Shawn Ryan Show - #38 Roger Reaves - Pablo Escobar and The Medellín Cartel's #1 Cocaine Smuggler

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

The adventures of Roger Reaves has you sitting on edge as he tells you his vivid memories of Smuggling Drugs into the U.S. He spanned the globe in his numerous aircraft smuggling tons of marijuana and cocaine for Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel and at one point was shot down by Colombian Military Jets. At the height of his career he had a net worth of $60 Million Dollars. It all came crashing down for Mr. Reaves and in total cost him roughly 30 years of his life locked away from his family. 🚨↘️ Sign up for the SRS Newsletter ↙️🚨 https://www.shawnryanshow.com/newsletter SHAWN RYAN SHOW SPONSORS: https://www.mudwtr.com/shawn (USE CODE SHAWN) https://www.bubsnaturals.com (USE CODE SHAWN) prepwithshawn.com https://www.meetfabric.com/SHAWN https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite #VIGILANCEELITE #SHAWNRYANSHOW Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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comm slash Sean use code Sean for 15% off everybody welcome back to the show. This week we have a very special guest for you guys. Something completely different, way out of the norm of what we usually do. This guy spent over 30 years behind bars and is still married to the same woman. I had the pleasure of meeting his beautiful bride, Mari. still married to the same woman. I had the pleasure of meeting his beautiful bride, Mari. Ladies and gentlemen, Roger Reeves,

the most prolific international drug smuggler in the world is on the Sean Ryan Show. He used to run cocaine out of Columbia for Pablo Escobar, Ochoa, and the Medellin Cartel. He ran hashish out of Pakistan. He's run just about every kind of drug you can think of from every nook and cranny corner of the world. Roger Reeves.

It's a hell of a story. If you like this video, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to the channel. And you guys remember these? like this video please like subscribe and leave a comment to the channel and you guys remember these vigilance leap gummy bears they're coming back it's gonna be right around Black Friday the only way to get these gummy bears to be able to find the link is one either join my patreon because they're going to get first dibs or two sign up for our email newsletter it's in the description you can find it down there we put all kinds of good stuff

there's going to be an edc pocket dump coming out soon but if you want to be notified on this and you want to get the link on where to get these tasty gummy bears that are made right here in the USA, you got to be subscribed to the email list. All right. Love you all. Enjoy the show. I want to see the comments of what you think about this episode. And if you're feeling extra generous, go leave us a review on iTunes. And if you're feeling even more generous, head over to Spotify and leave us a review there too. All right. Love you guys. Enjoy the show. Lots of good stuff coming. Cheers. Roger Reeves, welcome to the show. Mighty proud to be here.

Thanks for making the trip. I really appreciate it. So you're one of the most prolific drug smugglers in the world. You broke out of prison five times. Moonshiner, smuggled cocaine, marijuana, worked for Pablo Escobar, the Medellin cartel, the Ochoa brothers. Is there anything you haven't done? I hope. But, man, what a story. I've been listening to a lot of your podcasts lately, doing some research on you, skimmed through your book,

didn't have time to read it. It got a little late. But I cannot wait to dive in on this. So, once again, I just really appreciate you coming down. You just ask the questions and I'll try to answer them. Perfect. Well, everybody starts off with a gift here. And so here's the first part.

Those are Vigilance Elite gummy bears. Oh, my goodness. And just regular gummy bears, nothing funny going on. Oh, why? We'll save that for after the show. Okay, good, good. Perfect. Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much. And then, because you spent so much time in Columbia, I got you a little bottle. Cumbia. Cumbia? What in the world is that? That is aguardiente. Oh, my. A little bottle. Cumbia. Cumbia. What in the world is that? That is Aguadiente. Oh, my God. Yeah.

I have had to drink that a few times. I tried to find the original Aguadiente, but. After I drank that first, I thought about going down to South America and opening a bourbon place and making whiskey because they need it. They definitely need it. But yeah, it will do the job. It's hard to find Guado in the middle of Tennessee.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Roger, if there's one thing we have in common, it's that we've both led very dangerous careers. there's one thing we have in common. It's that we've both led very dangerous careers. You being a drug smuggler, me being a Navy SEAL CIA guy, and there's one thing you're worried about when you have a dangerous career back home, and that's your family.

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And if you need extra support, Fabric's team of licensed insurance agents can help answer any questions you have along the way. Protect your family today with Fabric by Gerber Life. Apply today in just 10 minutes at meetfabric.com slash sean. That's meetfabric.com slash sean. M-E-E-T fabric.com slash sean. Policy issued by Southern Life All right, Roger, let's get back to it. I want to get a little bit of your childhood. That's one thing I didn't hear anything about in the stuff that I read or listened to. And so we'll start with childhood, go through your whole career into prison when you got out, and that'll be it. All right, I was born in St. Augustine Hospital in the East Coast

Railroad Hospital back January 26, 1943. My father worked in a veneer mill, my mother, and that was during the war effort. They was making boxes for shells to ship overseas. And my great-grandparents had a big farm up in Georgia, and in 1945, after the war was over, we moved up there. That's the earliest memories I have is going up there on the train and all that dining car and riding with my grandma. And I slept with my grandma from the time I was just a little fella until I was 14 years old when she died. So a big old feather bed. So we moved up to Georgia to a three-mule farm.

And things were wonderful. That mules, I mean, I'd ride those mules to the field and cry if I couldn't go. And I'd ride the plow with my daddy plowing. And he'd say, it's hard right now. Sit hard. He'd make a little board on front of the plow for me to hold. And I'd put my little butt down real hard to help him put the plow in the ground. And life was great. put the plow in the ground. And life was great. And then my father started drinking. And he become an absolute hopeless alcoholic. But he's a wonderful man. He's intelligent. He was just, but he just loved that bottle better than he did life. How old were you when he became an alcoholic?

I guess about eight or 10 years old. And he just come right on and he died by the time I was 17 years old. And so I had seven little brothers and sisters. And so my mother worked hard. She worked hard. She hated his drinking. And we lived in the house with his mother, my grandma that I slept with. And my grandma, for some reason, got cross with my mother and they didn't speak all my life. So I kept, I wanted a horse. And so my grandma, I'm going to buy you a horse, Roger. We're going to go to town and

we're going to buy you a horse. She just was sweet and talked and just, so I kept telling my mother about it. And she says, Roger, your grandma's not going to buy you a horse. Just hush about it. Grandma, mother said you ain't never going to buy me a horse. They go get you Uncle G. And we went to Fitzgerald, Georgia and went to the mule and horse lot. And there he was, a beautiful pinto back in the back. They said, a little boy can't handle that. Boy, I didn't want nothing else.

And they brought that horse for $145. And man, he was just way too mean for me to handle. So my daddy came out there and tied him to a corner post and gave me a switch, said, ride him forever. So me and that horse rode for a long time with a three-foot lead. Finally, I got work a horse, and I think that toughened me up to life with that little horse. Really? Yeah, I do. I really do. That thing would bite me, and I'd bite him.

He bit me, and I bit his ear, and he nearly jerked my head off. So that was life on the farm. And I cropped a backer and hoed and worked in the field hard. I mean, I would. And we had three mules, and then later on we got a John Deere tractor, pop, pop, pop. I cropped a backer and hoed and worked in the field hard. I mean, I would. We had three mules, and then later on we got a John Deere tractor,

pop, pop, pop. You could hear it a mile. If anybody quit plowing, you could know he quit. So my daddy died when I was 17 years old, and he died from an aneurysm. And one day, and it was a terrible, sad thing for a man 54 years old with several little brothers and children. Seven of you, yes. They called us in one by one. He just came in the morning.

He came in and sat down, and in his stomach it had blown out. And I don't want to delve into the sadness, but anyway, it was really sad. And they come in. They said he can't live. So he said goodbye to all of us, and he told me, I don't mind dying, that you can help your mom and these little little sisters and brothers you have so uh i tell that story to say that uh a most unusual thing happened there shortly thereafter that i had a sister a year younger

than i was she was 16 there's a fellow from across the river big fella he uh asked her out on a date. These two are the guys, we knew them. So they took her out and her cousin Barbara, and they went to the picture show and it was all nice. And afterwards, she came in all clawed up, bloody around her neck and so, wow, she said they took her out and tried to rape her. One of them sat on her head and the other one tried to tear her clothes, and wow, well, what in the world to do? I didn't have a car or any way to go, but I knew I had to do something.

So the next day I walked down to a little village in Jacksonville, Georgia, and there was Stanley Wells and him on the little store, and he had an old Chrysler, and he said, you want to ride across the river to the skating rink? I said, sure, Stanley, let's ride across. So we went across, and there was that man roller skating with a woman in a long white dress. And they was going around, erk, erk, around the corners. So I just went up and paid my dime for one of them large Coca-Cola's and I dried it off.

I didn't say nothing to nobody. And I walked out and when he came by, I hit him in between the eyes with the bottom of that Coca-Cola bottle and it rinsed his head. And I run along beside him and kind of rearranged his face. The only guy that owned the skating rink, Bill Newman, he came along and grabbed my arm and fell down in all the blood and broke his glasses. And everybody, the whole world just stopped. They must have been a hundred skaters. And that, it's a cotton candy world just kept playing. And they come with a knife and I

thought, oh boy, I grabbed that bottle. And somebody cut his skates off to drag him out of all that mess. And so I walked out and they said, why did you do it, Roger? And I said, April Fool. It was the first day of April. No shit. My sisters couldn't get a date after that. Well, that's probably a good thing. So that was my first brush with the law.

Wow. Yeah. So when did you start studying to become a pilot? I back over there. Okay. It was like in the Grapes of Wrath at John Steinbeck. They was advertising for tobacco harvesters. We called it cropping tobacco.

You crop it, take the leaves off three or four at a time. As it ripens, you have to look at the stalk and tell what it is. And I was raised on a tobacco farm, so I knew how. So they was paying $20 a day room and board in Canada. Okay. And that was after our season finished down in Georgia. A lot of the boys here from South North Carolina went up there also during those years. And so it was $20 a day. And so it was like you could make $600 or $700 a year in six weeks. In Canada. In Canada. After hours finished, that was a huge amount of money.

Why was everybody going to Canada to grow tobacco when they could just grow here? I think the Dutch and the Belgians, they found out that it would grow just north of Lake Erie. It was kind of the banana belt of Canada. Okay. that it would grow just north of Lake Erie. It was kind of the banana belt of Canada. And it was just like 200 miles of solid tobacco and huge tobacco barns and beautiful. And it was beautiful farms. But they had so much tobacco, they didn't have people to harvest it. So they advertised far and wide.

So I hitchhiked up there. And after a week or so, you get rid of the sand lugs and you go really fast and so we could we'd finish by 22 o'clock in the afternoon and then I would pull suckers and so I make $30 a day they pay you by the road so some of the boys came from an air neighboring farm and said Roger you want to go to the fair is a fair in Tilsonburg. And I said, sure. I took a shower every evening after I came in in the greenhouse anyway,

and I put on a pair of black slacks and a shirt, and off to the carnival we went. Well, what a place it was. First, we went to the Hoochie Coochie show for 50 cents, and I'd never seen anything like that. It was just delightful. So then we go on down the road, and there's a man, a great big fellow with a long, flowing beard. He must have weighed 350, 400 pounds.

Five brand-new $100 bills. Anybody to wrestle my bear and get all four feet off the ground. $10 to anybody that's got guts enough to give it a try. What's your name, young man? Roger Reeves. How much you weigh, Roger? 145 pounds. 145-pound man against 600-pound beast,

and the crowd's flocking in. And he opened that circus door, that little circus wagon, and threw me in with that little black bear. And when that black bear got getting up, he wasn't little at all. So I ran into that bear, and we had a round or two, but the bear won. And I lost most of my clothes, and I asked the man for my money, and he told me to go to hell. I'd hurt that bear. that bear. So I couldn't work for two days.

So I went down Sunday, and I went down to the turkey point on the beach at Lake Erie, and I walked out on the pier, and there was three girls sitting on a towel. I tipped my hat to one of them, and it was Maury, and it was 60 years ago, a little over. 60 years? It's been buried ever since, yes. You guys years ago, a little over. 60 years. It's been buried ever since, yes. You guys have been together for 60 years. 60 years. Congratulations. That's amazing.

So I took Murray back down to Georgia. And she come from Holland and lived in Canada. And to bring her down to that heat and them flies and ticks and rattlesnakes, that was really in a swamp area where I'm from. To Backerfield, that was something else. So Purina Company had really promoted chicken business down there. And so I got my mom a mortgage farm, and we put in 36,000 laying hens. And that was just about the time that the curve was over. It was going down the

other side. So every time we picked up a dozen eggs, we lost a nickel. So it wasn't long before we $78,000 in debt to feed to Perina Company. And it looked like the farm might go to the bank. So I decided to turn some of that chicken feed into moonshine. So I started making moonshine whiskey. And I got up to 1,000 gallons a week. You were making a, how old are you at this point? 24, 25 years old. 24, 25 years old making 1,000 gallons of moonshine a week. Of moonshine a week.

I'm selling it for $3 a gallon. It cost me maybe about a gallon to make, a dollar a gallon to make. So I'm making $2,000 every week, 10 days, according to the temperature of the weather. What year is this? 1966, 67. But it was legal over in Florida, but they'd shoot and kill you over in Georgia if they caught you.

So anyway, the steel, one of the bottles got too close to the steel, and they call it puking. When it gets a little bit hot, the steel, one of the bottles got too close to the steel, and they call it puking. When it gets a little bit hot, it'll boom. The sides come out. And one of those big butane bottles got knocked over, and there's 200 of them. And it looked like World War II with flamethrowers down. Oh, man.

They're going off. And I went back. After I got the fire out, I went back to the house, and I was eating. It was behind our house. And after all of them blowing up, I thought the revenue was blowing it up, and I ran back there, but it wasn't. So I took a hoe and pulled those tanks all in the creek, and it was cold.

So we heard pow, pow, pow. Mari run to the back window there. I was eating a second breakfast, and I let me look, and she said, Pow, pow, pow. Mari run to the back window there. I was eating a second breakfast. And I let me look, and she said, it's Wayman LeFevre. He's chasing lice. He's chasing lice.

He fell down. His hat fell off. We knew the deputy sheriff. It said, he's chasing lice. Lice is getting away. So anyway, they brought the bloodhounds out, and oh boy. So that was over, but then I started up again, and then a fellow turned me in, and

I had to run from them too, and the bloodhounds after me, and they blew my steel up again. I had to swim across the creek, and oh, everybody knew it was me. How long were you making moonshine before you got caught? About a year. A year?

So then we was ashamed to go to church. We were ashamed to go to town. Everybody pointed their finger at us. It was all in the news. It covered Dixie like the front page of the Atlanta Journal and all. So the long-chain men came and took my tractor. They took my truck. I had a big old 10-wheeler.

