I think it was the Rio Camille Motel right off the airport perimeter. So I go there and sleep and they got the Quaaludes in their adjoining room in boxes and so the next day they load up all the Quaaludes. What year was this?
Speaker 1:What year was this? 78. So this is when the Sandinistas took over.
Speaker 2:Oh, you could hear this, daniel.
Speaker 1:Ortega, and that crew came into power.
Speaker 2:They were still fighting. You could hear the machine guns and the mortars and all that. There's a heavy military presence and all at the airport, which concerned me a little bit because my airplane's sitting on the ramp. And here we come in a Volkswagen van, it's loaded with boxes. We get to the gate and there's two guys there, military, with their guns and all their rifles and all that. And I'm saying, well, matt, if we get through here, and he talks to them in Spanish and all that, and they open the gates. We go out to the airplane, load the airplane up and I tell them. I say, look, it's too early for me to leave Now. I'll load the airplane up and I tell him. I said, look, it's too early for me to leave to now, I'll get back too early that I'm supposed to be back. I got to be back at a certain time and he says, well, we'll just go back to and have breakfast and you leave when you get ready.
Speaker 2:And the airplane was old, everybody wouldn't lock. I said I can't even lock this airplane, you know. He said, don't worry about it, ain't nobody gonna mess with it. And I I said, all right, let's go. We went and ate and then messed around a little, killed a little bit of time, and then I get in the airplane, fly back to Lake City and unload at the Lake City Airport about 11.30, 12 o'clock, something like that. Get my money, and I can't wait to do it again.
Speaker 2:And the next time the airport was staked out.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this so when you landed in Managua, it was all controlled. It was Ortega's people that just got. No, it was Somoza, somoza's, really.
Speaker 2:Somoza was still in power then they were still fighting and who exactly? From what I understood later that some fellow in Miami was the actual fellow that took care down there. I can't remember what they called him, mr something, anyway but he was the one that had the key to get in and out down there the way we did. And so the next time I go down and when I get there, everything's going the same way but the pill machine breaks down. They don't have the pills, which was a blessing for us, more than likely the way, I think, things went down. So I'm there another day and the pill machine breaks again. I'm there about three or four days in this motel waiting on them to get the load up. I mean I felt like they shouldn't have called us until they had it, and it's supposed to be $350,000. Well, I asked them the last time when it broke. I said how much have you all got? He said we've got $300,000.
Speaker 2:I said, well, I'm going, because I had took a friend of mine that I had flew with a lot, who had just been up in Alaska doing flying bush up in Alaska. He was wanting to get involved and so he was going to go with me on this trip and he gets antsy down there. He says I'm going to take the plane and go back. I says you're not. I says you're going on. If you go back, it'll be the airliner or with me. I says you don't get no money for going back empty and that's when I decided to uh, go and take 300 000. So we loaded that and we come back like four days late land and the trucks coming down the ramp to get us. He flashes a light and turns around and leaves.
Speaker 2:I said man that's strange what's going on. And I look out at the road and we had Mike, the guy that had the 210. He was supposed to be the blocker, and there's a car right behind him and he stops in the deceleration lane or turn lane. He stops and gets out and he stops in the deceleration lane or turn lane, he stops and gets out and he's talking to this fella. And then mike gets back in his car and he leaves and the fella that he's talking to, in this brown torino with ohio license plates on it, comes out onto the ramp and goes all the way down looking at all the airplanes. If i'd,000 quaaludes it would have been above the windows, but the airplane looked empty from where he was sitting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he goes all the way down and turns around and is coming back, and my buddy had his car at the airport. So we sneak around through here and we get in the car, his car, and it cranks up and we're pulling out on the highway, stop on the highway and the police, the undercover police, fella, he pulls up right beside us and I said, hey, how you doing he's, and he followed us. When he followed us, that's when the guys went back in and got the uh, got the quaaludes, and I feel like that they had probably more people at that stakeout than just one person, and you know, and they said, man, he's gone and went somewhere else or he's not coming, or you know, and so they just left that one guy there. I mean, I'm not sure, I don't know, but that's what it seems like to me, and if he hadn't have followed us, it would have been a mess out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when you came back you had Quaaludes and that and marijuana. Where did you go in other trips? I mean, we're going to talk about how you got involved and did you meet some of the organizational people that were in Columbia eventually, or what level did you? What organization was involved with your smuggling? I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:See, that's an interesting answer. Yeah, I met the biggest, I guess fella I ever met was in prison. Fabio Ochoa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's about as big as you can get back then.
Speaker 2:A little guy and he's a real nice, courteous fella. Yeah, and I would have liked to have met him earlier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would have liked to have met him earlier. Yeah, and did you. You met, because it was Ochoa and Carlos. Later you met him, did you meet him? Oh?
Speaker 2:Carlos, yeah, he, I'm not in prison. I met him. He used to get his airplane worked on at the same place. I did at Keystone Heights with Barney Kim and Barney had his hangar there and he had a couch, a TV and a chair For our viewers.
Speaker 1:where is this.
Speaker 2:Keystone Heights Airport.
Speaker 1:Okay, and where is that? In North Florida, okay.
Speaker 2:It's between Gainesville and Jacksonville, and if Carlos got there first before me, he'd be on the couch and I'd get the chair. And if I got there first I'd get the couch and he'd have to be on the chair and we didn't hardly speak at all or anything. There was a lot of smugglers we were using there and everybody kept quiet. Everybody knew what everybody was doing, but nobody would get in it. And Barney he was.
Speaker 2:he would hook you up with him, you know hey, this guy's wanting to know if you'll uh, he knows you know things like that. And I ran into Carlos again in um Great Inaugural fueling up and that's's. Personally I didn't like the guy. He was kind of overbearing, like you could have three or four airplanes in there getting fueling, and he acted like he was the only one there. You know, hey, I'm first, I do, you know, and all that, and I've never liked people like that.
Speaker 1:The me first. Mentality yeah me first. Y'all or nothing, yeah yeah, but Ochoa you met later on in prison okay and that I'm sure that was an interesting meeting we'll we'll talk about. Okay, so you were, you were into this. Now, obviously you liked the money because you hadn't seen this before as an airport manager or anything. That's a big jump.
Speaker 2:I've never had.
Speaker 1:Your lifestyle changed right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never had $1,000 of my own to do with what I wanted to in my life until then. Now I've I've gotten money and before and a little later on, the biggest thing about the money was is uh, uh is counting it. You know, in fact, years later, dealing with a lot of the people we dealt with and dealt with them so much, they would say, hey, randy, bring me money. And he'd say, look, he says I didn't count it. He says so-and-so counted it. He said he counted it and he says it's there. He says you want to count it, you count it. Let me know if it's over or under or whatever. I'll make it right. And that's the way we dealt. And, if you think about it, real honest people some of them, some of them not I ran into the ones that were not and I cut them loose because I'm not going to deal with somebody, somebody like that. It's like when you're in prison, you're playing handball with somebody that cheats.
Speaker 1:You don't play with them, no more yeah, you know, and you're the philosophy I don't like a liar and a chief a thief right you know that, that's quite the exactly, and I mean I've had people listen.
Speaker 2:That book there Take off was a quarter million dollars worth of pot and it gave me the money and he don't like it. I said, well, bring it back. Here's your money back. And I even told him down there. I said I'll bring it back down there to you. You know, we just keep doing business. You know, keep this train rolling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, keep this train rolling. Yeah, so you had a refund policy, but you know if you stole from you, that was the end, oh yeah that was the end.
Speaker 2:that's what happened to Charlie on our third trip to get quaaludes wasn't going to Managua, would be going to Corn Island and that's off the coast. And charlie, he didn't have a pilot's license but he went and learned how to fly and he had flew down with me on the first load and he's calling. He's saying well, I'm, we're getting it ready, getting ready, it's on hold, it's on hold. And the next thing the fella in atlanta calls us hey, man, where's charlie? Anybody seen charlie?
Speaker 2:And and a fella from miami calls us looking for Charlie, looking for Charlie. And he says I loaned Charlie, the guy in Miami, I loaned Charlie money to buy an airplane. He's going to pay for it in Quaaludes. And the guy in Atlanta, I loaned Charlie money to buy an airplane. So Charlie was just crooked, as you can be. He's getting money from this dude and getting money from another fellow and he can't fly, he don't have no experience. He goes down there, he gets lost, can't find Corn Island, lands in Bluefields and gets locked up. And we cut him loose after that. Good business practice, right, it's a liability.
Speaker 1:It's a liability for the business. How did you come about attracting the attention of law enforcement? How did that come out? You were doing this, and how long did you do this before you attracted the attention.
Speaker 2:Not long, not long at all. In fact, after there's a couple of things happened. We were at a, you know we were rookies I was and my friend Mike. We were sitting in a restaurant and Mike was real hard of hearing so people are hard of hearing talk loud and we're sitting in a restaurant and he's's talking. We're talking about hey man, we were happy we just done one and all that. And I see a fellow that the next highway patrolman sitting over there and I could tell he's kind of trying to hear what we call in prison ear hustling. He's trying to overhear us and I'm telling my men.
Speaker 1:We call that for you country, guys, rabbit ears. Like you've been in a field and you hear noise, it's the ears that pop up above the grass Rabbit ears, go ahead.
Speaker 2:He was rabbit earing and I knew it and we wound up. I didn't find out this until later, way later. We wound up. They followed me around for like two weeks. I didn't even know it and we ran a load.
Speaker 2:In the middle of all that and I had a friend north of Lake City. They have the inspection station. You know, agriculture inspection station, a pickup truck, all that stuff is supposed to pull in for inspection and all, and the way the rivers are around there you can't get out of the state without going through one of them and so a lot of people gets busted there. I had a friend that owned land right across from the inspection station, like 14,000 acres, and so we hunted there and we would go towards the inspection station, turn off, get on his property and go through his property around the inspection station and then back on the highway and on to Detroit's where he was selling the pot. And we'd done it while we were being surveilled and the people.
Speaker 2:Mike lived up that way close to the inspection station and he was going to town and you could see a bunch of skid marks and all on the road and he uh found out from some people that lived down around what area? Deep creek, uh, that it was. Some police were heading north at a high rate of speed and hit some hogs, so it appears we were saved by the hogs and they would come on the 14,000 acres and follow you?
Speaker 2:no, they were didn't make it to the 14,000 oh, they hit the hogs. They hit the hogs on the on the highway before going to the, trying to follow us and there was no aerial surveillance back then. Right, because there could have been, but there wasn't, not that you were aware of. Yeah, the local, yeah.
Speaker 1:But they hit the hogs.
Speaker 2:They hit the hogs, tore the car up, wow. So I feel like we were saved by the pill machine breaking down and delaying us there, right, and then saved again by the hogs. And then we find out you know that we are being people. You know they had talked to some people and the people had tipped us off, said, hey, man, we're getting. In fact, my neighbor, a friend of mine's aunt, lived next door to me and he's over at my house. Me and him are standing out in the front yard talking and his uh, aunt sees him over there. So I get a call a little later on from him at the meeting and I go to him. He he says hey, look, my aunt lives next door to you, says the FDLE and all them they want to sit up in her house to surveil you. She told me to stay away from you, so I said okay.
Speaker 2:So that's when I first found out that she wouldn't let them. So they went across the street. Behind the houses across the street there was empty lots back there. They set up back there and took pictures of the house and I had a lot of good pictures of the house and the car and what have you. And when we went to court on this, I got charged with racketeering for this deal Right away. Not right away, no, it was a couple of years later or a year and something later I'm charged with racketeering and yeah.
Speaker 1:So this was the federal recall statute, as we call it.
Speaker 2:State State recall, right the state I was indicted by the special grand jury that was in panel for drug smuggling. We were the last people indicted. I had a governor-appointed judge and a governor-appointed prosecutor and they used, they kept when we were getting all our discovery this is kind of funny they used a. They told the grand jury, hey, we got films of them. You know, up in Moulter Georgia we have films that took and all that. So we wanted to see the film. They said, well, we won't let you see that because we're not going to use it. We said, we don't care where you it, we might want to use it, you know. And so then they tried to say, well, it's not compatible. And we wound up sending it out to California and getting it where we could put it on a VHS.
Speaker 2:And we brought that VHS back and they had a time lapse of about I don't know how much it was on a two or three hour VHS, it must have been several weeks because everything was going fast and they had it in that old abandoned tower, aircraft control tower where they'd set up with that tripod I'd mentioned earlier. So they had a telescope on it. It was a telescopic and it was the funniest looking thing you've ever seen. It'd be getting night and then it'd be daytime and it'd be nighttime again and at daytime people would be coming and going in and out of their cars. Doors, open doors, close, airplane going airplane back. This, that and the other. And the star of the show was a fly and the star of the show was a fly. The fly comes buzzing in there and sits down. He sits down on the lens.
Speaker 2:Are you kidding me? Yeah, and he's a giant fly now on this telescopic lens and he kicks his back legs up and he does his little dance and all that. And you can see through those wings with all the veins and all that and we're watching that.
Speaker 1:How long was the fly on?
Speaker 2:there A pretty good while he takes off, and then you say, oh well, about time we get through laughing here. He comes back, sits down there again, he does his another jig and we ain't watching what's going on, we're watching the fly. And we said then said, well, no wonder they're not going to use this in court. Yeah, have the whole courtroom be broken up.
Speaker 1:Today they could have probably eliminated the fly. You know, with the technology now, it wouldn't have been so funny. It would have been screened off. Yeah, okay, so you got indicted for RICO on the state level and what happened?
Speaker 2:well, charlie, the guy that we cut loose, he's busted up in or somewhere around Dothan, alabama, I can't remember exactly what they. They brought in a, uh, a constellation up there and, uh, he got busted. And so that's the first time I'd heard of the Federal Witness Protection Program. He gets put on the Federal Witness Protection Program and he's got only two things he's got immunity on anything he talks about, but he can't lie and he can't have a murder. If you're murdering anybody, don't tell them, you know and don't lie. Well, he's on where it's hard to get a deposition from him because he's being controlled so tightly as security. And so we're having in front of the judge, we're having depositions because they're having so much. You know we're going to have to, we object and blah, blah, blah and they brought in another fella that they had went and this was back. They put this predicate act on our indictment. It was the judge smith whenever he gave it a supposedly gave a destruction order to destruct some pot and they carried it out there and didn't destruct it they, but it was the feds pot and they had cameras on them. It was foggy, camera didn't get pick up, nothing but fog. So the guys, when they came to the dump to load the pot. They got away with it. It had a bug on it and Charlie, whenever they went to federal court, charlie was the only one that beat the trial, that beat his case, and he told them that he had just loaned them the truck and I was standing out at the gate.