They took that. They just, I mean, I didn't have nothing. I was paralyzed, broke. Yeah. And I, what in the world can we do? My sister was out there in California. She said, Roger, they need laborers out there. They're making $7 an hour.

So we went out to California. So I say, when I quit running, I was in Redondo Beach, California, and I went to work doing construction, framing. So, I mean, it was killing me, doing that framing. There was an electrician there, an Italian man. He said, Roger, why don't you be an electrician? I said, I don't know much about it. He said, I'll teach you.

So every day at lunch, he would say, this is flex. Here't know much about it. He said I'll teach you. So every day at lunch he would say this is flex here's how you cut it and here's a handy box and this is a 4S box and this is that and he so he taught me whatever he said now go get some used tools and go down to Wilmington and sign the right to work book. So I went down and signed it and they sent me out on the job and they never knew I wasn't a real electrician. I worked there two years and then I got on the Redondo Beach Fire Department and I was real happy with that job. So I continued to do the electrical work and then I was one of the first pickers. I'd go down into the Los Angeles area where the people were moving out and getting rather slummy and I'd park my truck and I'd walk a block or two just on the corner.

And, I mean, within an hour or two, I'd have it completely loaded with junk and antique. Not junk, but I'd take it down to Antique Row and make me $200, and I'd be home. And that was one of my days off from the fire department. So I made quite a bit of money. Then I came back here just across the river. And you might not know, but the settlers, when they came from New York and Atlanta, wherever, they came on a train here to the river.

And then they had to take a ferry across. And then they put it into wagons on the other side. And those wagons were Studebakers, the ones that went across the schooners. And later on, they made the cars. But anyhow, that's what the wagons, the good wagons that they took. Well, they couldn't get half of the stuff that they brought on the train into those little wagons.

So they left pieces here by the millions. Really? So I started hauling it back. I had other firemen here buying it for me and putting it in a big barn. And I'd fly once a month and rent a truck and take it back. And I was bouncing along the highway there with a load of those antiques, and I was reading the National Geographic paper and magazine, and it said that mercury was 13 times higher and more expensive than the United States.

It was Mexico. And I told my friend Mike there driving, I said, I believe I'll go down there and get me some of that mercury. And he said, man, that's so heavy, it'll knock a hole in the bottom of your airplane. I had a little airplane then. And so you were flying.

Now, by that time, I'd backed up. I forgot to tell you, so I'll back up and tell you. I started flying in Georgia. I had read a book called Jungle Pilot. And it was about Nate Saint. And he had a bad knee and he couldn't fly in World War II, but he was a Christian. So he wanted to, he saw about the missionaries and how they took, sometimes they'd take two or three weeks to walk

out to get their mail and to get their medicine. And so he wanted to help those people. So he got a little cub and he started flying them. And he would, I don't know where it was in Borneo or South America, but he'd put a rope out and he'd put a bucket with a lid on it. And like a cowboy can take a rope and do that. He'd put the bucket right at their feet as he circled. And they'd say, I need penicillin. And he'd give them their mail and they'd put the mail back in. He'd wind it back up. And I thought, oh boy, I would just love to do something like that.

I'm not worthy to be a preacher, but I could certainly help those people and do it. So I learned to fly in a little airplane called Death Trap. Rode down the trap, a $700 airplane. Holy cow. So, but that's how I learned. So now then I, things didn't work out like I was planning.

And so now I go out and I'm on the fire department and I do the antiques and I bought an airplane. I bought two or three of them and traded them off until now I've got a Cessna 182, pretty nice little twin engine airplane. Still my favorite for a family plane. It's just the Volkswagen of the sky. It just does it. Yeah. So I says, what does it pay?

He said, I don't know. I'll introduce you to someone. So we met a fellow. He was so nice. He was paralyzed. I didn't realize he started with that beautiful voice. He spoke Spanish. He said, you got an airplane?

I said, you'd fly some pot? I said, I don't know. What do you pay? I see what the deal is. He said, let me introduce you to somebody. So he introduced me to this guy, Wild Bill. He was a nice-looking young man. He said, I'll give you $10,000 to fly down there and bring some pot back.

I said, let's go. Did you ask how much pot? I go, you can't put much in there. It's about as big as two chairs in the back seat, you know. So it wasn't a very big airplane. It's about as big as two chairs in the back seat, you know. Okay. It wasn't a very big airplane. Were you nervous at all? Not a bit.

Not a bit. Not a bit. I've been going down there flying, getting fishing in Baja and stuff. You fly back sometime, it'd be dark. I decided not to even stop for the border. Nobody would bother you. There was nothing separating Mexico and California or the United States but a barbed wire fence. There was nothing. Okay. So I went down there and flew a load and come back. Guy gave me $10,000 and I took it home and I didn't need that money. I had two houses, a nice car, an airplane. What in the world? Beautiful wife, two little girls. Just something

to do, that sort of thing. But that was a lot of money, $10,000, just fall in your pocket at that time. So I shook it onto bed, and my wife put her hand over her mouth like, oh my goodness. The baby grabbed some $100 bills and was crawling around with them, and we just laughed. I told my wife, let's go out to dinner. Well, we could go out to dinner if we wanted to. We just didn't. We just, you know, working people. So we went. I said, don't you dare look at the right-hand side. Just look at whatever you got on the list.

So we put that money in the lockbox, and I went to see a lawyer. And I put a $100 bill on his desk, and I said, Mr. Lawyer, I got one question. If I got caught bringing marijuana back from Mexico in my airplane, what would the penalty be? He said, what's your criminal history? I said, I don't have one. He said, nothing? I said, I've never even had a speeding ticket.

I haven't even had a parking ticket my whole life. He said, you work on the fire department? I said, yes, sir. He said, well, for sure you'd get probation. But the worst, if the worst happened to worst, you'd get one year and you'd spend four months raking leaves on some military camp. I said, no, that ain't, that's pretty good odds.

So I went and bought me a Cessna 207, a really big Cessna, biggest they made back then. So I could go down and make $40,000 a day. So I told Mario, I said, we're going to make $300,000 and we're going back to the farm and we're going to farm. And it was like a thermometer with a match under it. I made $300,000

quick. It wasn't you turn your head and that was done. A couple of months, I had it. How much was this new Cessna? Do you remember? Yeah, I paid $55,000 for a used one. You could get a free- It was 207 with the wing off.

I had to put the wing back on, get it to fly. Damn. So I bought me a new Cadillac like an idiot. It was pretty. So I called my mother and my baby sister. I said, come out here, I got something to show you. So they flew out, and I flew them out, and I took them to Disneyland. And so my mother looked at me kind of funny.

She was a sport now. And she said, what you doing, boy? I said, I'm hauling pot, Ma. She said, how much you making? I said, I'm making $40,000 any day I want to go down there. She said, my goodness, what would they do if they catch you? And I told her what the lawyer said. She said, my, I said, what do you think, Ma? She said, do you need a co-pilot, son?

Oh, man. So that's how my marijuana days started. Wow. It was just so, I was just, the maximum sentence would have been five years. And it was just like, they were nothing, DEA wasn't even started, they were just nothing to stop you. If you went across the border with your airplane and cleared customs at the first place and got the permit for your airplane, you could fly in Mexico just like it was a Mexican plane for six months. Fly back and forth with that.

If you run out of gas and had to go into town, just show that. You were just welcome as any tourist. Wow. How many $10,000? Did you only do one $10,000 trip? I did two $10,000 and I went to $40,000. And then I bought a Twin Beach airplane. And I guess I must have made $60,000 or $70,000 a trip on that.

I always just flew it for somebody else. I didn't like to buy it. I didn't like to sell it. I did a little bit, but I just was absolutely a trucking company. And so I did it over 100 times. You did it over 100 times? 100 times. Were you ever, you were never

nervous? It was so lax back then. Well, it was lax, but I got shot down twice. And so I'll get to that a little bit later. But I'd like to tell you how I come about being able to do it and not it called. They formed the DEA and they put up trucks across the southern border between Mexico and the United States, probably on every little hill or a lot of them. And they had a little radar on those trucks. And they called it Operation Star Trek. And they caught lots and lots of planes coming across. Really? So I said, oops, I can't go across there. So I thought, where don't they come across?

They don't come across between San Diego and Hawaii. They don't have them out there. So I started flying, and I'd come up, I started flying and way out through, I'd come up and there was a place in central Baja that I have to tell you about. And I call it Juan's Goat Ranch. 22 minutes southwest of Moolahay. And it was over 20 miles to the nearest road and it was a goat ranch where they made cheese. 20 miles to the nearest road, and it was a goat ranch where they made cheese. 20 miles to the nearest road?

To the nearest road, yes. And it was a beautiful runway. Many, many years ago, they used to haul meat out of there when somebody had a huge ranch there. And muskie treats just sick all over the place. Just beautiful. And I would land there, and the doves would just fly out just like it was in a movie. It was so pretty. And I would land there and this guy Juan would come up on his mule riding fast and I'd unload the load. We put it under the musket trees and he would look after it all day. And I'd fly into Moolahay and he'd wash my plane and clean the

windshield and fill it up with gas. And I'd eat barbecue or whatever was there and I'd fly into Moolahay, and they'd wash my plane, and clean the windshield, fill it up with gas, and I'd eat barbecue or whatever was there, and I'd get a room and take a nap for a few hours. Then I'd fly back out to the goat ranch, and we'd load the plane back up, and I'd take off heavy and go out, and there's some islands 200 miles off the coast of Baja called Guadalupe. And I would go over Guadalupe Island,

and then I would go northwest out of there and so when i came to the border united states i was 300 miles off the coast of san diego okay and i put it right down on the deck so when i came in there was a quarter inch of salt on my windshields wow so and i would uh then i would fly all the way up to the Santa Barbara Islands, Santa Rosa, and I would come in late in the afternoon, just about dark, and I'd come up from a runway there, and I'd pull right up and just fly like I'd just taken off from there, and I'd go out to the desert and unload. I never, ever had a one ounce of problems, I never, ever had a one ounce of problems, except with airplanes sometimes.

Nothing? Nothing. How many pounds of pie? I carried from 22 to 2,500 pounds at the time. 2,500 pounds? Yeah. And then I got a DC-3 and I carried three tons. Three tons? Yeah.

How many pounds is three tons? Is this like 6,000 pounds? 6,000 pounds. How long does it take to unload 6,000 pounds of pot? Not long. I'm telling you what, you can throw it out of there real quick. Must be one hell of a two-wheeler. Back truck back up there. We had rollers.

Just put it on there and just put those rollers out there. In 20 minutes it was done. How did you know? Did you always know who you were picking up from and who you were dropping off to? Yeah, I had one guy that I was partners with. Okay. And I was partners, except he was stealing more than his share. But anyhow, it was his responsibility to load it and to sell it.

And I didn't have anything to do with it. Who was paying the bills? Was it Mexican cartels? See, I owned my airplane. It was about $50,000. Well, I meant who was paying your paycheck. Was it a Mexican cartel? No, it was real simple.

He would load it and bring it up, and he had a fellow that unloaded it, that drove the truck, and they took it to town. They had a guy sell it, and it was something. Oh, it would just go disappear just like zip. People would be mad with you if you didn't save them some more. Like they'd come back next week. Why didn't you bring me up, man? I wanted to, you know, this and that and the other.

That's how it sold, and it was no problem at all. Wow. That's how it sold, and it was no problem at all. Wow. So he was trying to build a big restaurant down in Mazatlan. He didn't want to pay me, so I had to go and run him down to get my share of it. I just gave you $50,000 last week. I said, you didn't give me nothing. You just paid me what you owe me, man. That wasn't my part of it.

And I'll tell you about that fellow. That's the most unusual thing in the world. I hired a pilot to fly for me. And him and that pilot got together and decided to cut me out. So he had a fellow work for him named Peter, and I've never been talked to so ugly in my life. You sit on your powder puff ass in Santa Barbara, you out of the deal. Well, he owed me about $300,000, and they had my DC-3. And no, no, you out of the deal.

We got your pilot, and we got your plane, and we got your contact, and had to deal. We got your pilot and we got your plane and we got your contact and bye-bye. Don't come down here. We'll dust you for a nickel. Really? Well, I hate to say this because I'm not a violent man. I never went to shoot nobody in my life, but that was just a little bit too much to swallow. So I had an old leather suitcase and I had a nine, Browning high power and a 38mm Smith & Wesson. I put them both in there and I took off to the airport in Los Angeles.

Well, I got to the airport and there were no flights to Mazatlan that night. So I had to go to Houston, I believe it was, and change planes. And when I got there, there was a terrible thunderstorm. That plane, I mean, the wings almost touched the ground, scraped the runway and bounced down that runway and finally got stopped and just flooded all night long. And I went down and my suitcase didn't come. So I went down there two or three times at night to see if it had come in. It didn't come in. So the next morning, I knew I was going to have to go buy a new suitcase and new guns and start over again.

So I called down there to tell them, just hold your horses. I'm on my way. So I called down there, and Peter answered the phone. Oh, Roger. Oh, Roger. Somebody shot and killed Mark last night. God had somebody kill him in my place. No way.

Surely did. Interesting. The only time I ever picked up arms from anybody. Damn. Interesting. Any idea who did it? Yeah, we know exactly who did it. The guy that we bought marijuana from was a guy named Roberta.

He was the nicest man you could imagine. He was just a farmer that put it together, him and his brothers, and we could get it from them. He'd give a lot of credit. He didn't care. He had a bunch of ranches out. This Mark was building an elephant bar and grill. He needed a couple of million dollars, so he was slow on paying him. He was slow on paying me, and he was doing what his thing was. I kind of understood it. I wasn't mad with Mark. So I guess Roberto would drink him that Saturday night, and he sent three of his cowboys in,

and when Mark closed up his place, he went across the street there, the way I understand it, and the cowboy says, hey, the boss wants to see you. Yeah, my box I yeah yeah so one of them pulled a pistol out says the boss wants to see you and Mark was a tough guy he just reached and took the guys pistol away from me shot him and the other boys jumped on me took the pistol and shot and killed mark right there and right right there in the. So that's how that happened.

It was just so, nobody wanted to hurt anybody. I mean, it was just like, Roberta Stewart didn't want to kill nobody. I was taken off of my airplane one time and the Federalists came and they shot Roberta down and he spent five years in Kuyukon, kept his mouth shut. Wow. And I just, I was just taken off. Let's hear about that. That was all he was doing.

That's it? That's it. Loaded up, and I was there, and they just swarmed in on him while he was leaving. Is that when you got shot down? No, I got shot down another time. I'll tell you about that. That was lively. That was in Mexico?