Speaker 2:He said I don't know what they was doing in there. And they knew somebody was at the gate as a lookout, but it wasn't Charlie. And so they asked Charlie, did you handle any pot? No, did you see any pot? No, nothing. No, nothing about it. He just come clean. So that's the story he gave them in federal court and he beat the case.
Speaker 2:Well, he had told me how he beat it. You know, with his story. I knew what his story was. I told my lawyer I says question him about that. I said he's either gonna lie now and you know, stay with his old lie or tell the truth. And if tells the truth, he's always lying in, he's a liar and you know this and I knew him is gonna stick with his old story. So he gets up there and he tells the same story that he told me. I was at the gate, I didn't know nothing. They I didn't handle no pot, didn't see no pot and all that.
Speaker 2:Well, they called his co-defendant in there next and we're talking to him and asked him. They said how much pot was that? Now this guy got convicted. He says we don't know. We never really got to weigh it because it got busted, you know later on. And he says well, did Charlie handle any of the pot? And he says yeah. He says well, how many pounds did he? He said I don't know. I told you all. He says well, what percent did he handle? He said all of it. He says what do you mean? All of it? He said well, I've taken it off to you, hall, and handed it to him. He's putting it in the truck. Judge says hold it.
Speaker 2:And my lawyer says Judge called a recess. My lawyer says I can tell what they're going to do. They're going to force a deal on us. And I said I had Bill Shepard for a long time. I said Bill, how can they force it? I said I think we're winning now. This thing's turning around. How can they force it? I said I think we're winning now. This thing's turning around. How can they force a deal on us? He says they can make it so good you can't turn it down. I said, well, let's hear it. And they charged me a $40,000 fine, two years all suspended, but nine months. And I already had six months of it done pre-trial in jail. So he says you'll be home by Christmas and it'll be work release. I said, well, let's do it. And so I've pled no low contender and was sentenced to two years all suspended, but nine months. What have you? I go from looking at 30 years because Charlie lied and that was a good thing.
Speaker 1:Charlie and the fly.
Speaker 2:Charlie and the fly, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what happened after that? When you went home, how long were you incarcerated the first time?
Speaker 2:Actual, maybe a couple months, uh, halfway house six months, uh, pre-trial, and then uh like three more months, or I got a little good at game time, it was less than a year, and uh, then I got another you didn't have a bond on pre-trial no yeah, $750,000.
Speaker 1:Wow, so that means they've got to put down $75,000, right, right, 10%.
Speaker 2:And then you've got to do that. I could have done it, but they were going to keep the money.
Speaker 1:Sure, there was no.
Speaker 2:All that, that wouldn't work.
Speaker 1:I worked hard for that Source of the funds Right.
Speaker 2:I got you of funds, right, right, and so I said we tried to get. Uh, I had a, uh, my mama's uncle, he was a millionaire and all and he was a preacher also, and so, uh, he, uh, she went to him about you know, hey, he could just put it all up, land, whatever and whatever. And he says he's praying for me and that's it. And I said okay, thanks, yeah, but you know, I'd done real good in jail. I mean, I sued Suwannee County Jail and they moved me to another jail that was built in the 1800s, had a hanging tower in it and everything.
Speaker 2:They moved me to another jail that was built in the 1800s, had a hanging tower in it and everything. And we this is a story about they had a new section to it for juveniles and women that they had closed up and used it to store pot because it's Hamilton County Jail and Hamilton County was right at where the I-10 inspection station was, so they're catching semi-loads, everything at the inspection station. So they needed a big place to uh. So they put this in the jail in the in the uh. They closed down the uh juvenile and women's part of the jail and they put it in there. Holy rock.
Speaker 2:And it was right next to the catwalk. It was a catwalk and we had a shower in one of the cells and we could stick. This is how we found out the dadgum water stuck and it wouldn't turn off. So they got us and they said, opened up down the catwalk around here and we unplugged the uh got the shower to stop and on our way there, the bean holes we call them bean holes, where you stick the food in to the thing uh, look in there, bells of hot. So here we go, we're sticking the shower. Now we're getting uh stuck on purpose. There he goes and we're going and loading pillowcases up with marijuana, and so we, you know, make our stay a little better. And they bring some pain.
Speaker 1:So it gives new myth of the fox in the hen house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly, and this is where we went wrong. This is what happened to us.
Speaker 1:So how did? On a side note, how did they find out about it? I'm getting ready to tell you, Okay.
Speaker 2:They bring some painters in there to paint you know, I guess they're going to have an inspection or something and these painters come in there and we're smoking pot in there and everything, and the painters we don't have no whiskey, so we're needing some whiskey, so we're trading pot for whiskey. The painters is bringing this whiskey and they get busted out there selling the pot and so that shuts us down. Uh, pot coming from the jail boy. They come back there, goes for the talking to, and the bean holes they we can't reach in there no more. They got them blocked off. But luckily we had a whole pillowcase load of pot thrown up on top of the drunk tank and so we wasn't out of pot. So we was, but our whiskey dried up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a new one for me. I have stories with the marshals with, like in federal prison, the Church of the New Song that allowed winemaking. You know what I'm talking about and you know fraternization and like Lexington and stuff like that. So it's kind of interesting. This is stuff they don't talk about on television shows and you know the war on drugs and everything else. It's the reality. That's why we're doing this show.
Speaker 2:Let me go back.
Speaker 1:So you got out, and what happened then?
Speaker 2:Well, let's see, I've already been locked up in Jamaica so we can back up. That was my first bus down there and I was flying for the same guy I was talking to you about earlier that wanted me to talk to people to tell them how to do it. I get down to the airport that we had been working out of, down in a valley I don't know if you know where Falmouth, jamaica is and you go over the mountains there and down in a valley I don't know if you know where Falmouth, jamaica is over the mountains there and down in a valley, we'd load up but the police would go with dynamite and they blew holes in the strip. So they say we're going to change strips and so they want me to go down there and look at it. And I go down there and look at it and heck, it's a paved runway. All this. It's got a mountain, you know, a little in the distance off of one end. And I told them yeah, sure, I can come in here. 4,000-foot strip, no problem, load up. They said well, they said it's got to be on Friday night after 9 o'clock. I said, good, I'll see y'all Friday night. After 9 o'clock they said they was going to have it lit up with flashlights and all that. And I told them I says I'm going to land going towards the mountain and we'll load up down on that end and take off going away from the mountain and keep the mountain out of play.
Speaker 2:So when I came in and got there that night there was nobody there. They didn't have it lit up and I wasn't sure if I couldn't see the thing. So I flew down, I flew past, I said I'm too far, I'm down towards Montego Bay and all. I come back, nothing. And I'm getting mad because that airplane that I had was an Excalibur Twin Bonanza and it had real tight nacelles, low-dragging nacelles, and you fly it slow, the oil temperature and cylinder head temperature would heat up. And so I'm flying slow and I'm heating the airplane up and all this and I'm planning on I got round-trip fuel. I'm planning on just landing, opening the door, loading up and going. So finally I come by. I see they gottrip fuel. I'm planning on just landing, opening the door, loading up and going. So finally I come by. I see they got it lit up. So I come in, I go all the way down to the end, nothing. I turn around and I come back to the other end and I see them bringing in the pot, a line of people. They don't have all the pot in yet.
Speaker 2:Guy runs over to me and says, hey, you're going to have to shut it off. He says it's going to be a minute or two, which I never shut off in Jamaica, no more after this, and so I cut the thing off. I may as well get out and check the oil. I got out and checked the oil, all that, and they're getting it loaded, and this airplane the bladder was putting a pot on top of the bladder and so when I got in they had packed me in and so I couldn't get back to the door until I'd burned the gas down. Then I could crawl over the top of the pot. So I crawled in.