Yes. Same time period? A little bit before this is back when I had the 207, the big signal engine plane. There was a little village, a starving village, starving donkeys, where I'd got a contract to buy the marijuana. And had an ugly little hair-lip man came walking that said he had the federales paid off he had nobody paid off so i uh i'd land there on that little village i had about an eight or nine hundred foot runway in a oxbow of a river and the river wasn't as deep as knee deep but it was just beautiful cactus Cactus out there.

And even all the fences were made with cactus, so a goat couldn't even get through. And I'd land there on that little sand bed on the bend of the river, and just up there was a waterfall. It was pretty. Well, not high, but as high as this ceiling here. Just enough to just be picturesque. But I couldn't take off with a load.

And Mari would get all kind of toys and goodies and candies and red apples, what the children liked. I saw how starving they was. They had nothing. I mean, they were just poverty. And I'd bring that airplane down loaded with these goodies and these candies and little toys and give it to those children. And I noticed every week there was more and more children.

They was hearing about that American Santa Claus coming. So I think that might have been my undoing. So I remember I did 12 loads in a row. And on that 13, I had that little thing going off in the ding of your stomach. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Don't do it. Don't do it. And I landed, and so the children were there by the gobs.

So I landed about halfway down the strip, and I went by the starving donkeys and up the road to the place, and I asked this walking, do you have the Federales paid off? Oh, yes, sir, completely paid off. So I spent the night in a hammock in this barn-like structure, and the donkeys braying and the roosters crowing. And the next morning, just at daylight, just before daylight, they'd wake me up and we'd walk down to my airplane,

which was a quarter of a mile, I reckon. And I'd brush my teeth in that river. And they had a young fellow, Pedro, he didn't probably weigh 120 pounds. And he'd get in the plane with me. We'd fuel up the night before I'd take fuel with me. And then he would show me where they have a roadblock. So he'd take off and I'd take off with that empty airplane. I'd go 20, 30 miles or maybe. And they would block a road when he had a two-ton truck and he'd take off and I'd take off with that empty airplane. I'd go 20, 30 miles or maybe and they would block a road when he had a two-ton truck and he'd come out with all the guns on it and they'd block the road and then you'd see about a mile up there

another big truck could come across and block it and the road would be clear and I'd land between them and they'd come up with a truck and put the marijuana in the airplane and I'd shake hands with all of them And I'd get in the truck and take off over the other one. Okay, so you were landed in the highway. I landed in the highway because that was the only place down there that was a runway long enough to take off with a load like that. Yeah. We didn't have any place that you could take off, so I was always on the highway. And sometimes they wouldn't be six inches from the wheels on that side to the little

berm, so I had to keep it right dead center. And so that morning when we got in the plane, I was going to taxi back to the end berms. I had to keep it right dead center. So that morning when we got in the plane, I was going to taxi back to the end to start. Pow! I thought a wheel blew out. They kind of stick out there and I'm looking and Pedro's yelling, Policia! Policia, Roger!

Policia! And it dawned on me, uh-oh, I don't want none of this. So I just pushed it to the firewall and I only had a full 500 feet in front of me. And Ioh. I don't want none of this. So I just pushed it to the fireball, and I only had a full 500 feet in front of me. And I went tearing off down that dusty, sandy place. And when I got to the end of it, I pulled up real strong and just hoping it would fly off. I had to. And it took off, and it was just hanging on a stall on its nose and they riddled that airplane with machine guns I mean there was 80 bullet holes in

there one took the top of my head creased it took my kneecap off took the end of my toe off oh you got shot I got shot three times three times yeah and Pedro's I didn't see it at the time I tell you but anyway the airspeed indicator just went away that's what I was looking at to see where I was and the instrument I was watching at the time it just disappeared and the bullets went up above me over my head they was all over I don't know how it didn't die and they shredded up the top and the wings are high and the gasoline from that left wing was just pouring in on me like you're just pouring out of a bucket. It was all over me.

And somehow or another, it scared me so bad until time almost stopped. Things turned yellow. The only time in my life I was, that's crisis. I thought I was fixing to burst into flames any second. Those bullets was hitting so hard. It was like a hailstorm. And it was over just like that.

Could you see them down there shooting at you? I didn't see them shooting because I went through them. Now, I'm up at the end, and I looked ahead of me, and the river is maybe 18 inches deep or so, and it looks like it's huge turtles on the river. Those rocks had made shapes. You know how diamonds and other stuff make. They're just laying there in that river like that.

And I pulled that power, and I cut the electricity off so that there wouldn't be any sparks, hopefully, till I could get down there. I knew I was fixing to die. And I hit, bam, I hit hard, and the wings came off. And then it bounced again. And when it bounced, the next time, the whole firewall under came under the airplane and I'm sitting in the middle of the river and I'm not, I guess, unconscious because Pedro's hitting me in the ribs. Come on, Roger, come on, Roger. Well, I undid my seatbelt and stepped out.

And now there's four Federales running down the runway and they're quite a ways from me and they're still shooting. They hit the plane twice while we start. Well, it just happened so that I had that 9mm taped to the top of the radio so I'd have it in case of crashing in the jungle or whatever. Well I just reached, now it's just there in the holster in the most conspicuous place, and I popped a few black down the runway. They ran into rocks.

I didn't see the federales no more. When the rabbit got the gun, the farmer, he run. Oh, my gosh. So we took off down the thing, and then I looked, and Pedro's foot had burned. It came under his, when the AK-47s came in his ankle and blew it out the other side. It wasn't even bleeding.

It was just white. So, my goodness gracious. So I want to go. He said, no, no, we got to go up the hill. The Federal is to go down here, the easy place. Let's go up. So we went up and got into a path of cactus. There's a big old cactus there everywhere. And there was a donkey. She must have been 30 years old with long hair. And Pedro just runs up to her, charlotte, charlotte, and starts petting her. And we jump on the back of that donkey. And we go for several hours, a couple hours. And we come to a place, a little farm, a white house in a clearing.

It's just like where the indigenous people will just make a place for themselves. And the trees was down, and it had been burned, and a man was plowing there, and he had a cow and a little mule. And the thing over the neck was sideways like this, and he had a little plow, and he was plowing with them, trying to make him a living. And Pedro knew him. So then he put us in his house and his wife and his daughter

were in there and he went for help. So we were there all day long and the woman got some cloth and put over our wounds, I remember on my head, and then she poured diesel all over it. She thought it did keep the flies off. Anyhow, we sat there all day long. I mean, just in a straight chair all day long. I guess I was in some kind of shock. And about dark... Were you worried about anything? I wasn't worried. You weren't worried about getting caught?

There was a hunting rifle on that wall, and I wanted to go back over there and take care of business, to tell you the truth. But I must have been out of my mind. But somebody shooting me, I ain't particularly in favor of them. But so late in the afternoon, a bunch of horses and mules come walking fast up into that yard. Might have been 20 of them.

They was help come. And there was a young man there. He spoke English, Dr. Benjamin Soso. He was a Red Crouch doctor from 20, 30 miles away. And he came in there and, boy, he gave us tetanus shots and give me a big shot of morphine and same thing for Pedro. And he sings up right quick. And he worked, there's a slug in my foot back in the ankle bone. He looked for that for a while. I think he did more damage looking than the slug did. But he says, you got

to get to hospital. And Pedro, you'll die if you don't get slug did. But he says, you've got to get to hospital. And, Pedro, you'll die if you don't get to hospital quick. And he said, they got the roads blocked all the way north. They're looking for an American pilot that they think's dead. There was so much blood in that airplane. So he said, you've got to go south. He knew you were a pilot. Yeah, he knew I was, of course.

He'd come for the help. He's got the story. So he said, it's all over. He said, there's roadblocks everywhere. So there's a platoon of soldiers in here looking for you. So I got on a horse or mule, I don't know. And we rode a long way. And we came to a road, a dirt road. And there was a big 10-wheeler truck. And it was loaded full of corn, corn in the shuck. And they dug holes on one side for me and that corn. I got down in it, and on the other side they dug one for Pedro. And these people were sitting all over the truck,

and there's the rapids and the big sombreros. And that road was rough, and every time that truck would roll, that corn would roll over my face, and they'd dig me back out. We must have rode 20 miles, and we came to the highway, and we went through three roadblocks, soldiers all over it. Nobody said a word. So we came to the road, and they took me in a house and stripped me off and got me some, I remember the pan had a little chip in it.

I must have changed the water 20 times to get the blood and the crud off of me from all day and all that stuff. And finally it got clean, and they got me some clothes and put on me. And so they needed a taxi to take me to Guadalajara. I don't know how long it is, but it took all night, so a long way. So they had to go to Mazatlan to find a taxi, and so finally they had to find one that would go that far with something like this. Finally they come up with a brand-new car,

and they made a bed in the back seat for me and laid me up there, and that doctor gave me those pills, and I was buzzing. So the man was a dwarf. What kind of pills? What did they give you? I guess something with morphine or something to keep the pain down. I was shot. I was hurting. And one was in the middle of my foot lodged in there.

It was rough, right in the joint of the ankle bone. So I got in the back seat, and I lay down in there, and he started off to Guadalajara. And he was a small man, dwarf. And he talked all night. And I'd like to tell you what he said. I said, do you have a family? He said, oh, I have a lovely family.

Let me tell you about my beautiful wife, Dora, and how I got her. He said, I was in the village, and you know, look at me. No girl would even look at me. But I had my eye on this girl across the way. And one day, she's playing the flute in the back of the band, and she comes by, and I go out, and I grab her, and I pull her in the gate, and my mother helps me pull her in the house. And I tell her I love her.

But she sits straight in that chair all night and won't even look at us. So senor, the next morning what could I do? I have to send her home. So I send her home and I follow her at a distance and she knocks on her father's door and her father, get away from here you prostitute. You spent the night with some man.

You're no daughter of mine. Get away from here, you prostitute. You spent the night with some man. You're no daughter of mine. Get away from that door. So Dora left with her head hanging low. And I went up and said, Dora, let's go talk to the Padre. And senor, that's how I got my beautiful wife, Dora. He said, and you won't believe it, but one year later we have a beautiful boy. And I was driving a new Ford. So we named him Ford.

And senor, the next year we have another boy. And that year I just bought me a new Dodge, so we named him Dodge. And senor, I know you're not going to believe it, but the third year, we had another boy, and I had just bought a new Chevrolet, and that priest wouldn't name him Chevrolet. I had to teach that son of a bitch to drive before we'd name him Chevrolet.

And that's how I got my three boys, poor Dodge and Chevrolet. Oh, my gosh. So you see some of the tales out here, and they're allrolet. Oh my gosh. So you see some of the tales out there and they're all true. Yeah. Just unbelievable. You also went to prison in Mexico. Yes.

Is that around this time? Yes. It was right during that time. Right after that time. I paid $17,000 to Joaquin for that load that I didn't get. So I went back down to get my load, and I had a fellow, an older guy, that I said, bring me an airplane, and we'll go partners. He had an airplane.

I said, now, here's $5,000. You land at the strip just south of Hermosillo. It's a huge cattle feed lot. And you give them $5,000 both ways, and they'll give you all the gasoline you want. He wasn't paying attention. He landed at the International and tried to give them $5,000. He did what? Uh-huh.

Can you repeat that? So I'm at a real nice five-star hotel, and a gentleman, I had a phony name, Ardell. And he's a really nice-looking gentleman. You never dreamed it. And he said, are you Mr. Ardell, sir? I was in the swimming pool. I said, yes, sir.

And he shook hands with me and put handcuffs on me. And he took me to jail. sir, I was in the swimming pool. I said, yes, sir. He shook hand me and put handcuffs on me. And he took me to jail. They all came over and took me to jail. I went up and got some clothes. And they took me in there. Of course, they took my clothes and my suitcase. I had $300 in my wallet. And the guy took a blackjack and took that from me when I went inside and had nothing. So I stayed there about three days in a cage, and sometimes 18 people in that little room, and oh, it was filthy. And then they took me back to the back and started a torture deal. What did they start with? If they want you to confess, they don't wait around for the court. They make you confess.

So, and then when you confess you get to go before the judge and he'll give you two three four five six years if you don't they can keep you up for four years so wow major crimes they call it you know so uh i uh first off i went back there and they just put me in a cell about six foot square and 14 feet high, and it was really hot. I mean hot, over 100 degrees there at that time. So I heard the torture and the carrying on and the begging and the crying and stuff right in front of me. They do that to soften you up so they don't have to work so hard on you.

So then they come got me, and they keep you naked. They put you in there naked. They're supposed to take away your dignity. Grit. Yeah. But so they took me out and wanted me to sign it. And they started off on the bottom of my feet with black jacks and rubber hoes. And they beat me yellow.

So I wasn't about to sign that thing. It would have beaten. So they got a tub of water. And they had some kind of, I guess that was the first water board that they ever did. And they had some kind of seltzer in that water. I mean, if you go whiff of it, it took the top of your head off, your eyes, tongue, and your nose and ears. I guarantee you three of them couldn't hold you down. So I found out just before that happened, you scream and you carry on just like that and get a good whiff of air. That didn't work. So they came after a while and took me out naked, and they put chains on me with little click, click, click,

and they pulled me apart, and they put butter or something on my backside, and they just packed me full of hot chili pepper, ground up. And they showed it to you with their thumb, just poked my colon full of it. I mean, that was some kind of terrible. It's common. They do it. Yeah.

So anyway, I begged and cussed and carried on until finally they washed it out, but I didn't do it. And then they came, and I don't know if it was that day or the next, but they hung a dead man in a cell with me, and he was frozen. And he was wrapped in newspaper strips of it like a mummy, from his feet all the way to his head. And they put him on a meat hook onto a bolt on the side of the wall and hung him there and said, you next, son of a bitch, you next.

And all right right dead man to sell with me okay but so but then he started to throw out it was so hot the first thing he thought out would look like his eyes and the paper rush started on run he was a black man and it started running down his face the tears looked like for the formaldehyde running out of him oh man then his face the tears looked like for the formaldehyde running out of him oh man then stuff started unwrapping off of his private parts and it looked like he was peeing on the floor and it puddled down there oh what an awful smell and then as he opened up you could see the the hook was on his ribs here and it pulled it apart you could see his liver good and clear so how long is all this?

Pardon? How many hours is this all? I don't know. Days? No, just in one day, yes. Okay. But there was a little hole. It wasn't even maybe a quarter inch under the door.

That thing was filthy. There was blood spatters, crap all over the floor. It was a filthy place. I lay down in there naked under there, and I put my lip just as far as I could under that door, trying to breathe. And I had the darnedest dreams you've ever seen or hallucinations. I was sleeping completely, and I remember pink flying pigs. They were really pink with big wings, and they were just flying around.

And whenever I came to, I didn't know which was real and which was a hallucination. And so I didn't really come to. They took me to the hospital, and I woke up then. I had an oxygen mask over me. You woke up in the hospital? Yeah, in the infirmary. And there was a doctor there, and he was concerned that they had gone too far, that I was going to die from that formaldehyde fixture.