Speaker 2:They packed me in and he comes around. Got a little storm winded there. He comes around and says buddy says we still got a couple of bales Anywhere we can put it. I give him a kiss. I said yeah, put it in the nose baggage up there. I said make sure you get it closed. Good, though, because I don't want that thing coming open when I'm taking off or anything, or in flight. So he goes in. Yeah, we got it in. He comes back, hands me the key. I turn the master switch on. I got my hand on the starter and first thing I see is fire jumping out the barrel of the shotgun. And here it, and then it sounds like a firefight. Jamaicans running everywhere screaming, shooting the guy. I look out the window, he's got the shotgun pointed right at me and he's going and the sergeant waits a guy named Sergeant Waits. He's screaming at this guy shooting, shooting, shoot the SOB. But he used the acronym there.
Speaker 2:Shooting if he won't get out Shooting, shooting. And one of my buddies from and I'm thinking, well, this is it, and I know what comes to your mind Came to my mind. I said, well, my poor two. I had two girls and they were like six and eight. I said my poor girl's going to live grow up knowing their daddy got his brains blown out down here over a load of pot. And then the next thing that came to my mind was I hope he gets a clean kill, because I ain't wanting to be jerking around in here dying. Yeah, and the only reason he didn't shoot me, that guy just wasn't shooting somebody in cold blood because his superior was telling him shooting, shooting, shoot the SOB and a friend of mine, you know that was there's, you know today with the SRTs, and that they take people out right away.
Speaker 2:Oh, down there the radio down there, seaga was going against what was the one's name?
Speaker 1:Manley, manley and Seaga was going against.
Speaker 2:What was the one's name? Manley Manley. And there was a lot of hey for having a gun down there or a bullet's life sentence. They got the gun present and all and so that means they're going to use that gun. And there was a lot of the radio down there, a lot of violence back in that time, and he just wouldn't shoot me.
Speaker 2:And a guy that was from Stark Florida, billy Griffiths. I heard him. He said please don't shoot that poor man, he can't get out of that airplane Boy. I took a breath and then he goes please don't shoot that poor man. He says we can get him out, we can get him out. And they said get him out. So he opened the back door, took a couple of bales of pot off and I come out on my belly like a snake and down the door and on the ground spread eagle shotgun barrel between my shoulder blades. They didn't handcuff you or nothing, they just put the gun on you. And then they all mad at us. What do you think you're doing? You ain't paying us and all that. And we had paid. But the guy we paid wasn't honest. Wow, he was an auxiliary policeman that was answering the phone. That night we found out the whole deal he was. He came on on friday nights and he just sat there and answered the phone and run the thing and a lady had seen them going in with the pot and called him.
Speaker 2:He told, yeah, yeah, he done his job. Okay, I'm gonna call back again because you know it didn't. Things wasn't going the way it's supposed to. I supposed to load and leave and, uh, one of the head policemen came up there and she called again and he picked the phone up. As soon as he picked the phone up, they, they all jumped in the Jeep and headed down there and busted us and we gave in fact I'd loaned them $15,000 for the protection money and the guy that I was working through, he'd give the police sergeant $700. And he kept the rest of the money. They had enough money to pay everybody. That's what we tried to tell them.
Speaker 2:We said look everybody's, you know it's too late now and I wound up doing some time there in Roccabesa Jail and then they moved us over after a couple of weeks to Port Maria Jail and if you can imagine Rockabesa, you slept on the floor, had a garbage can for a toilet and they bring you your food you eat with your hands. You ain't got nothing.
Speaker 1:No, I've heard the horror stories about that, oh man.
Speaker 2:And to believe it, I think it can't get no worse than this. And they moved to Port Maria. Oh man, everybody, all there's just room to lay down. You're shoulder to shoulder laying down in there that's how crowded it was. And the new guys, your seniority is who's the least? Seniority is over by the honey bucket, and the more seniority you get, the further away from the honey bucket you get. Yeah, and they, when you filled up, at least we beat on the door. I had a big wooden door. You beat on the door and they let you go, empty it, you know, and come back and I seen them beat those Jamaicans, whip them, beat them. Oh man, they had scars. I mean witnessing something.
Speaker 2:You see them on TV whipping them, being there watching it and busting that skin open and swelling up and all being there watching it. It busting that skin open and swelling up and all. And then already, them guys already having scars all over them from prior. You know, I've seen a guy run out of the jail over the gun. The man's standing there holding the gun on him while another man's whipping him. It run right out over him, bust, boom, gone. And as naive as I was his buddies I said man, what kind of whipping is he going to get when they catch him? And they told me, they said he's running for his life.
Speaker 1:They said the whipping is in here. It would be a final chapter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the whipping was here.
Speaker 1:They said he's running for his life. I'm glad you touched on this. So when you got out, you went back, and then how did you get into the federal system? What happened then?
Speaker 2:Well, when I got out, we'd give some people some money that was supposedly going to uh, take care of thing down there, get the airplane back, get, uh, get us out, tear all the paperwork up and all that. Well, that was a ripoff and I'm trying to. He's from fort myers, so I get out and I'm trying to find him to get my money back. He's gone and I said, well, I can't, I can't, I may as well go because my, my partners were still down there and you can't come out until you pay your fine. I paid my fine and then I got to get. I told them, because the fellow that we was working with, he's on the run now. Everything's messed up about as bad as it can mess up. And so I got to get money. I told them. I said, well, I'm not abandoning y'all. I said it's one person you can depend on. I'm going to get the money and I'm going to get y'all out, pay y'all's fine. So I couldn't find the dude that we had loaned the money to. That's going to get us out. Didn't loan it to him, he's going to get us all out. And then I I come up to Lake City. I said, well, I can make more money better than I can collect money.
Speaker 2:So when I get to Lake City, a fellow comes up to Tom's bar and he gets a hold of Tom and says hey, I got a fellow from Daytona, he's got a load ready right now and he ain't got a pilot. Are you interested? I said yeah, I am. So I met him at Gainesville Airport and he told me he says I've got two airplanes and five pilots. He says I'll pay a pilot and I don't see him again until he's broke. And he says how much are you wanting? Will you run? I told him I says every time you pay me, I'm ready, I'll go again, but I'm not going to run another one to get paid for the other one. I've already done that and that don't work so good. And I said you as soon as you pay me. He says were you ready to go? He says I got one ready and I said yeah, he's. I was going to tents of pen in jamaica to pick up a load. So we go to gainesville airport and in fact I got a picture of the airplane. My partner crashed it. Uh, there's a twin bonanza, nine five alpha. I uh jumped. The first time I'd seen it, I jumped in that airplane and boogie, boogie, there I go and Me and the Daytona boys had a real good.
Speaker 2:We done real good. I made my biggest year, according to them. Now I didn't count them, but I said I was doing it because they were trying to see how much money they had paid this guy to use his farm. And it's 23 loads in one year. Wow. And my buddy from Daytona that would fly with me to Inagua for the fuel stop and all he said he rode with me on 45 trips and so how I wound up with a federal bit, 45 trips, yeah, he said he rode with me and you did 30 in a year, 23.
Speaker 1:And how were you paid for that and how much?
Speaker 2:How was that work $50,000. I made $1,300,000 on that 23 trips.
Speaker 1:Wow, and this is what year trips. Wow, and this is what year?