So they took me then and put me into general population, and I stayed out there for a while until my wife came down and paid a bribe, and I got out and went out the back door. What did your wife think about all this? I don't know. Did you ever ask her? She was glad I got home. I'll bet. Was she upset?

Not particularly. I did it so many times, and I think that she just had such faith in me that she just thought, surely he can do it. I think it was, and she just never took it. It was marijuana at that time, and it wasn't any big deal in the United States. Everywhere we went, everywhere we went, I was a hero. Did you tell her everything that happened to you when they were torturing you? Oh, yeah. She made sandwiches for me, and I'd get love notes. You know, I'd be eating one of them, and there was a little love note in that thing. So she was going home. I didn't tell her exactly what I was doing.

I mean, yeah, she knew what I was doing, but I didn't let her get close to it. Nothing. Not even no, so she's not guilty in any way Okay, but there was there was about half the people in California voted for the referendum to legalize that stuff way back there in Early 70s. So there was nobody mad at me not not in my side of the fence anyway. Yeah did Did your wife want you to keep? Making these trips?

No, she didn't. She wanted me to quit. But I had such real estate deals going, I just had to keep supporting them. I was going to make a billion dollars. Gotcha. I went and bought Moreno Valley, every foot of that land out there. Got an option of 6,000 acres. Now I want a city. If I could help that, it would have been worth it.

So you said you did hundreds of loads, right? About 100 loads of marijuana. 100 loads of marijuana. Was it always for the same entities? It was always for me, but I mean, I had different people load me and sell it. So how does that, how does it work? Okay. I figured that I had an airplane worth 50 or $60,000 at the time. That was what the load cost down there. And I'd say, all right, Bill or Bob, you load me. We, we, and I got, we, we're both risking the same amount. Okay. You load me and then we'll sell it and we'll take the price of the pot out of it

And we split what's left over, but I do not want to sell it I don't to come down here and I don't mind being in the jungle and loading it But I if you come and you get a load and you come back for it. It's not the same stuff. You need to stay there Okay, so it's better to have a partner in this you need to stay there okay so it's better to have a partner in this okay so that that's what i did and it didn't matter and so that's how i got away with a long time because i i didn't touch it i come back on a dry lake in the desert throw that stuff out real quick and i'd wait till the truck leaves and it gets he gets away then i'd take off and go back to town did your name get spread around everywhere?

Not really. There was a DEA agent that followed me for years. He had really nice things to say about me. He never told any lies. He had a stack of papers 16 feet high when I went to court. It was 16 bucks or something. He had me all over the world in different airplanes. Wow. What would a phone call be?

Was it a phone call? What was it back then? How did you know, all right, load's ready to be picked up? I don't even remember. We didn't talk much on the telephone. I knew that. How were you communicating? We'd come see each other and talk, and you'd go down there. It must have been a phone call.

It was somewhere or another. It was face-to-face, too? We'd say something, and I'd know it ready. Okay. I knew it'd be ready anyhow. Sometimes the weather would stop me. I didn't want to go through bad weather. I didn't want to fly through thunderstorms.

Did they know when you were arriving, or they just— Yeah, and you could set my clock by me. If I said I was going to be there at 6 o'clock, I would be there within 10 seconds. I'd put my wheels down. I'd adjust it just out there. I enjoyed being on time. Roger that. So then what happened?

I got in trouble in Mexico. I was in a... Woke up, knocked on the door one morning, and big red-faced warden... I'd ordered breakfast down, huevos ranchero and some coffee, and bam, bam, bam on the door, and I went there in my blue jeans and big red-faced waiter,

Buenos dias! And he put that thing down and put a.45 right between my eyes and says, Federal Police to Mexico, you're under arrest. Then he went to looking through my stuff, and I got me a Coca-Cola out of the bar. I started knocking him in the head and didn't run. But I was on the sixth floor, and I didn't know how many was out that door. So I said, oops, I better go. So he put a gun in my ribs and went down the elevator and put me in a car,

and there was one behind and one in front. And they went through town, and I thought he was going to put me into prison where I'd been sometime earlier, a year or two earlier. So I went on out and went across a railroad track and went down a rough road, and they stopped right in the middle of about an acre of dead animals and all kind of decomposition. And that's where there's trucks that pick up the dead burrows and cows on the highway and bring them there, and it's just a stinking place.

I mean, blowflies everywhere. But this was just at daylight. Well, he got out and says uh don't just do avions where your airplanes and i says i don't speak spanish and boy he's a great big red face fella he hit me upside the head with his flat knocked me plumb off my feet my uh spanish rather improved. So he grabbed me by my hair and slapped me around, busted my nose, and they want me to sign this confession. They say they're there with a joint group from Mexico City, American DEA,

and they have orders to stop me, that I have two airplanes and a yacht that I'm holding marijuana with. Of course, I tell them I don't know what they're talking about, and they continue. I mean, they put me down right just in that cairn. I don't know how he stood it. I remember he had a white shirt, and he had a big old gold chain, and he had a sailfish with a big red eye on it that just dangled in front of my eyes as he's doing his work on me. So then they bring out a cattle prod, and they burn me up with that thing.

I mean, they eat me alive, and they start just about my knees, and they stop about my waist. And they come and put a cigar out on my neck. Well, I'm not too happy with those fellas. I can imagine. So the cattle prod runs out of electricity and it's got about that many batteries in it. It's a bull prod. I mean, it burns. It just...

And there's red rocks everywhere. I mean, there's big old rocks and clay around. And I guess once a year, the bulldozer just comes and pushes all that cairn off into a big pile. And you can see it's about that high dirt and all bones sticking out of it and cow hides. And gourds were growing thick. And then beyond that was the jungle. And those three cars was parked up there a little bit. thick, and then beyond that was the jungle.

And those three cars was parked up there a little bit. So he keeps, every once in a while, grab me by my hair and tail, puts that paper under me to sign it'll all be over. Well, I done been through that and that other deal. So I fooled around there, and he had my hands tied with my belt. And now I'm all sweat and slobby and sticky and bloody, and I get my hand loose it pulls some skin off of one hand now I got a hand loose but I can't

let them see it and I fooled around there and I got a rock loose under my I'm down with my feet this way and this way the whole way they got me and got my shirt pulled up and it's all bloody and uh I get that rock in my hand. And so the other ones go back to get some batteries. And I said, I'll sign, I'll sign. And he'd been a what? And I came up with that rock load, and I hit him in the head with it. And I ran out of my shoes trying to get away.

And they started shooting at me. There was about eight of them. And they emptied their guns at me. I wasn't 150 feet away. And it was dry ground. They were just gunning. And they opened up with a... And just as I went across that pile of dirt, a little machine gun pistol or a MAC-10 or something opened up.

And they were just tearing it up all over me. And a vine caught me across that nose, and it's still a cave. It crushed my nose in right there, and I caught that nut. And when I went, my feet kept going, and I went and hit the ground hard. Whoop! And I went, oh, oh, I went to screaming like a dog that had been shot. And all shooting stopped. And I ran through that gentleman and got away.

You got away. I got away. So there was something about I killed that man in Mexico, but I know I didn't. I didn't kill him. Of course I did. They extradited me back down there, all sorts of stuff. But the DEA said that and just make things work for me. So I thought it's best I not to go back to Mexico.

Probably a good idea. So I didn't go back. Well, you had mentioned you also had a yacht. Yes. I didn't know. I thought the yacht didn't come into play until later on. So you were doing, you were smuggling marijuana in both planes and yachts at this time? Let's talk about the yacht.

Oh, it was just too slow and too dangerous. I'd get away with an airplane. I didn't like that yacht stuff. So I, probably after that time, I went to Pakistan and I bought a 80-foot shrimper I didn't know the difference you went all the way to Pakistan to buy around the world and like a bulldozer going around the world I should have bought a fishing boat like some tune the boat it'll burn about 1 tenth of the fuel I didn't know here's a

brand new beautiful boat that's been seized by the bank, and I can get it just for a little bit of payments. It took more fuel. I could have, oh, my goodness, if I'd have just known. How did you find a boat in Pakistan? I mean, there was no Internet back then. I went to New Orleans. I decided to quit probably after the Mexican deal.

I went down there and started one of the first hydro blasting business in the world I went to Shell went down there and bought a Wheatley pump that pumps up pipelines and I got the right hoses and stuff and I would go in those ships

and spray them down and clean the inside of them and so I got a contract to clean the Russian grain ships that was coming into America. They had been loading ships with dirty grain that had oil and fertilizer in it, and the United States had to pay the Eastern Bloc $7 billion, and they just stopped. I think there was ships backed up from here to the mouth of the Mississippi. Wow. And I threw my hat in the pot from here to the mouth of the Mississippi. Wow. And I threw my hat in the pot, and I went to cleaning ships. So anyway, I didn't like

that business. It was all right. It was a million dollars per ship to clean them, but you couldn't make much money. People just wouldn't work. They just wouldn't. It was a union, and more of them crawled off of the than got on. It's just about itself. There was a fellow there, and he had a boat that had been seized by the bank, the bank of Mobile, a brand-new, beautiful shrimper. It needed $60,000 to get it out of Hawk. I got it out of Hawk and went to Pakistan and got three and a half tons of hashish and went on around through Singapore

and through the straits of Japan and way anyhow. Hold on, hold on, hold on. How did you make a connection? Did you just say three and a half tons? Yes. How did you make a connection in Pakistan from the U.S. that had three and a half tons of hashish? I flew over there and we rode camels around.

Met a guy named Diesel that was a taxi driver that knew the guy, that made the guy, and so I went over there and did that. What a terrible place. That's the only place in the world I never didn't like. I didn't like Pakistan. I don't blame you. I'm not a big fan either. No, I didn't like that place.

So anyway, we came back there and got to Hashish and then went on around through by Singapore and went on through the Straits of Magellan. We ran on through and came back and unloaded in British Columbia. And I bought a float plane out of Hood, Alaska, out of Anchorage and cut it out of the ice with some blowtorches and took off across the ice and went down there. And I flew that into Washington State.

It took me load after load in that snotty weather in a Cessna 206 hauling 700 pounds at a time. How many? Okay. Where else did you smuggle marijuana into other than the U.S. and British Columbia? Well, I did a 20-ton load out of Thailand twice, and then I went back to Pakistan, did a 10-ton load. And then I went after I was, later on, you're going to see that I was in some trouble, and

I was on the LAM and on the DEA's 10 most wanted list. And I hauled a hashish out of Morocco into England. How are you making all these connections? I met this gentleman. The worst contact I ever met in my life was the famous Howard Marks that wrote the book Mr. Nice. You ever hear of him? I have.

Well, he hired me to do all these things, and he turned me in so he wouldn't have to pay me. He was the biggest mistake of my life. Really? Really, for sure. Just one thing after the other. So he was the gatekeeper. He's the one that had all these connections in all these different countries and put it all together.

Yes. How much did he owe you? I don't know. It was just everything that he did. Oh, on that last one was $2 million, but on another load, he put another load with a DEA agent behind us, and the unloaders were supposed to pay us $30 million, and they never paid us because they said, you brought the heat on us. Well, we didn't bring the heat on.

He brought the heat on us by putting somebody else behind us with the same unloaders. Damn. So he was just bad news. Yeah. Everything you touched. Did you like him before you figured out what was happening? I liked Howard. Of course, he just knew a lot.

He was an educated person. But I don't know what it is. I liked him. It was just like, okay, here's somebody. Hey, this is somebody that knows, you can work with. And of the $2 million that he owed me, I had carried the load from three and a half tons from Morocco to England and it sold. I went to England to pick up the money and Howard gave me the passport,

a British passport because I was only one because I had a Brazilian one. I was kind of a little strange with a Brazilian one. So he gave me a good English one. So when I got to England, I got to Holland to pick up my money. A Dutchman, a tall man, young fella. He just, is this your passport, sir? I said, yes. And he just put, get clothes and came around and grabbed me by my arm really hard.

Come with me. and came around and grabbed me by my arm really hard. Come with me. Well, I knew the game was up because I'm wanted in the United States too and where else? I didn't know what he's after. But bam, bam, bam, bam. So he put me in a little room and there's three or four more agents and he stuck my passport under a blaze

and there's certain guys in there with the turbans. And I opened that door and I ran through that crowd like crazy. I knocked people sideways and stuff. And I went into a room, and I looked, and I bought some books. I still had the books, and I threw them on the floor. And there was a little window, and I crawled through that. And there was a wide corridor, a long way. And I ran like crazy down that corridor.

There was nobody in. At the end, there was a big elevator door, and it said, you know, forbidden to enter, and I pushed it, and it opened up, and I pushed it down, and I went down, and there was hanging there a KLM cap and jacket from a captain. Boy, I put that on right quick,

and I walked out on the time rack, and there was a crew coming by, about 20 people from a 747, all of them. They're walking along. And I, all right, I got right in behind them. And we got way down there to the gate, and all of them are holding up their badges, and there's two police or two guards. And I, oops, that won't work. And I turned around and went back.

And I got back. I said, they are going to be looking. They got my passport picture right there. They know who I am. I got to, I said, they are going to be looking. They got my passport picture right there. They know who I am. I got to do something quick. So right before I got back to that terminal part, there was a four-lane highway that goes under the runway, under the airport skip hole in Holland.

So I just, there was a high chain link fence there with big barbed wires on the top of it. So I just crawled up that thing and grabbed that barbed wire and pulled up and get over on it. And I jumped down into the roses on the other side. I screamed bloody murder. I mean, they were there for something. They weren't roses. They was a hedge that high with spines that long. They just eat my legs alive. I mean, just tore my clothes up. You couldn't move. So I took that KLM jacket off, and I started stomping. And here comes a blue van with the Dutch police, and they're right there with the young fellas with their pistols in the air. Halt,

halt, halt. And I'm stomping, and I had to get 10 or 12 feet through that scrub, and that made a big stop thing. It was hard. I mean, you just, I don't care who you are, you couldn't go through it. And so when I came to the highway, cars were zipping in like a freeway, in and out. So I ran between those cars, and I had to slow down on the other side because there's four policemen there.

I remember the one woman had a lot of cleavage, and a cross between her, and she had to twist. You just see things like that when you just, and I just walked calmly by them and went back into the terminal where it looked like 500 people waiting for their loved one to get. I mingled with that crowd. And then I got on the little escalator that went down. It says Nardi Trains, Tudor Trains. And I said, there's one to Amsterdam and there's one to Rotterdam. They're looking for me. I'm going to get on one to Rotterdam. So I went back several cars. There was nobody there. I was waiting. And I went into a bathroom and took that coat off. Oh,

I took that coat off. I probably hadn't. I shoved it in the thing. And I mean, I went to pulling thorns out of me. And I sat down on the toilet and I closed that door and went and I said my feelings exactly oh man so I went to where I was supposed to go to the train station and of course nobody showed up so Howard comes to Mari says oh my mom what happened that passport oh it was nothing to do with that I got the two million dollars Roger. Tell him to come see me. So I went back to, I disguised myself and went on the ferry back to Mallorca, Spain to meet him. And I go to one place and we go to breakfast. And he said, do you have the plate, still have the Andorra plates on your car? And I said, yes. He said, well, they're looking for them really hard in Holland here, in Spain here. So he said, but I'll get you the money later today. So I went back to my car

and there's four policemen there with a gun. Boom. Take your keys out of the car when I went to open and put your hands on the car. And I turned around and looked and they was all old men. One of them was big and fat and the other two just looked like they wouldn't be. Well, the one that looked like might be something, I got him right on the nose and went over him. Through the crowd I went and there was tourists everywhere and they didn't last long. So I went into a hotel, jumped out the window on the other side and went across Little Creek, went back into another hotel and I stayed hidden there for an hour or so out the window on the other side and went across Little Creek, went back into another hotel. And I stayed hidden there for an hour or so behind a stage and a curtain.

So I went out and there was a fellow there with kind of glassy eyes. And he said, hello, hello. And I looked, it was that fat policeman from the first. And I had to go back through the hotel, back across the place. And I went into a place that had a little workshop for wood. and I went into a place that had a little workshop for wood. And they had a little three-wheel pickup truck with the little front one on the front that they have in Spain and France. And I said, I'll give you $100 to take me Magaluf.

And so we jumped in just right then and back out and go. And police cars were sliding in from everywhere. He said, I wonder what's going on. I don't know. So I got away from Howard that time. So he cried and begged Murray, oh, Murray, I don't know what's happening. It's those Andorra plates. There's nothing to do with it.

And they got a lawyer to tell Murray, tell Roger I pay him and do this. So we had lunch with him. And Murray told him we got, my son was having a little plate. And I'm kind of believing, I know better, but still, I couldn't believe it was him. We've done 10-ton loads, 20-ton loads with him. Yeah. So we go to the school, and, of course, I'm the only father there, and here they come with their machine guns and all those children there.

I just put my hands up, took my watch off, and took everything added to Mari, and they still knocked me down in front of all the people. My children couldn't go to the school anymore. They put me in prison. How long did you go to prison? Well, I didn't stay there very long because they took me to court in Majorca. For the extradition, I found out I was to be extradited both to Germany and to United States.

Double extradition, I found out I was to be extradited both to Germany and to the United States. Double extradition. So they're handcuffing me now this way everywhere I go with my hands over my back like that so I can't get handcuffs. So that's rather painful when they leave you that way overnight somewhere. Anyway, they took me to court and they had to put the handcuffs in front of me. They can't have me that way. So they had four policemen now on me after I've escaped from them that many times. So we're waiting on the judge, and it's high.

It's the third floor. I heard later on it was 31 feet from the bottom of that window to the ground. So I asked that lawyer, how high is it? And he said, you'll kill yourself. I said, I'm dead anyway so I said when two of those policemen go to smoke I'm going out of here he said you're going to kill yourself

and I said is it higher than the palm trees and I could see the top of a palm tree below the window so when two of them went to smoke I bound across that courtroom and jumped up on the stenographer's desk. It was like a grand piano. And she was nine months pregnant, said she almost had that baby. And I kicked that window out. It was a big window. And you could hear that courtroom going. And I looked down and there was a station wagon

on the street down there. And it was parked kind of up on the curb, and I bailed out on that. And I hit the top of it, kind of like you do when your fireman hit the bank, and it went all the way to the floorboard, all the way to the drive shaft. I already had to pay $4,000 for that car. I got up and got away, but they caught me down the road. Holy shit. They beat the crap out of me. You're the master at escape and evasion.

Yeah, and they beat me up so bad, and they cut my chin, and they blew it all over me, and I wouldn't clean up. So then the man from the German embassy came, and so when they, I stayed there a year and a half in prison. They sent me to Madrid to the big prison, and they extradited me to Germany with my hands over my back like this, prison and they extradited me to Germany with my hands over my back like this and I got up there and because of the the brutality of the Spanish police where they saw that blood on me I got three days jail time for every day I was in

Spain so I didn't have to then I escaped from the German prison to after they put me in there why were you going to German prison I'd never been to Germany never made a phone call to Germany, never thought about Germany. But I bought a ship in Holland that was under bank seizure. That was usually the cheapest ship you could get. And there was a really jolly fellow on there. And he was a German.

And I asked him, would you like to, would you hold some hashish? Where? I said, from Morocco or anyhow, Middle East somewhere. Oh, yeah, how much you paying? I said, I'll give you $400,000. Yeah, I'll do it. So he hauled a load, and I paid him the $400,000. And he bought him a long BMW and a cigar and was bragging,

and they found him and arrested him for having the money. And they said, if you tell us who gave you the money, you'll be home by Christmas. But they forgot to tell him which Christmas. He got seven years and no evidence whatsoever. So they extradited me out of Germany, and I got nine years in Germany for using a German citizen in an international

crime. No evidence whatsoever. We didn't ever do anything. The fascists went to Germany. They went to England. So after one year at the maximum security prison in Lubeck, Germany, I escaped. Went between the bars and almost got killed and skin off my chest. And I went through, we got on climbing on the roof where they was doing some windows changing up a scaffolding and got above the guard tower. There was towers everywhere. Every hundred feet there were machine guns in it. And I got right up on the fourth floor and there was a machine gun nest on the second floor sticking out and i waited until a guard was coming with his wife and a little boy and it's pouring down rain there i am

all bloody with my chest skinned up and i jumped right on top of that that tower with the machine gun and he got hey and i bailed over the wall and they was doing some digging on the other side there was a pile of sand i'd seen it and i jumped on the side of that sand like he would have skiing and and broke my fall uh it was fourth floor up and so uh uh four floor and then down to the tower and and then across and i got away and got to holland and mario had buried a hundred thousand dollars for me there and give me two hundred dollars and it was in my shoe and when i when i was going after I got away and went to the man and his wife, he went in. Hold on.

So your wife buried $100,000 somewhere. We're out in Holland. She's from Holland. She buried it on her cousin's farm. When? Oh, before I escaped, because I told her I was getting out of there. No shit.

And she gave me $200 in the prison. And I had that in my sock. So when that woman got after me, the one that took her home, I heard flam, blam, blam behind me. I'm going down a real steep hill. I'm just slapping wide open. It's a maximum security prison. You don't escape from there.

So I hear blam, blam, blam. And that fool woman's up on the sidewalk knocking parking meters over trying to kill me. And I jump behind a car, and she tears the fender off of's up on the sidewalk knocking parking meters over trying to kill me. And I jump behind the car, and she tears the fender off of her car and the fender off of another car. And she has like a devil face screaming at me with a little boy standing in the seat. So I jump over a fence, a wall, and it's got glass sticking up. I cut myself all up on my hands, and I jump over, and it's plowed dirt on the other side. And I bog up halfway to my knees, and it's raining. And I lose my shoes and my $200 in that.

Anyway, I get away and I get to Holland and then I dig up. Marius had told me, he says, you go to the haystack and then you turn right and you go to the linden tree and it's 10 feet from that linden tree. She didn't tell me that there's 20 linden trees in that pasture. Oh, shit. So we had to get rods and poke in the dirt until we found it. Found it pretty quick. But it was kind of funny. So you got the money.

Got the money. And then what? Got me some clothes. And then I stayed there until I could get a passport. And then what? Got me some clothes, and then I stayed there until I could get a passport. And then I went back to South America to see the Colombians. They owed me $3.5 million, and I thought they might pay me.

Hold on. How did you get a passport? My daughter lived in England, and she went to a graveyard, and she found a kid, a baby that had died about 1943. It wasn't registered, or it was registered with no death. So she went in and got the birth certificate. And with the birth certificate, you go and you apply for a passport and you get the doctor and you get the dentist and you get the baker. And they sign that they've known you and you're a good character for those many years. And the passport comes.

That's the way it used to be. It's not that way anymore. I got a beautiful British passport. Incredible. So then you flew back to? I flew. I took my train. I disguised myself and went to Portugal.

And I flew out of Portugal to Venezuela. And from Venezuela, I went across the border and went on to Medellin, Colombia, to see the Colombians. How did you disguise yourself? Do you remember? I don't remember, really. I did the clothes and the hat. Clothes and the hat? Maybe a phony beard or something that I got.

You can buy all kinds of little stuff that you get and sun visors and shorts, and you look like a tourist. So you go to Columbia and you're starting to get into cocaine. I backed up some of those years. I skipped some years way in the middle of it. Okay. After the policeman, I hit him in the head with a rock, I started flying a few loads out of Columbia. Okay. Well, before we go into Columbia, let's take a little break.

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Go to prepwithshawn.com right now and grab your 20% savings off each three-month kit you need. That's prepwithshawn.com. That's prepwithsean.com All right, Roger, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to hit Columbia. But in the break, you told me you had a couple more stories of marijuana smuggling. Yes, rather lively ones. Well, we like hearing the lively ones. Oh, my goodness. I got to tell about my sister going down with me. rather lively ones. Well, we like hearing the lively ones.

Oh, my goodness. I got to tell about my sister going down with me. A DC-3, you must have two pilots. I didn't have a pilot that wanted to go with me, and I didn't have one I wanted to go with me. But I got a wild sister. And so she'd put her hair up, and she'd fly down with with me and then i'd put her out on the loads and she'd fly back so but she's an alcoholic she was then so we landed in uh houston i believe it was

big old dc3 and i had two tanks inside that i don't know thousand gallons i guess that they held and so the guys pumping it with little hose you have at the gas station there from a truck. And I'm pumping it from the main tank back into the tanks inside. And he's just like, wow, how much is this thing? Anyhow, Kay says, I'm going to go get some sandwiches. Well, you stay sober, Kay. Uh-huh. So after a few hours, we all filled up, and it's raining, and I go over, and there's Kay at the bar. She's got the sandwiches, but she's got her

foot up there entertaining the cowboys. Kay, it's time to go. So anyhow, we go get in the plane, and she's sitting there just fine. They get up about 11,000 feet, and she says, I'm cold, I'm cold. I said, well, go back and open my suitcase and put some clothes on. So anyhow, there's two big tanks. I think there's 500 gallons strapped on this side and 500 in these big hoses. It goes in the middle, and there's a lever that I can turn into either side of them. And these big hoses, it goes in the middle, and there's a lever that I can turn it to either side of them.

Well, we're out there about 400 miles south of New Orleans over the Gulf of Mexico at 11,000 feet, and pretty good rain bouncing along, and both engines stop. Bam. Woo! Got my attention. I looked, and everything looked right, and I think, what in the world? Now we're plummeting

towards our death. There ain't no way we can live through a crash in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico at night in a storm. And I think, that fool has turned that gas off. So I shine my light back there. And there she is wrapped up

all in my clothes, all wrapped all around her. And she's got her foot on that lever. Are you kidding me? Both engines. Well, I jump out of my seat and run back there, and I forgot to pull the throttles back as I run back. They're still wide open at that altitude. And I push her out of the way and turn that thing on, and it goes, bam!

And both of those engines take off and throw me all the way to the back. Oh my God. And here that thing's turning up. They just turn it up going up on its side and I run up to the side trying to scramble back in there to get that thing level. Anyway, that was just the funny that I tell about Kay and my trip going down there. Are you and your sister, is she still alive? Oh, she's just wonderful, yes.

You guys are still close? Yeah, we love one another. Did she go down there with you a lot? A few times, yeah. I remember on that trip I was so upset that I forgot to give the people the money for the load. It's a minor detail. That's right.

They let her go anyhow. They put her on a plane and flew her back. So I was flying out of Columbia, and I went down and had a fellow that wasn't telling me the truth. He told me he had three tons waiting at certain, certain place. So we left San Jose, and he was just adamant that we go further now. We've got to go now. I said, listen, fool, this thing flies 150 miles an hour,

and it's 900 miles. It's going to take us six hours to get there. What can't you figure out? Oh, we need to get there. I'm not going to sit there with my plane all day long, all afternoon. But what it was, this was a staging place and he had planned to go

400 miles further and he had all kinds of pipes. So anyhow, we landed there, just about dark in the rain, filled it up. He said, well, this is not where you're going to get the marijuana. It's got to be 400 miles further. So you were flying cocaine out of Columbia, or I'm sorry, marijuana out of Columbia as well. Yes, I flew quite a lot of them out of Columbia, or I'm sorry, marijuana out of Columbia as well.

Yes, I flew quite a lot of Columbia out of Columbia. So I said, all right. He said, we'll just lighten the load and bring out two tons. That's a lot of money because that stuff was, let's see, $300 a pound. So three-sixth a million, what is it, four times 1.2 million would have brought. So it was worthwhile doing, but he was deception that made me go that far, so I wasn't on time. So the next morning about daylight, we were 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning.

We took off to go and to go, and we had to find some forts in the river and finally found the morning. We took off to go and to go and we had to find some forts in the river and finally found the place. And we landed there and out of the bushes, it was termite hills all along. It didn't even look like a runway, just a little bit of thing in the grass. Here's these white, irate Colombians come out of there and man, they have shotguns with banana clips and they pointing out, get the hell out of here. Get out of here. Get out out of here this is where they live and it's a guerrilla group group farsk and they didn't want an airplane there this they they've been patrolled every day by columbian jets they want us out of there we had the marijuana here last night you should have been here damn come back tonight so we went back 400 miles to the same place for a staging place. And that's where I'd give the old man that was hooting the load together,

I'd give him $80,000. And he was surprised to see us and like, well, what could he do? What could we do? Either go back and leave it or, but I'm done down there, done all this. So there's a woman who killed an old rooster, and she boiled it a while but not long enough, and we got a little bit of something to eat. It was bad. And I went behind the house, and I was in a hammock,

and I went to sleep in a hammock. And I looked up in the ass, and there were two military jets going straight up, and the other one just peeled off. And he came back in front of my airplane with a.50-caliber machine gun, just tore that runway up. Just dirt flying everywhere and coming right up by the house. I'm like, damn. So it looked like every Colombian in town got on a flatbed truck

and took off with my $80,000. And I thought, well, they won't really shoot me. So I took off and ran to the airplane and I got that dc3 and I fired her up and took off without even warming up a bit and the two jets swarmed right on me one on each side they just come right down I think their wings was on top of my wings nearly and they were just telling me going I knew where the airbase was, via Vincenzo, go there. And I said, uh-uh, give them the old peace signs. And I kept slowing, slower and slower. And they just slowed down so they couldn't go no further. Now my gear's hanging down. And those tires are bigger than a truck tire. So I wasn't going nowhere. So I said, I got to stop. There's a pin that you put in them with a big red flag so you won't forget.