Speaker 2:1980. Right after I got out of jail in Jamaica.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now I'm not going to town Today. That's unimaginable the amount of money with that. So you know I tend to ask direct questions. What happened to the money when you had that?
Speaker 2:Well, I got a lot of friends.
Speaker 1:They need money too. You got more friends than ever when this shit was coming Absolutely, they come out of the woodwork.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I know what it's like to need money. So I got all this money. I don't know what to do with it. I loan money. I bet the banks was probably happy whenever I got busted, but some people paid me back. Some people are paying now, after I got home, and some people never did, or in the wind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the wind and lawyers just being stupid. Bad luck, like in there. I pay the $100,000 train ride. You know I go to pay for this airplane out there. Give them the money and I'm going to get it, and they keep the money in the airplane. The government gets it. And I wound up and then I crashed that plane on what they call a crash as a forced landing, lost the engine on the island of Hole Box, I lost the load there, lost the airplane, Tore up a brand new well, it wasn't brand new, but it was brand new to me Airplane on takeoff down there and the wet strip was too wet to get off the ground, just things like that. There's a I think it's Robert Palmer, they said there's no telling where the money went.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on his song no, no, yeah, that's right, that's right yeah, robert palmer's.
Speaker 2:She's so fine. There's no telling where the money went.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, that's right, there's a voice from the past, robert palmer. Um no, as far as friends it. It works in the law enforcement community the same way. You help people and then you know they forget you know, when I was an agent, and they're, oh okay, so it happens like that.
Speaker 1:You know whether it's giving somebody an informant or running an undercover operation and this and that, and they end up taking credit for it. You know, in our world I should say in my past world that's how it goes. It's somebody else's case, it's somebody else's operation and this and that, and that pisses me off, and I'm sure you were pissed off too. You did this in good faith and look what happened. So you made this money and obviously the feds were. You know you were giving people and that they got on to it. How did they get on to this, which resulted in your significant sentencing?
Speaker 2:Okay, my first federal bit. I was federal prison twice. My first federal bit is a fellow had stole 40 pounds of pot. I had went down and brought some pot back from Belize and everything was going good. But in Atlanta he's. In fact he was a Dixie Mafia dude. Of course I didn't know nothing about that until later. That's the thing you don't ever find. You're meeting people and you don't really know who they are until a little later.
Speaker 1:It wasn't Barry.
Speaker 2:Seal right. No, no.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And so he's buying the pot. So I go and he's a co-defendant of mine on the racketeering, he's in work release while he's buying the pot. And so I had a friend keeping it and he had a appliance, a used appliance thing, so we had his refrigerators and washers and dryers and all that full of pot because he had them everywhere. And then we're going to move them, move a lot of the pot out, put it on to send to Atlanta. And the car took everything but like one or two bales. So they took a couple of bales and left it in a house trailer out at a farm. And I told them, I said that ain't enough to even worry about. Man, don't even this guy don't have to sit on it, you know, and watch it. I said don't, don't worry about that. So he goes to town. What have you? And a fellow had been watching. He ripped the. He ripped off the pot, a little bit of pot, and it actually made the guy in Atlanta more mad than it did me, because it was real extremely good pot. I'm selling it to him for $100 a pound. He's selling it for like $800 or $1,200. He's making more money than I am. I'm the one smuggling. I'll find that out later how much money they were making off of it. They're making more than I was Double yeah.
Speaker 2:And he's mad because this was an extremely good pot and he's wanting to take the guy out. And I told him. I said man, you can't do that. I says this ain't Atlanta Georgia. He told me. He says the world will get around. He said I don't want anybody messing with your pot after this. I said yeah. I said we'll be over on death row, you and me both. I said he can't do that here in this town and he said well, I'm gonna go see him. He goes down there and pistol whips the guy and uh fella goes uh straight to the police. And there we go. Here we go again. They uh. The lake city reporter called it risky business, was the headline.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I said, oh my goodness. And we wound up. I wound up getting nobody testified on me that they'd seen me with any marijuana. So the judge kicks out. This is where In Jacksonville yeah, in Jacksonville Judge Moore and he goes, he throws that possession out, but he lets the conspiracy to possess go to the jury.
Speaker 1:So you were indicted on a dry conspiracy. What would you call a dry conspiracy?
Speaker 2:All do you call a dry conspiracy, All of them. And he takes and lets the conspiracy go to the jury. And they convict me of that because all the witnesses, they all said you know, we heard it was his, they heard it was my pot, Somebody told them it was my pot, but nobody said you know, we heard it was his, they heard it was my pot, Somebody told them it was my pot, but nobody could say hey, he's the one, we seen him with the pot. And so I'm sure the jury's thinking you know they arrested him. He must have done something. It's got to be this conspiracy, Since it wasn't the other. And so I get five years for that. I get sent to Mollin Michigan. I do about a year up there. I go through a winter, they put you in the cold weather, ice storm, I'm telling you what it's 67 degrees below zero wind chill factor.
Speaker 2:I've been there, I know, but not in the winter. We had a lot of birds. That was in a sally port. They were all froze on the ground. Ice was that thick inside the dormitory windows you slept with everything you could get in there.
Speaker 2:I heard they got heaters in there later on. But you could steal a carton of milk out of the mess hole and set it up in the window. But you could steal a carton of milk out of the mess hall and set it up in the window and you'd have almost ice cream. You'd freeze it and you could eat it. You know frozen milk. But I got. I was wanting to go to Tallahassee, you know closer. I kept telling them hey, every time I'd have you a review. Every 90 days I want to go to Tallahassee. She said no, no, mr Ray, no, your points are too high. And they told me that I had connections with the Dixie Mafia and all that which that's news to me.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that. And so here you can't go. And so here you can't go. Well, my wife, the church she went to was having a reunion and Don Fuquay, our senator, was going to be at the reunion. And my wife, she was going out there to see Don Fuquay and ask him if there was anything he could do to get me moved to Tallahassee. And when she was out there, another fellow that was— what year was? This 84.
Speaker 1:Okay, and Norm Carlson was still ahead of the BGP.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was still ahead. Norman Carlson was out there he was a very tough guy. And all right, he's a very tough guy.
Speaker 2:And all right. So she's out there and she runs into a fellow that used to be a. He was a state senator, a state representative, then a state senator and before all that he was working at the high school as a driver's ed teacher. A real nice guy. And he sees my wife here. Hey, kay, how. He says where's billy? And she said, uh, uh, he's in in, uh, in prison. He said, oh, that's right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He says is there anything I can do? And this guy's name's wayne, he says. She says wayne, I'm, I'm here to see Don Fuquay. I'm trying to get him moved down to Tallahassee. And he says, okay, I'll take care of that. She says you can do that. Yeah, he says. And he named off. I don't know who it was. He says he's one of the head men up there at the BOP. He says I party with him all the time. He says I'll get on the phone. And uh, he said call me monday tomorrow. And he called. She called and said he'll be there in two weeks. So he was, he had a connection, and, uh, I got stuck in talladega as a holdover for a little while. I didn't make the two weeks, but she called and he called again.
Speaker 2:They put me on the fast track and this was funny because I just had a teaming review and, miss Ray, I told them I wanted to go, your points is too high. And then they called me I'm at work. They said they need you back at the dorm. I said what is it? I don't know. I get back at the dorm. I said what is it? I don't know. I get back dormant going there, miss ray, what is it? Miss ray says we're doing a special teaming on you. I said y'all. I said what's going on? Says you're, we're sending you to tallahassee. I said I thought my points was too high. She says we're putting you on the sliding scale. I said First I'd heard about the sliding scale. Come up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, it slid me right on down to Tallahassee, wow.
Speaker 2:So I finished my time down there in Tallahassee and I got two detainers on me. I got a detainer for violating my probation off of the first RICO Great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, probation off of the first rico, right, yeah, and then I got another rico charge, uh, while I was in there, that uh actually, and you know I was surprised they called me racketeer. And then I got another one, and part of this one overlapped the other one. We thought, you know, hey, double, that didn't work. But I was racketeering in Daytona and racketeering in Lake City at the same time Two different you know double racketeering, Two different state attorney's offices.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, Judge Smith down in Daytona, and yeah. So what happened on that one? What saved my bacon on that one, is the fellow that signed all the affidavits and everything that got us indicted. They had him. He had been in prison out in Arkansas and from what I can hear about Arkansas, it was real bad and he got shot. In fact he got shot through the back of the van and wound up doing time in Arkansas. When we got out in Arkansas they arrested him again over this racketeering with us, and so he signed up and he wouldn't give him no bond and he traded us for a bond. And then when he gets out, the next time the prosecutor hears from him, he's got a letter apologizing changed my mind, I just couldn't do this and the letter is postmarked lima, peru. So he uh went on the vacation, he went on vacations and that uh messed our, messed it up for him and I wound up.
Speaker 2:Uh, I was like the last one they had already. Uh, the enterprise.
Speaker 2:They gave him house arrest and other guys they give them like probation and it's that you know, like that. And so whenever I get out uh of federal they take me to state. I do my state time, finish up my uh two years or whatever it is. I've done about eight or nine months on it in Putnam Correctional and then here comes Volusia County, picks me up at Putnam Correctional and then they take me down to the Volusia County Jail by the racetrack, not too far from the racetrack. So I'm in there and the next day they give me a bond here, a $50,000 bond. So I bond out and the lawyers and all work it out to where they give me.
Speaker 2:Since I'm already on federal parole, they gave me more probation and let the federal parole officer handle my probation and so I was looking at 60 years on that Conspiracy to racketeering, 30 years apiece, and thank goodness I lucked out on that thing and uh. So that was uh. It was very fortunate on that and uh that that fella took off and I, when I was a fugitive down in belize, I ran into him down there. He was was.
Speaker 1:That's just amazing. There's so much to cover and with that you ran into him. Let's talk about the fugitive and let's talk a little bit about I don't want to, I mean.
Speaker 1:I want people to read the book Right, right, but about when you were a fugitive the second time in and what happened then. About when you were a fugitive the second time in and what happened then. And then, finally, I want to get into what you're doing now and your literary stuff. So where are we at now with the second thing? The guy's in Peru. Okay, he's a fugitive. I don't know if you bought him dinner when you were in Peru. Right, okay, he's a fugitive. I don't know if you bought him dinner when you were in police.
Speaker 2:He was on his way through to Mexico. Okay, I actually loaned him some money. Okay, he's back in Daytona now. I don't know exactly what happened, but he's doing real extremely well. He's back in Daytona, he's back in Daytona, he's back in Daytona. Wow, yeah, wow. His dad was real well off. In fact, one thing that helped me my deal with the guys I was smuggling with down there. Their parents were all in the upper doctors real estate, people, stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Why would they get in a business like this if they got money? I mean, that's why you got into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the majority of people do yeah. Why would?
Speaker 1:they get in. It was a thrill for them, or what I guess so, but it became for me too.
Speaker 2:I mean, that was later on, it was just Daddy told me a long time ago. He says, son, when you pick out a job, he says it don't matter if it's digging a ditch, if you like digging ditches, he said that's what you're going to be doing most of your life. He said be the best ditch digger he is. He says like that. He says you'll find something you like.
Speaker 1:Daddy was right, because I'm coming up on 50 years of doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's a good point in that I don't play pickleball and I don't garden and all that. So with that, but let's go to your second time in. How did that occur? My second federal? Yeah, my second federal.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I had they got on us right away, because the fellow that I was dealing with in Miami that I'd met in prison I didn't know it, but he was hooked up, he was a Canadian, he was hooked up with. In fact I ran into his boss in prison, who was like the John Gotti of Canada back then, and he was doing guns, buying guns to send over to the what's that? Over the IRA or something.
Speaker 1:Irish Republican Army. Yeah, because you know they're up around Boston, what's that?
Speaker 2:over the IRA or something Irish Republican Army? Yeah, down there, because you know they're up around Boston and they got a lot of connections over there and he was going to be sending some to Columbia and they were on him on that gun thing. So I go down to get the airplane and all and they get. That's how they wind up tagging me in the deal and then, as you know, we lost that load in the airplane and they hook everything together and so they arrest the boy down there for the gun deal and then he tells on us on the pot deal and, um, some more. Uh, people go to telling and, uh, I know it's time to go, so I take off, I'm a fugitive for about three years and then I get busted by, uh, the man I was telling you about and they had, they were on us a lot.
Speaker 2:I had a fake ID and I had convinced myself I was that guy. I was Jim Lane, everybody. Hey, jim, I made a whole different. You know I'd moved around a lot but I had been in the bars and doing drugs. The cocaine was my downfall and I imagine a lot, but I had, you know, I'd been in the bars and doing drugs. That was my.
Speaker 2:The cocaine was my downfall and I imagine a lot of people's yes you just go crazy and I was having, uh, I was doing a lot of a lot of drugs and um drinking and uh I guess, uh basically being crazy, you know, and losing money here and there. So I get busted there at Binnington's and they offer me 10 years. Tell on everybody. You know how that goes. Tell on everybody and we give you 10 years, you'll be out in eight how'd you get busted?
Speaker 1:what happened? What was the circle?
Speaker 2:well, I was at, uh, I was my partner. He had been to drug rehab. He was having all kind of problems on on drugs. He was still on his parole, he was still on parole. I mean I was still on parole, I mean I'd quit my parole so I wouldn't worry about it. And he's getting, he's taking urine tests and filling them. He's sitting in this rehab. He escaped it and went to another one and he's having all kinds of problems and he's got heat all over him.
Speaker 2:And I think I got better at smuggling than from whenever they were following me around. I didn't know it. I said, well, you know, we got the heat on us. They're watching Freddy. The best place for Freddy to be is at the house. Let them watch him and we'll be smuggling while they're watching him. So I told him I, I said, don't worry. I says, uh, I got. We. I keep the books on everything and every time everything, after it's all finished, everything was sold and everybody was paid and everything was collected. I'd go over the books with freddie and then, when we were done with it, he had had his share, I had mine and we'd throw the book away. Well, I had this book for the last load where he was the decoy, and I told him I was going to meet him, I needed a meeting so we could settle up and I could throw the book away. And I met him at Bennigan's and he uh, that's when I got busted. They, uh, I think this was the IRA guy. No, no this.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is something. Yeah, this was a pilot that was a friend of mine from Freddie Crowe.
Speaker 2:So it was I uh had felt like that.
Speaker 1:Uh, I kind of lost my place here no, no, no, no, I'm following you, but you know, yeah it was for him to.