So when you take off, because if your hydraulic fluid goes, it won't let it go down to the ground. So there was a big pasture ahead, and I put it down. That thing was rough. Oh, it was way rougher than it looked. It looked smooth when I looked. And those 105-foot wings were just flopping up and down like this as I landed, and the gas cap popped off and gone.

So I jumped out and took the pins out of the struts and run back, jumped in the airplane. And I guess one plane was low on fuel, and the other one stayed with me. And anyhow, he got under me, and he's shooting those tracers, and he must have been just under the airplane because they looked like they were coming up like an arc right under the windshield, just red streaks up. Of course, some of them was live, you know.

And then the.50 caliber cannon, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I thought, he ain't going to shoot me down. And then he come around and he just tore the tail of it up with a.50 caliber. And I got like 10 or 15 barrels of high-test gasoline in there. It got me on my attention. Then he started off on the wing and just eat it up with a machine gun. Uh-oh.

So there was a thunderstorm straight ahead. And they hang close to the mountains down there in the tropics. And I thought, well, I get in there, I'll lose him. He ain't going in there, but I'll go in a little ways. Well, I must have been 12,000, 15,000 feet when I went in. And I got in an updraft, and it just popped my ears like crazy. You know something about a thunderstorm pilot? It took me up, and I don't know how high it was,

but I had ice on the windshield and I think on some of the leading edge. And I went back out. It was thundering and lightning there, boom, boom, boom. And I went back out, and there he was, boom, boom, boom again. I said, all right. So I went back in, and just as soon as I got in, I put it in a spin. I put that thing up on its wing and put it on a spin. Went all the way down, and I got down about 2,000 feet and broke out.

It was so pretty down there. I blew it, and I lost him. So by now I'm bulletproof. My adrenaline's done gone up. He done shot my airplane up. I got $80,000 gone off through the jungle. I'm going to get that load. Holy cow.

So I'm falling in the Guayabera River, and down there, it's way down, and close to Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, anyway. And I saw a spot that looked like it was miles long of just grass, high up on a bluff above the river, and I'd seen that it had been smoothed out by the freshness in the river when it comes up that high. And I put the wheels down, and I must have went a mile, and the

Propellers are just cutting the grass like like lawnmowers and I go around I must went five or six times Had a copilot in there named Dan. I said I know Al and I said we'll put it down this time so it was just smooth as glass went to put and then as it went to Slow when I said get you get your feet off the brakes. He said, my feet not on the brakes. Those airplanes were 30,000 pounds, and they just owned two tires. That was breaking through the crust. That plane, that 30,000 pounds broke through that crust, and that plane started coming to us up on its nose.

It came right up, right up, right up, slowly right up, and crushed the nose right in on us. I fell between the seat, and it came right up right up right up slowly right up and crushed the nose right in on us and i fell between the seat and it stopped right at me you're not you're kidding pardon you're kidding me no it's right there right i mean the whole nose the the uh the engine stopped it the propellers and engine are in the mud now they They're sliding along, and it stopped absolutely 90 degrees, just like that with that big tail 100 foot in the air. Beautiful airplane stuck up in the nose. Now then, the hatch is over your head.

Now it's right in front of me, so I just undo the boat, step out, get my little satchel. And the co-pilot gets out with me, and they had two guys in the back, the ones that were arranging that load, and there was all that fuel, and they got some hoses, and they opened that back door up there, and they was all right. I knew they would be when I broke his finger, I think, and all them drums turning around. And they skimmed down, and that big fella that had the load, he was nearly seven foot.

He was too big, he couldn't get in the in the cockpit and had stretch marks on him all over. He was crying so he couldn't even tow his suitcase. Shows you what sometimes. We took the suitcase down the pathways. Oh man it was hot and they were bugs just

all over us and the grass was about that high. So we had the suitcases, and met a little boy and girl. They might have been 12 years old. And one of them was riding a little ox, and the other one a little mule. And we asked them, can you take these suitcases to the village for us? I knew there was a village about 10 miles a day. Yes, yes, they can take it.

So we tied them on, and they run alongside of us, and we chatted along going down the little trail through this savannah type thing. There wasn't much trees. And so I knew he was going to the village, and I said, are there any police there? No, no, senor, no police there. Oh, good. So when we got close to the village, I gave them the money and told them, go home, go home. No, no, we don't want you to go with us. I didn't want them to tell about the airplane sticking up.

So they went back, and we went to a village. And wow, we pulled around. When we got to the village, it was like a thatched roof place and a little store. And we ordered some Coca-Colas, and we're standing there, the four of us, having Coca-Colas, when a bunch of soldiers surrounded us with guns. There's no police there, this was a military base. Oh boy, sound as they did Graviari up the river from it. So, uh-oh, what are you doing here?

We had passports, but they didn't have the stamp in them, but they didn't notice that. They said, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm a doctor and we're looking for cures for medicine and we were studying the plants of the Amazon and our boat broke down 20 kilometers down and we walked here. Okay, that sort of

satisfied them, but they weren't too satisfied with it. So I looked and there was a big dugout. That thing must have been 40 feet long. The Yamaha engine looked like it had a shaft 12 feet long on it. That thing was big. So I noticed that and found out where the man lived.

So they put us in a house. We ate supper there with them. And they put a guard on the door. And before daylight, I got on the big fella's shoulders, and I removed one tile at the time from the roof. And we crawled out of that roof and got dropped down on the ground on the outside, and I went to the house of the man that had on the boat, and I don't know what we promised him, but a lot of money to take us down the river to our boat.

Let's go, but we got to go now. Let's go now. So boy, with the money, I handed it to him, I think $1,100 bills or $1,000, And so we jumped in that boat and took off down the river. And I guess after about an hour, how much further? He just put it up on a sandbar and said, I'm not going any further. We said, mister, you've got to go. We got to get down the river. He said, this is the official boat for the village. I carry the mail. I'm it.

I said, I don't know how much we promised him. We gave him a lot of money and he'd take us on down there all day long. Before we got to Santa, we had to empty the boat because there was some rapids, some really good stuff like 10 feet high. I stayed in the boat while a young boy that

lived there ran it. He wouldn't even ride in it. I don't know how he got back up over those rapids. But we went on down, and we got out, and we went to a poor place. That was where a little trail went in. We spent the night, and oh, I got eat up so bad with bugs. It was just terrible. I noticed that the man and woman had two little children.

They got in a wooden box and spent the night. The next morning they got out, they were just wet with sweat stuck to them. They stayed out of the bugs. And I remember the man, the chickens and the pigs rooting on the floor, and he knew three words in English. I want more. I thought, he knew that. I want more. So we got something to eat, and I walked about, I guess, close to 50 miles that day. They had put me in with a young man, and he threw his hips back, and he could walk. I almost had to jog stay up with him like 12 hours. I believe I would do at least four miles an hour. So we got to a sawmill and i rented a jeep and came back and got got the other uh guys that was there and uh we started out that night uh about midnight and we was going out the road to get out of there and the road would be out and we'd have to go

off and around it and those all those people, they would just sit in the Jeep. They wouldn't get out. I'd have to get out and jack it up, hook a winch to it. I was as muddy as a hog. I mean, laying in the water. I was mad with them, too. And they're sitting right there. So just as it was just getting daylight, the guy that was driving,

he says, get all your passports in order and everything. Don't have anything on you because we're going through a big roadblock up here. This is Fark Gorilla territory and everything comes out of here is scrutinized big. And I said, boys, we can't go through a roadblock here after what we did yesterday. Oh yeah, we got $800 and you got a credit card we can get through these people only make $50 a month and this guy Dan and I said I'm not going through I'll crawl on my belly a month or a year and eat snakes before I'm going through a roadblock I stick in your head on a noose man well uh we tired we're gonna go on through and I get out of there'll come on with me man you work for me

I know I'm going with Dan and had big muscles so I got out and I watched the taillights of that Jeep going down the road they spent five years in prison in Bogota and I went on down a trail and I I come to a yard, and there was an old woman there, a real old woman. She was peeling oranges, and I says, and there was a well. There was a curve of bricks around it, and I said, can I use your well to wash this mud off of me? The water belongs to God. Use all you want.

So I drew bucketfuls and bucketfuls, and I put my clothes over a bush, and I scrubbed, and I shaved, and I cleaned up, put on clean clothes out of my satchel, and I had brute aftershave lotion. I put that all over them bug bites. I must have had 1,000 of them on me. That felt so good. I thanked the old woman, and I went on down the road, and I found me a mossy spot under a tree, and I slept for most of that day. And then I went on down the trail,

and I came to a little house on the high banks of a river. And they were so nice to me, a man, a woman. They didn't have any children. And she, I don't know where he called him. He must have had a net, because he had a tub full of little fish fried up. And she had mounds of them. Those things were delicious. And so I slept in a hammock that night with a mosquito net over me. And the next morning, a beautiful breakfast and wish me luck, and I went on down the road in my suitcase and got in a canoe and went down the river. I was 11 days going through the jungle, and I kept asking the Indians, Dandista avions, where's airplanes? Loma Linda, Loma Linda.

So I kept going to Loma Linda, and in one of the dugouts I was standing in, I think I was just trying to communicate with Mari, and I said, I'm all right, I'm all right, because they thought I was dead. Yeah. And Mari said she was taking a shower and she heard me say it clearly, and she had less worries about it. So after the 11 days, I finally came in all kind of ways

getting across that country. I came to a place that is pretty as Hawaii in World War II. Ship black buildings low, a runway there, and a tower for a radio antenna, a bunch of little airplanes, Cessnas. What in the world is this place? And I went up, hello, how did you get here? And they went, my name is Katie Sue, welcome.

You don't know what this is. This is Loma Linda, headquarters for Missionary Aviation Fellowship for the Amazon. Wow. And I stayed in a cabin that night, and there was a redhead electrician that worked for the same electrical outfit I did that come down there to do work. And what a witness for the Lord he was to me. I mean, he was on fire. And so the next day, I got in an airplane with an old missionary from Canada that had retired,

and they flew him out, and I flew with them. And they flew to Villa Vincencia military base where the planes had tried to get me to go, and a military policeman reached in the airplane and took my bag out and put it in a taxi. So God did tap me on the shoulder. So I was the first Plane that was shot up Or shot down in Columbia And they interrupted the World Series

Baseball game in 1981 American DC-3 has just Been shot by Colombian jets He's up, he's up and away ladies and gentlemen That's when I stopped to take the Oh my god And we'll keep you posted. So that was some of my marijuana smuggling out of Cologne.

They interrupted the World Series. They interrupted to tell about that. Wow. So then I hooked up with some big boys. And we went to, I met up with the Davalos out of Santa Marta, and they just had endless supplies of marijuana at $300 a pound. And they would give it to you on a credit, and you'd give them $50 a pound after it was over.

So we went and bought a DC-7. I went and bought it at Hollywood Burbank. Of course, I'd never flown anything that big, but that guy says, I'll have you flying in in a week. She's our sweetheart. Come on here. I just flew it out of Mozambique. The bullet holes was in that thing, and it had one engine missing, and he had

a great big dagger on his desk, paperweight, and it says, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because I'm the meanest son of a bitch in the valley. So I thought, what a blasphemous sign that was. But anyway, I remember the fellow, he's a big South African,

and I bought the plane. And there was four of us going to, you know, I was going to fly it and get a help, a pilot. So the next morning, I start to go down the stairs, and my daughter, Maria, she's about 12 years old at the time, and she's there in the nightgown, and she's just crying her eyes out. Maria, what in the world's the matter, baby? And I said, Daddy, it's just that it's the worst dream,

but it wasn't a dream. I saw it. It was just you were there. You were driving your train, and the bad people had taken the rail out, and it was on fire, and Aunt Kay was drunk, and we couldn't get you out. And so I just shook her. I hadn't drove a train in 10 years. I used to work on the railroad.

So she said, yes, but before that it looked like your DC-3. It had the same smiley face, but it had four engines, and one of them was off, and it was all greasy inside, and the inside looked like a tube, and it was on fire. Well, my blood run cold. That's exactly what that airplane that I just bought looked like. So I said, oh, I'm not about to fly that thing. So I went and told the other guys, and they said, that's all right, we'll get somebody else.

And so I got my money back. And no problem. Anyhow, they hired some guy to fly it, and he landed in Rio, I think, oh, anyhow, in Santa Marta. He landed on the salt flats, and I think it was on 4,000 feet. And those big propellers have to be put in reverse at 70 knots to blow them back in position. So he held it in too long, and they stayed in reverse.

So they had to hire a mechanic to come from Miami to fix it. And that plane sat there for two days for all the world to see. I wonder how much that cost. That thing's huge. It's almost like 747 sitting there. So when they got it loaded with 30 tons and they started to lift, engine one fired right up, engine two fired right up, engine three, engine four, yuh, yuh, yuh, yuh, and then it caught on fire.

Engine two fired right up. Engine three, engine four, yuh, yuh, yuh, yuh. And then it caught on fire. They turned the fire extinguisher to that engine and pulled it because the canister that holds the chemicals is under the pilot's seat, the co-pilot. And the hoses blew out in the cockpit and asphyxiated the pilot, the co-pilot, and the flight engineer. And that plane sat there and burned, and they had to go in and break in

and pull those men out of there, and they were hurt really bad, broke their arms and legs. They had to throw them down the ladders 20 feet to get them out of there on that burning plane, and it burned right there on the salt flats. Wow. So I know my daughter saw that. Well, that's interesting because we had spoken a little bit about visions. Some of these things, yes.

Before and during the break. What do you attribute that to? I don't know, but people's had them. The Bible's full of them. You look at them, they're just there. I just think I'd like people to look at Ezekiel like 38, 39. We're facing a war. We're going to have a war with Russia, Israel.

Don't believe it, just read it. Where people have to go out and mark them bones and clean the land. Yeah. And we'll burn the fuel of this invading army. What could it be? It was written nearly 2,700 years ago. You see, the people have them, and I certainly have them. Do you have any other ones?

Yes. I was arrested in Australia, and I had the vision two weeks before it happened. It happened exactly like I saw it. And then I was up in Long Park Penitentiary and Mari was visiting. She visited me every Monday. She brought color to that place.

It was a maximum security prison. Somebody killed there every month. 12 years. It was a bad place. Just a bad place. I saw guards get killed. I slipped around in the blood. People got around in the blood. People got killed in front of me. Man cut another man's heart out and ate his heart,

and then they moved me in that cell. It was vicious. Wow. But I saw my friends laying in glass and blood and all the windows blown out, and I told all of them, it's coming. I told them, I had a chaplain, I told him, I said, it's coming, I have seen it. And so I saw the guards on the back putting handcuffs on people. And we was in the visiting room, and the blacks had a rapper to come in.