Speaker 2:I was gonna settle the books with him and everything. And when I got to benigan's he wasn't there. He showed up, finally showed up and we're gonna go out. I'd had a airplane already picked out and was getting. I was working on load. Right then there's gonna get a fella had. Well, I'll back up a little bit. I'm'm at Bennington's, I'm going hey, let's go smoke a joint and I'll go over these books and everything. And I had got a call that somebody was wanting to borrow $100 from me, so I was going to leave. I asked them. I said anybody got an envelope? They didn't have an envelope. I had one in the car. I'm going to go get an envelope, put a hundred dollars in it and leave it there and tell them hey, give that to whoever you know. Well, I gotta go. And, uh, so I go out to get the money. I mean the envelope, put money in. And that's when I was surrounded.
Speaker 2:But what I think happened was a fellow that had been working with us went to. He was living in Tennessee up around Newport. He went back up there and got in a fight with his girlfriend and the law got involved and they seen where he had had some pot growing and then they checked him out and found out that he was a fugitive and they arrested him and they sent him to Scambia County Jail in Pensacola. And he didn't tell on me, but one of his co-defendants. I think that he told that co-defendant hey, when you get out, I said you haven't got a record, you own land. They're going to give you a bond. They're not going to give me a bond.
Speaker 2:When you get out, go to Bennigan's every day until Dekel shows up. He drives a blue Grand Marquis Mercury. It's got a Cocke County, Tennessee tag on it, he's got gray hair and you just keep going and let him know what's happening. And let him know I want to borrow some money, naturally. So I think whenever he went for his bond I don't think they gave him a bond and then he said look, I'll trade you. I know how you can catch Deagle. And I believe that's what happened in my heart that he traded me for a bond.
Speaker 2:So, when I did show up. Who is?
Speaker 1:he under arrest by DEA? Yeah, okay, who is he under arrest by?
Speaker 2:DEA. Yeah, okay, and whenever I went to meet Freddie at Bennigan's, bennigan's had a nice Marriott or something right beside it. It had, you know, suites and everything, and I could park there and walk right to Bennton's and do all the drinking I wanted to and then walk right back to Bedroom Suite, you know, and that's why I used that area a lot when I was there, and so I went out to get the envelope and I'm walking back and that's when I get arrested. They surround me. I know where to run. I was checked out, I had suicide.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What were you charged with? I was charged with importation of over 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, conspiracy import and possession of the same 1,000 kilograms of marijuana. Over 1,000 kilograms, they said, and then they broke it down into smaller increments. They call them substantive and non-substantive. I wound up getting eight 30-year sentences under the old law and two life sentences under the new law, which is life without relief.
Speaker 1:When this was going on, you said earlier that you were really abusing drugs yourself.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I mean you were using high-quality cocaine.
Speaker 1:Remember cocaine got stronger as it went on and that.
Speaker 2:I had the best, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I guess I had connections, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that kind of drove you into the business to do this, or what? In other words, were you paying for your addiction too, in addition to making money?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that part wasn't there. If I wanted cocaine, I could buy a kilo instead of going and getting ounces or quarters or whatever, and I'd have all I wanted, and a lot of people you know. I'd do it until I'd get sick of it and tired of it and I'd quit for a little while and go do something else and then do some more. Being on the run is kind of a lonely thing, you know. As far as trying to, what can I do? And I kicked my own butt for not having more imagination to do something constructive instead of what I was doing. I should have done. I had a fake ID, I should have went and got a pilot license and my fake ID.
Speaker 2:I should have flew done things that I like.
Speaker 1:So you were indicted. You went to tell me what happened with that and the fugitive part too.
Speaker 2:Well, like I say, they told me they was going to give me 10 years. I'd be out in eight if I told on everybody. But I've told people I'm sure you relate to this Everybody, normal people. I guess they like to be liked, you know like hey this guy.
Speaker 2:Hey, there's billy. He's a good guy. I like him, or this. You know what have you and the way I look at it. If nobody likes me as long as I like me, I'm okay with that, but I'd like for other people like me too. But I've got to look. When I look in the mirror, I got to see somebody that I say I like that guy he's he, he don't.
Speaker 2:he treats people right. He don't tell on people he don't do this or what have you, and I just couldn't do it. And I've done a lot of things that I don't like, that I wouldn't like myself about in the past. But that's over and done. I can't do nothing about that now. But I'm not sending you know, people to prison over a plant and things or people that were friends of mine. In fact I've hooked up with people now that were friends of mine. Then they got at road with me 40-something times I've seen you know we had to be real close and done a lot of things together and all, and since he's got out he was one of the main testifiers on me and all that I mean. I'm not a person that can live with hate in his heart. That's not healthy. I'm a forgiver on something like that. Now, somebody that just goes out and tries to bust you, just to bust you is one thing, but somebody that's under a lot of duress Saving their ass is what you're saying?
Speaker 1:Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And I had one guy tell me one time I loaned him money, he was good. I'm good with him now. He was good all the way until he knocked his wife off. He saved his wife, he went and done time, he done his time and all that, but he just, you know, he was in a position and you don't know what these people are going to do until you there's no way to test them.
Speaker 1:And that's the test, and that's too late then yeah, when you got what happened the second time with your federal case, you got sentenced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was a three-day trial or two and a half days. They slam-dunked me and the biggest thing I was in jail there 10 months because they was trying to figure out was arguing about whether I was old law or new law. I didn't have any actual acts that I was named on on the conspiracy. That was within the new law. There was four acts. What year was this? This was 1990.
Speaker 1:So this was under the George HW uh laws that came into effect with minimum mandatories.
Speaker 2:Right, that's it yeah, yeah yeah comprehensive crime bill and all that stuff yeah and um.
Speaker 2:So everything went up. You know, I I was getting uh life sentence or something. I'd max out at 50, you know, like a couple years earlier it it would have only been 15 years, which is a good chunk, you know, and you would have to do a third of it, I believe, before you was eligible for parole and you'd do two-thirds of it and they'd kick you out. But yeah, I was, I got slammed on that and so they sent me, gave me the two last sentences.
Speaker 1:And what was the fugitive part in here? I missed that when you were in Belize. Yeah, when was that Before this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was shortly after I got out. I mean, I had— oh, the other war and stuff. Yeah, like was shortly after I got out.
Speaker 1:I mean I had oh the other warrants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like from 87, 88, 9, 90.
Speaker 1:And you were in Belize the whole time.
Speaker 2:Back and forth. I stayed down there for six months. How'd you get back in Ringing a lot, huh, ringing a load of pot, but you were wanted right, yeah.
Speaker 1:How did you? In the air I realized you could fly under the radar and come in and we, you know it's detailed, but, yeah, the viewers are going to say, well, how did this guy get back in the united states if he's a fugitive? And we know that you have different ids and and the ways that fugitives operate. I'm very familiar with that.
Speaker 2:I came through one time when I was real, real sick. I didn't know it. I thought it was Montezuma's Revenge, but I found out. Actually later, in prison, they told me this. They said you've got antibodies for hepatitis A. I said I ain't never had hepatitis a. I said yeah, you have. I said no, I never turned yellow or anything. And they said have you ever been out of the country? And I said yeah, they should ever get real sick when he's out of the country. I said yeah, I know when, I know right when I got it and um, so I was so sick how'd you get sick seafood or something, or?
Speaker 2:uh, I think it may. I think it was either the restaurant in cancun or uh water on that island that I had. That uh got out of a. Well, that uh, I think was bad water one or the other. Anyway, I mean, that was sick and I said to myself I thought I was going to die. I said I'm going to die, I'm not going to die here, I'm going to die on an airplane heading home or at the house and I finally get back.
Speaker 1:So what you had was a state charge and I'm always a technical guy what they call a UFAP unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Is that what they had on? Yeah, okay, all right. Now what it is is BDEA or the locals went to the FBI and they got a warrant on you for UFAP, okay, so you came back, you got the big sentence.
Speaker 1:You went into the system a second time and we talked earlier there was allegations made for escape plans and all that. You got moved through the system and then, tell me, you went to different institutions. You ended up in coleman, okay, and, um, I understand the minimum mandatories very well, because there was a woman by the name of evelyn bazone, papa, papa, who, who you know, I'm sure you've know about and uh, uh, advocated for her release and she was under. She got two life sentences. She was, uh, in Tallahassee for 30 years and uh, and that we we, uh, I guess the right word reacquainted ourselves through her daughter and you were classically under that. So let's go to Coleman and I want to give you time for you to talk about the book with that. But what?
Speaker 2:happened and how did you get released?
Speaker 1:Well.
Speaker 2:I was actually released from USP Pollock in Louisiana. That's where I was at and I had filed. I can't even remember the first one. I filed two times for clemency and I was in big USP, big Sandy, when I got turned down. I got my letter. That's in South Carolina, right.
Speaker 2:Kentucky, Kentucky okay, I'm there, I get a letter. And there's another Florida dude there. He gets a letter, too, from the authorities. He had filed for clemency. And I look at my letter. My letter says after careful consideration, blah, blah, blah. You know, you keep on going and keep. Clemency is not warranted.
Speaker 2:And my buddy there from florida, from madison, florida, he had one. He looked at his and we compared them and the only difference between his and mine was mine had my name on it and his had his name on it and they had done the same careful consideration. And blah, blah, blah and all that. So it's basically turned down with a form letter and, uh, president obama, he started what's called the clemency initiative of 2014. Uh, he changed the pardon attorney and he told me, says he's wanting them to see if he can get some people out you know that are deserving, been in these long times and all that. And if you qualified under a certain deal, they would even give you a lawyer. And I had already filed again because you have to wait a year to file for clemency again.
Speaker 2:So I had already filed again for clemency and there's a lot of activists, you know where people walking around with signs with my picture on it in front of White House but not just me with Randy Lanier and John Nock and a whole bunch of us pot prisoners. You know these guys, they'd all been in over 10, 15, 20 years. You know, sent them home life sentences. One of the activists told me he says you need to file for a lawyer. I said, well, I've already sent it in. They said, don't matter, file for us if they'll give you a lawyer. So I've done it all.
Speaker 2:They had computers in there now, you know, inmate, I filled out all the stuff for that and I wound up with a lawyer out of New York City Caitlin Nadoff, I think it was her name, a nice young lady and all, and she'd done some amendments to my supplements to my clemency request and one of the things that they had enhanced my sentence on clemency request and the one of the things that they had enhanced my sentence on that I objected against and didn't get anywhere with my objection if somebody had something very similar to it and it went to the Supreme Court and they won, and so part of what she did was, you know, part of the clemency issue is if you were found guilty today, would you get as harsh a sentence, as you got back then, and so that was the deal. Hey, I'm found guilty today. They couldn't use this prior conviction against me, and so I would be a maximum or minimum of 20 years.
Speaker 1:You know, I wouldn't get the whole life.
Speaker 2:And uh, they, uh, I'm, I'm at pollock and they uh call me in and say, uh, hey, we, uh, we want you to sign this release papers. We're going to send your the pardon attorney's wanting your records.
Speaker 1:I said, great, I signed it where's this R&D at the institution no?
Speaker 2:this was in my case manager. Oh, okay, and so I get on the phone and call my wife. I tell her. I said look, I don't know if something's going on. There's some movement. I said they must be looking at my case. I said that's a good deal. That's never happened the other time. And so I kept rocking on. Days later, a week, two later, I get a call. They said you need to be in R&D receiving and discharge at such and such a time. You're getting a call from your lawyer. And I said okay, so I'm at R&D at that time and I'm sitting there with the officer and all and the phone rings. And yeah, here he is, he hands it to me and it was Caitlin. She says your clemency is being approved, approved. President Obama approved it yesterday. You'll be released on April the 16th. That was 120 days from that day.
Speaker 1:So I woke up that morning, so you were approved in January, right?
Speaker 2:No, it was 120 days before April the 16th, whatever that is. April 16th was your release date. April 16th was my release date. That's on the weekend, so I got out on April the 15th because they don't hold you over.
Speaker 1:You're released on Jack's day. Yeah, ironic.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so they told me that and they said you're going to go to the halfway house and what have you and everything. And so I got back on the phone. He gave me the phone, I called my wife and told her. I said she had just had a knee surgery, a knee replacement. How many years has he been married? Well, if you don't count our divorce 52.
Speaker 1:No, that don't count 52, wow, yeah, I told her.
Speaker 2:I've been married to her for 52 years. She divorced me.
Speaker 1:What do they call a hall pass? Right, yeah, that's what the kids call it, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So she was, you know, everybody's happy. And I, yeah, she came. I wanted to ride the bus, you know, to the halfway house in Jacksonville. She wouldn't have it. She drove all the way out there with just a fresh knee replacement and hobbling around and everything, and picked me up, took me to Jacksonville and dropped me off here at the halfway house. They told me they said now you call us when you get there. We're leaving now. We want to know that you've made it. Well, I forgot to call them when I got there because we're on the way there and we get behind, there's real bad weather, a wreck and all this, and look, we're not going to make it on time. So I called the halfway house to let them know hey, we're running late. And we took pictures of, hey, where's the cars? Just lined up, stopped on I-10. So we ain't going to make it. And they didn't even know I was calling them. They said what, who? I said yeah.
Speaker 1:They said well, well we got to get you a bed. I said, well, I'll be there tonight and all that, but I could have spent the night at the house. So this is flied by. This is amazing. What are your goals now? I mean, what do you want to do the rest of your life With the family? I am assuming that you have grandchildren.
Speaker 2:I've got a grandson who's 25 years old. He's a machinist, he works on what's called a MESAC thing and he's extremely smart. He knows things I don't know trigonometry and stuff like that. Then I've got a 15-year-old granddaughter and I've told people I never imagined seeing anything coming in my life like her. She has hijacked my heart and gone with it. That's my life, she. She plays soccer, she plays softball. In fact she's at the University of Florida right now at a camp softball camp down there and that's, that's that's our life. We live right across the street from my daughter and granddaughter. We in fact she moved and bought this house we sold in. The house across the street from her came up for sale and we sold our house and moved to where we, because we were on one side of town. They were on another side of town. I can just look right out, walk right across the street. There they are and they come over and eat with us all the time and that's my life now's and I'm happy with it. It's uh.
Speaker 1:I mean nothing that more money wouldn't help, but uh, yeah, yeah, well, we talked earlier and you're in the process of writing some more books and I commend you on that because the more you read, the more you know in life. That's the way I look at it. I read, the glasses keep getting thicker on me, you know, and that, unfortunately, but that's how you learn. But it's been a great pleasure, billy, to interview you and I thank you for coming to the studio and doing this in person. I like to talk like this Got to too.
Speaker 1:I think it's good for everybody to hear all the sides and that I'm sure. And just to say that you had the support of law enforcement on your release too. You've given me the people to talk to that know you over the years and I will talk to them and, uh, you know.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming you know well, I'm glad to be here, and you know I wish her everything the best, and I understand why she would have been great to have her here, but you know we'll do that in the future thank you again.
Speaker 2:You're welcome, thank you.