And she had a slit all the way up the side of her skirt, and she was rapping black bond bondage black bondage and those boys tried to get on the stage to touch her and her bodyguards was getting them and they're coming immediately and a white guard came up to stop it there was only one in there and they put a microphone in his head down he went and it was it was on so we was in the visiting room, and here they are, helicopters overhead. They must have had highway patrolmen and police from all over the state coming in, 1,400 men fighting. Some of the guys that had tried to blow up the trade center there back in 91, there were five or six of them in there.

And they grabbed a little guard and drug her in her cell, and they said she broke those windows. Scream. They dropped cans of boiling water on the guards, and there was a pool table, and they'd take those pool panels and throw them, and they'd bounce off the wall, and they'd take those pool panels and throw them and they'd bounce off the wall and they'd get them again. It was going on. They came in with concussion grenades

and all kinds of stuff. They blew 10,000 windows out of that place. Wow. I guess 9 or 10 o'clock they let me go escorting Mari out. We had a visit, I guess, 14 hours. I don't know how long.

We couldn't leave the visiting room. Those guards would come in there to resuit up, and they was all bloody. Go back. Oh, my God. And so they put two guards on me and handcuffed me and took me back to M unit, maximum unit in the maximum unit. And there, laying in the glass and the blood, was exactly the same people, my friend Bill, Big Jim. No kidding. Just exactly like I'd seen it in the glass and the blood, was exactly the same people, my friend Bill.

Big Jim. No kidding. Just exactly like I'd seen it in the vision. When would you have these visions? Usually about two weeks before it happens. What would you be doing? Middle of the day? Nighttime?

I'd be sleeping. Dreams? Dreams. It wasn't dreams, though. For sure, I have dreams, but it wasn't dreams. Dreams? Dreams. It wasn't dreams, though, for sure. I have dreams, but it wasn't dreams.

What would it be like when you would come out of the vision? You just wake up and you know you've just been somewhere. You've seen it. You've definitely been through, scientists call it a wormhole, but it's not as prophetic visions. Well, sure, we can. I'm sure that there's people that meditate, do that. And the strangest thing that ever happened to me in my life in that sort of thing, I landed

at Orange County Airport, and I had a business there of land development, but I wanted to see somebody at the airport or in a five-star hotel across the street from the airport. And I walked across. It was a rather cold Wednesday morning, let's say. And I went up to the desk, and there was a nice-looking woman, about 30 years old, blonde hair and page boy cut, and she had kind of powdery skin. And I thought, I think that book was out, Women Are From Venus and of powdery skin. And I thought, I think that book

was out, women are from Venus and men are from Mars. And I thought, boy, she looked like she's from Venus. And I went on and spoke to the lady behind the desk, and it was a cut glass bowl of apples. And I wanted one, but I wasn't a guest, and I was ashamed to get one. But when I turned around, I spoke to the pretty lady, and I said, hello. hello excuse me sir and I stopped she said I know you and I laughed like I do and I said I don't believe I've ever met you do I know I'd remember so she said no and tears come out of her eyes he said no I know you and I said perhaps if it if so I've forgotten I'm sorry but my name is Roger Reeves. And we shook hands. So she's flesh and blood. And she said, will you come across the lobby here with me?

And I thought, this is strange. And we walked across together and there was a large lobby, nobody there. And there was a little ensemble with leather sofas and a green hood and a little fire and she sat down and she says just sit on the little thing and she said will you take both my hands and close your eyes and tell me what you see oh i get cold chill all over me when i tell this story wow i'm in war i'm in another dimension i'm a'm an officer, and I'm in a cage as big as this room, and it's all been from mining. It's a cave with rocks, and there's rough tables, there's lanterns. So it was maybe World War I.

I don't know World War II. And there I am with a hat on, like the cap, and I can't see my eyes, hat on like the cap and I can't see my eyes but I have a grease coat on and I can see where the epilepsy were any in sigma I had I was certainly an officer had been taken off because those were snipers targets and I remember I had boots and the thing came down and yeah I had a good look at it and there was sandbags out the front of it and there was a long row of them and some kind of metal across the top, and it was like eight feet tall. And just outside the door of it there, a shell hit, and it hit so hard, the sand almost looked like it got in my eyes,

and the cordite flew. I could smell it. It was all in my nose. And I walk there as it clears up, and there's a young soldier in that rubble. And I pick him up, and I'm walking on air. And I'm just taking one step at a time, and I'm saying, Medic! Medic! Medic! And I look at the young soldier's face. He's dead.

And it's the face of the woman that I'm holding hands with. And I have no memory of that day. From that, it was erased. Otherwise, I'd ask her, what is your name? Who are you? Wow. How did that happen? I'm 80 years old and never before or after anything so unbelievable happened to me.

That's incredible. And it wasn't long ago I had another thing that happened to me, and I would like to, if anybody knows, to tell me how to do it, if it's possible. I had a daytime vision, and it was a vision of a physics formula. And it was on a grid, and it kept sliding down to the left bottom quadrant, and I kept pushing it up. And whatever it was told me to memorize this because it's extremely important. It's what physicists are looking for all over the world.

And I turned to get a pen to write it after I memorized it, and it vanished like a dream. So I've been to two supposedly, well, certainly good hypnotists, and neither one of them, I want to know, is it possible to take me back to look at that again? And neither one of them could hypnotize me. So that's the strangeness other than my endeavors of life that this happened to me. Wow. I've had visions.

Well, I wouldn't say visions. I would say intuitions before. You've got to kind of, if you're there and you see it and it's bright and you're there, it's a vision. Intuition is I think I've been there, I see something, oh I've seen that before. That's that. But when you're there,

it's bright and you're there. You can smell it and see it and taste it and feel it. Yeah, I haven't had anything that vivid. But I've had I can't make sense out of any of it. I've had it where I'll mention somebody's name and then they call

like right away several times and when I say mention somebody's name it's not like I mention my wife's name and then she calls me because she calls me 50 times a day I'll mention somebody's name that I haven't thought about,

I haven't talked to, don't even have their number, maybe haven't seen them in 10 years. And then, bam, we'll get an email in through the website or a text, a phone call

from a mutual friend. It happens all the time. You know? There's something to it. We are spirits in flesh. I know that. Yeah. And we may

be eternal and uh mary wheeler wilcox i believe i believe it beautiful poet many years ago she had the same thing and just one one line of her saying she said and you never can tell what your thoughts will do and bring in your love or hate for thoughts are things with airy wings. They're speedier than carrier doves. So they speed over the track to bring you back whatever went out of your mind. How very true. Interesting. You had mentioned something about, have you ever looked into psychedelics? No, I never have. I've never taken any drugs. I don't do drugs at all. You've never done any drugs? No, I've have. I've never taken any drugs. I don't do drugs at all. You've never done any drugs?

No, I've tried a little bit, but I'm like Clinton. I didn't inhale. No, I don't like them. I like myself like I am. I smoked a little pot one time. I did cocaine just to see what it was like. It was a nice feeling, but I don't want to be that way. Well, they say psychedelics, you know, you really tap into your inner self.

They tell me that. And I read those books, a really good one, A Chemical Love Affair. I believe it was like those boys up there. It's good. And a peyote, I know people see things. Yeah, certainly they do. Maybe you could get that vision again if you... I would try it with that. Somebody chained me to a cactus,

so I can't do no harm to myself or whatever. I'm scared of that stuff. Yeah, I am too. I did it, but I did it for some healing stuff. But about six months ago, it changed a lot of aspects of my life for the better. Did it really? Okay, I've heard that too, really. And Washington State, I believe, was opened up. And people said, Roger, go up there and grow that stuff.

Yeah, well, yeah, it cleaned me out. I haven't had a drink in six months since that. Oh, good. And a lot of self-healing stuff. Learned a lot about myself, and you will have visions on that. But anyways, moving on. You kind of had mentioned some reincarnation type stuff too. That was the one with the woman.

That's the only thing I ever had. That was so profound until how can you... You can't dismiss it. It's just something happened to a person that never even thought about such a thing. I've had two out-of-the-body experiences.

Completely out-of-the-body. I'd just come up and walk over here and go over there and come up and look in your ear if I wanted to. Do you see yourself? Yes, I watch myself breathing. All right, I got to hear this too. Let's dive into that. I've done it twice.

And Bill Monroe writes a book about it called Out of the Body. I believe, I don't know what it is. But anyhow, it's a real good book. And if you're asleep with your head turned due north, he says you're five times more likely to have one. So I had to. Hold on. If you sleep with your head due north,

you're five times more likely to have an out-of-the-body experience. And they do it now with a sound in water, and they've got sound for you to help you do this. Mine happened naturally. Okay. I'll tell you, the more vivid one that lasted a long time, I guess lasted as long as I wanted it to. I was working on the railroad.

I was a fireman on a diesel electric. And it's just me and the engineer up in there. And I think we had 217 loads of stumps, of them gondolas going from Waycross, Georgia to Brumdrick to the big Hercules Powder Company. They made gunpowder out of those things. The lighter stumps were the pine stumps that were left. Pine stumps are left there from 1,000 years ago.

So I had taken a car out to a cousin of mine in Oklahoma, and I drove it out there, and then I had to get back, and I get to work. So I'd been asleep, been awake, except for a nap here and there, but I had to go to work. So I mean, I had that job. It was a good job on the railroad. When the trains run, you got to be there. So I showed up, and I remember my engineer was Mr. Wendell Davis. He was a sport, the nicest fellow. Anyhow, we hooked seven of those great big diesel engines together and started off with that load of stumps across the Ofakunoki Swamp, and it was raining. And I believe there's a million candle power on the front of those engines, and they go in a figure eight to warn possums or deer or people or cars, and they go like that, just almost enchanting, you know, just.

And the rain was coming down at an angle, and it was just hitting the windshield like diamonds, and the windshield wipers was going, then when that thing was going like that and I just came out of my body I mean completely out of it and I thought wow and I went up to look at myself and look at myself I had my eyes open and I was still looking and I looked at myself I was breathing and I floated across the engines are 10 10 12 feet wide went up there Mr. Davis I looked right in, I could see the pimples where he had dug them out of his face

when he was a kid, could see all that. I went up in, I looked outside, I looked at all the gauges kind of red, and I knew that I could just go wherever I wanted to. And I went up, sat on the radio, and I thought, I'll watch this scene for a while, I'm out of my body. And then after a while, I mean,

I thought, I wonder if I'm dead and when I did a bam I was right back in my body that's that's happened twice to me and that you can do you can have out of the body you can work at it and have that for sure don't and you can learn to travel I understand what was it what was the other one another time that I was uh me and another boy had a log truck, and the fuel pump broke on it. And so I laid across the chassis, and I'm blowing into that 55-gallon drum, and I'm breathing that gasoline fumes.

And I had to keep pressure on it to keep the make that thing it was an 18 wheeler with all them wheels behind me and I'm laying across

things going 80 miles an hour down the highway and the back window was out of that thing must have been 1938 or something it was old and it slowed down

blow Roger blow blow and the wind blowing and I became I came out of my body and I just get to just come right up there in the cockpit this thing I read the signs as we came by then he stopped I was unconscious and he pulled me off of that I could see him doing it Wow I could see him doing it. Wow. You got to look into psychedelics. All right. You got to look into it.

I'm going to send you some information. A lot of people have those type of experiences on psychedelics. And I swear, it's like a veil. It's just lifted up, and you just see so much more than what you normally do and everything makes sense. It's really, it's, my psychedelic experience is one of the most profound experiences of my life. All right, that's strong. Yeah, and I don't say that lightly.

That's strong. Yeah. And I don't say that lightly. No. And mine, these visions I have, I certainly just like honor them. It's just like, all right, I'm blessed. Sacred. Yes. Wow.

Wasn't expecting to have that conversation. I wasn't either. But yeah, I got to send you some stuff on psychedelics. Oh, good. It's the stuff that, yeah, it's not the party drug that was going on in the 60s and 70s. There's some real benefits to that stuff. But anyways, let's move back into Columbia. All right.

I was at my house, and there's a wonderful old airplane sailman named Cameron. And he came to my house with a really nice-looking lawyer from Bogota, Columbia, and they wanted to know that if they sent a ship up, if somebody wanted a ship, would I unload it? And how much? It was 65 tons. Well, how much are you paying? I don't know.

We made it. And so they said yes, so I made an agreement. Of course I unloaded it. I'd be happy to unload it. You have to go out with small boats and get that thing 20 miles over the horizon where up you. So they said, but but now he came up once before and the people didn't unload him so he's shy he wants the gasoline money for the diesel

to come up and so you have to put up 65 000 for a guarantee that you'll be there and i thought that's strange but my airplanes cost more than that now on every trip. And I said, well, I won't be risking any more than the normal risk. So I gave those two shysters $65,000 and they left. And of course, I didn't hear from them anymore. So I had the cards for the lawyer's address in Bogota. So I got on a flight, $65,000, enough to go look about at that time. It still is today. So I had the cards for the lawyer's address in Bogota. So I got on a flight. It was $65,000, enough to go look about at that time. It still is today. So I went, and he was the nicest. Oh, I give it to the man in some big tale.

So he says, but I'll tell you what. You can make so much more money with the cocaine. I said, I don't want to fool with cocaine. Man, there's so much money how much money he said oh a million or two dollars two million dollars a trip they'll pay you now what let's go talk to these folks so we his wife was a work with avianca and so we got on a flight went to medellin colombia and at that time that airplane landed right downtown i mean the wings almost touched apartment buildings on both sides whoo those 707 it just shook terribly what year is this 19 1980 1980 so uh we go to a beautiful condominium

and we go to the top and it just looks out on verdict jungle and just across the whole city and then I didn't you never could see a scenery so pretty. And there was a man in there. I'd say that he was a modern-day Winston Churchill, just a pure genius, sloppy drunk. And he could talk any language you wanted to speak with him. And he slurred, yeah, and he said, yes, I got old cocaine you want to haul. Anything.

I pay $5,000 a kilo. Go see Marta. That was his wife. Go see Marta. But anyhow, while he was in there, the most strange thing happened. There was a woman came in with her two bodyguards, muscled up little fellas. And she was wearing a rabbit fur hat and a rabbit fur jacket in the tropics and boots rabbit fur in a miniskirt and she she kissed him on both cheeks she ain't paying

us no attention and uh she's sonia de atila from santa cruz bol. High cheekbones, was Indian looking. Kind of a pretty woman. And so, Fernando asked her what she's doing. I'm on my way to Miami to buy an airplane. Well, that lawyer, Roberto Davila, he was rather smart. And he said, Roger has an airplane for sale. Oh, now she sees me. What kind of airplane do you have? And I thought, I had several airplanes. I said, I have a Queen Air. Queen Air? Oh, now she sees me. What kind of airplane do you have? And I thought, I had several airplanes.

I said, I have a Queen Air. Queen Air? Oh, Queen Air. She liked the idea of having a Queen Air. She said, how much you want for the airplane? And Roberta's going like this. So Queen Air is a really pretty nice airplane, beach craft, but two or three of them, the wings burned off all at one time

within a few months or a year or so, and they just grounded them. So I bought several of them, about $50,000 a piece, and it was a $300,000 airplane. And I had a mechanic. There was just one hose that was giving trouble. And so it had tanks in the inside. She said, okay, if I like it, I'll buy it. Bring it to me.

I said, listen, you give me $5,000, I'll have somebody bring it down today. She said, give the man $5,000. So her little bodyguard came up and gave me $5,000. And I called my friend David, and he flew it down to Panama. So we went to Panama to see it. And there it came. Oh, it looked good. You could see it looked like an airliner coming in.

And, oh, she got in it, and she just played pretend driving her queen there. And so she said, okay, I'll buy it. Said, but you got to go to Santa Cruz to get your money. Oh, boy. So we loaded up with a whole bunch of her people, and we take off way too many for the plane. And we take off and go to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, across the jungle. And we land in Santa Cruz, and the policemen were there, and they put the flags on their old cars,

and they led her through the streets. She's a black widow of Bolivia. Wow. She's a cocaine queen. So we go out under the water tank, I remember, and she had a house made of marble, big old marble slabs. And it was new, and so she had recently made her money. And there was a chain link fence around the place with kind of a homemade gate.

And she had about 10 or 12 servants, and they were all out at that gate crying and wringing their hands and just going on. And she, what's the matter with you fools? What's the crazy? Your lion is eating the baby. What? So she runs in the house, and I go in with her, and she's got this mountain lion, and he's eating a baby on the floor,

and he's only left just like a diaper and some shit in the head. And she grabs that lion with blood all over his mouth. Oh, Tommy, ay-yi-yi. She puts him in another room, and she goes out there. Out of here, you idiot. I don't want to see your face again. Leave a baby on the floor in front of a line. She had no sympathy whatsoever.

Was it her baby? No, it was one of the maid's babies. She didn't have any babies. But, yeah, the mountain lion, it ate the maid's baby. Holy shit. So I saw that right in front of me, that mess, what she saw there. So she was just a terrible person. I got my money and got out of there.

I don't ever want to go back. I'll bet. They offered me to fly Ether from Panama down there where they make it. Ether was extremely dangerous, but they was paying a huge amount of money, a million dollars a load, and that was just legal. But that stuff gets to leaking, and it blows up, and it burned a lot of people to death. Damn.

But I'll tell you another lion story. I would love to hear it. We're going to back up to marijuana days. All right. Mexico? Mexico to Juan's ranch. All right. The goat ranch.

Anyway, I... A lion on a goat ranch. Worse than that. I landed there and I said, Juan, is there anywhere that we could grow marijuana A lion on a goat ranch. Worse than that. I landed there, and I said, one, is there anywhere that we could grow marijuana here in the middle of Baja that I wouldn't have to go over Oaxaca and Guatemala and wherever and buy it? He said, there's a place maybe where we can go, but you need to spend the night here.

So I spent the night in a hammock, and then we got up the next morning from fast mules. I mean, them mules are fast, young, fast-talking mules. And we went to walking. And we went by a mesa. And he says, I killed two big lions here last week. What? He said, yes, I was hunting deer, and I rolled the rocks off down in the bushes. And the deer run out, and I shoot them, and that's what we eat.

But he said, this day, two big mountain lions ran out. And he said, killed them both? Yes, I killed them both. I said, what did you do with them? Like I was saving the hike. We ate them. You ate them? Yes, it was very good.

What? Yeah. So we rode them. He was on, and we stopped for lunch. We stopped in a mason, and it had rained sometime before, and it was just a paradise of flowers everywhere you looked. It was just like riding through heaven. It was so beautiful on those mules. And this dry cactus stops, and we stopped, and he had a stack of tortillas and a

package of sausage, and he took them tortillas out, and the great big fly just made him one of them. He just took it and threw it away, and he broke this cactus up and made a little white flame. You couldn't even see it. Well, the dried cactus burned. He put them tortillas on it and heated them up and took that sausage and put it in there and rolled it up. Man, we ate them.

I must have ate a dozen of them. I said, that's good meat, Mike. One, what is it, Leon? So I had lineon for lunch. Nice. That two-line story. So I guess it is good. I guess he put all the peppers in there, whatever.

You couldn't tell the difference. Couldn't tell the difference in a house, Cat. Wow. You've got all kinds of stories. So I'll get back to how I got in the cocaine business. So this Fernando, Fernando, yeah, I can't remember his name. And I went to see his wife, Marjorie, and she said, he'll sober up one day and he's got all you can do. He's got tons of marijuana. So I was in Belize and I called down there and I said, Fernando's having a birthday party over on the Pacific.

So come, Avianca is flying the people over to it. So I flew down and I think I flew commercially. I know I did. And so I got there and they flew me over in one of those island shorts, care about 40 people, they used to be around, you don't see them anymore. And they flew over a verdant landscape out of Medellin and down and somewhere between Panama and Columbia. It was just that there's no roads over there, wasn't any. And they landed uphill, and it must have been a mile-long runway. They must have been loading stuff like crazy.

And I met a couple on the plane, a beautiful couple, and she spoke English. And so we became friends on the plane going over, and we got out. And there was a river running in, and there was a log house there. They would barbecue and hogs and goats and cows and all kinds of stuff. And they had little houses on stilts 10 feet up to get out of the waves. But I didn't get one of them. I got where the workers stay, a bunk in that. But anyway, I'm walking on the beach with a woman just come up to me,

and she was in poor clothes like she was from the slums. But she was very nice and very quiet. He says, I have no idea. I've never been in a helicopter before. The man invited me to come, and I don't know how I know. So then the couple are coming, and this Matilda, she said, Roger, Mario says that you're walking with the girlfriend of the most vicious killer in Colombia. He suggests that you get away from her.

Oh, shit. So we kind of come to the end of the beach, and I excuse myself, and she went on her way. Anyhow, that night, people came there from all over. That was where the Medellin cartel started. They decided that so many people were killed until they all got together to have a huge party. And so they stopped killing each other. 10,000 people were killed there a month. If you had 10 kilos and you gave it to one and he's got some pilot going to take it to New York and, well, 10 kilos or 40 kilos got busted in New Jersey. So sorry.

Bang, bang. That was what was happening by wholesale. So they said, all right, particularly the Ochoas and Escobar and Gacho, Carlos later, they said, we're going to make an insurance policy and transportation. The price of cocaine at that time was $50,000 in New York. It was $10,000 in Columbia. For what? A kilo?

For cocaine per kilo. Okay. 2.2 pounds. So you give it to us here, we will deliver it to your man in Miami for $10,000. If it gets busted anywhere, for any reason it's lost, we will replace it here in Columbia. You can't lose. So they got 100 tons put on them real quick.

So that was the beginning of it. So I was there. Anyhow, the pretty girl got shoved in on me. Bam! That night, about midnight. Uh-oh. Here comes this guy, and he's angry. I guess she won't sleep with him, and he's telling her to sleep with me.

So anyway, that was the beginning of that, and his friends got around him, like, whoa, man. But anyway, that's when I met the people with the Mario that knew all the people. So we went back, and I think that kind of seemed as old. So all the important people with their planes and helicopters left. It was about two days, and we had stand-up comedians, police chiefs from all over the city and I mean they had they were skits and it was it was big. So they left and I think it was only four men there and I was I was laying behind the house again just like the other and I was reading a book, the M.M.K.'s, and I was in a hammock having some barbecued goat. Pow! Pow! And blood spattered on me and all on that book page. I rolled out of that hammock, must have rolled 20 feet because it was real close and it was a big

pistol. And I looked up and there's a young black man, look like about 25 years old, handsome fella. And there's a white Columbian there about 55 or 60 years old. And he's got a big 38. And that black young man tears that pistol out of the man's hand and just tears it out of his hand and puts that gun between his eyes. It goes click, click, click, click, click.

There was no more bullets than he took. And I looked and there was a dog that had been shot in the head. And I guess he was turning and the blood was a dog that had been shot in the head and i guess he was turning and the blood was flying and that's what got on the book but then i looked at the the young black man and he's done ashen he'd been shot right there and his femoral artery's been cut and the blood was just gushing down he's holding it yeah and i said i i have some training in first aid on the fire department.

And I said, I'm a doctor. I can help you. And he put that gun at me. So anyhow, he went hobbling on back. I had my friend Mario. We went and tried to talk to him. And he went on back down there and died. And so then, oh, you could hear those people back there under those trees. La, crying. And so the night got there and there

was only four of us men. And one of them was a tall airline pilot and he just went to crying. I've seen some cowards in my life. So he was one of them. And Matilda had a pistol, so I stayed kind of close to her. And so we was at that old log house, and just four men and those women, and the lights went out. And I went back in there with a flashlight, and the generator, the gas tank had been filled up with water and sand. Those black people had come, and they said, there's going to be some killing before daylight.

Well, we got little cans and put kerosene in them Put twisted little wicks, put around there in the bugs What a buggy night we spent Anyway, the soldiers came and rounded us all up And got the guy that did the shooting And he went to take a shower And he escaped out the back The runway's covered with logs and drums and airplanes flying. Anyhow, they finally get it worked out and we get out of there.

But I get back to Medellin, and I meet up with Mario Matilda, and he said, listen, I want to introduce you to some people. So he took me up to a little town called Envigada. That's where he lived too. And we went up a winding mountain road, real pretty, with the old bromeliads in the trees and a gate open. He was allowed in and we went up a stony road to a little, they called them fincas, a little farm.

There there was people out there in their old fedora hats. There was a hitching rail in an old house i bet it's two or three hundred years old i'll see and and it was sagging but it was beautiful black museum and we were ushered right in amongst all those people and there was a really pretty woman and they asked us for a wanted coffee or tea and she made us a cup of coffee in a pretty little cup. There was a hole in the floor. We had to walk around that, and it was just shiny.

And went in to see Jorge Ochoa. And a mighty nice fellow. Spoke English. And he had 12 telephones on the big desk. And he was proud to show me. He said, this is New York, this is Seattle, this is Chicago. When they ring, I know what's happening. And so then after he asked me what kind of airplanes I had, and I told him, and what kind of experience. And he was happy. He said, well, I got all the work you can do. And we pay $5,000 a kilo. And first load, we'll put 300 in. So that's one and a half million dollars

for an eight-hour flight. So he said, let me call my partner over. So he sent the pretty woman next door in that old house, and in come Pablo Escobar, and he asked the same things, and he did the same thing, shook hands and said, got all the work you want. Did you have any idea who these guys were at the time? No. They were just regular people. And Jorge Ochoa still is.

He's a gentleman. He owes me $3.5 million. He don't want to talk to me, but he's still all right. Because his people in Miami said I was paid, so he's saying I'm clear. But he's not. He owes it. It wasn't him. I went to prison, and he owed me.

He should pay me. Well, before we get into recovering your $3.5 million, let's take a quick break. All right. Real good. Serious question. Who wants to take the best shit of their entire life? Right here. I do.

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order. Thank you Bubz Naturals for being a sponsor of the Sean Ryan Show. Alright Roger, we're back from the break. You had just met Ochoa and he's bringing in his business partner El Jefe. Yeah, Jorge was

a spoke English and he called the pretty woman, I mean she was pretty and called her in and spoke in Spanish. So she went next door and come back with a gentleman, plaid shirt and khaki pants, all iron, very nice. And Jorge introduced me to Pablo Escobar. Pablo Escobar is a guy 5'8", 180 pounds. And so he asked me about what kind of airplanes I had

and my experience flying across the border, and I told him that I had a DC-3, a Beach-18, a turboprop aero commander, and that I'd done over 100 loads of marijuana. So he seemed pleased with it and said that they paid $5,000 a kilo and that I hauled all I wanted to. So we just had a nice little chat there, and he didn't seem anything unusual except a businessman that was next door.

Who was Pablo at the time? Nobody ever heard of him. So this is very, very beginning days. Yes. He hadn't made a name. He wasn't the richest man in the world. I never heard of him. So this is very, very beginning days. Yes. He hadn't made a name. He wasn't the richest man in the world. Never heard of it. Were you nervous?

Not a bit. Why would I be? I mean, I just, people ask that. But it was just like if I was on the truck and I went into a trucking company and asked for, let's get a contract, meet a haul from stuff across country. It wasn't anything. And I was looking for cargo. Before, I'd been looking for marijuana, and it got hard to find in Mexico with all the heat that was there.

So I had to move further afield. Did it bother you that you were getting into stronger narcotics than marijuana? Not so much. At that time, back in 1980, the cocaine was pure. It was made with ether and rather fluffy, looked like big footballs, twisted on the end. And only the rich people were doing it. And I don't know if you know that up until not long ago, it was considered a non-narcotic control substance. So they didn't consider cocaine a narcotic.

A narcotic has to be something like cigarettes or heroin that you want, your body craves. Okay. If it's mentally addictive, like a lot of things gambling sex all these things But they're not they're not narcotics So I understand that The CIA invented crack. I don't know that they did but in the book the big white lie by

Clavel James Clavel he was a top DEA agent Big White Lie by Clavel, James Clavel. He was a top DEA agent. He accuses them of it and said they put it in every city in the United States in the black communities to sell their cocaine because they're bringing in 10-ton loads. And so at that time, it become the most narcotic substance in the world. They said, you take a few hits of that and you're addicted. It puts all the endorphins in your brain until you want it again.

Why does he say that they, why does he say the CIA got involved with that? What's his reasoning? There was a group of people in the CIA. I don't believe it was a whole group of them, but they wanted to sell cocaine. And that, boy, I mean, it just went rapid. And now it is a narcotic. And I don't know until that time if anybody had ever died of cocaine. And even today, with all the people that are in prison,

I'd like to just say that for cocaine, compared to cigarettes or alcohol, it doesn't even register. If you looked at a chart, it might, yeah, there's some people, and anybody, one person dies. I don't want any person to hurt anybody. But if you talk about doing the greatest evil, things on earth, it's just like, look what's doing the evil.

Yeah. Look at the sugar and all the people and the trouble we have and the billions and trillions of dollars in health care that we have just from the sugar industry and the things that's mislabeled. Do you realize that up to 400,000 people die each year in the hospital from misdiagnosed drug mistakes? That might be somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000. Now, that's a lot of people.

You look at half a million people from cigarettes. And here it is. The government's got their money. And look at the devastation that alcohol does. I don't want to take away alcohol but if alcohol kills 100 people and and something else kills one in a million why in the world don't you go after the after the cause and it's just educate people it's what's happening yeah this business you know i i saw on the news that uh cocaine col, Columbia is trying to legalize cocaine right now.

Or at least it's... It's devastated their country. 10,000 a year being murdered over it back in 1980. Yeah. I was surprised to see it. But, yeah, I've seen it in a couple different headlines now. And over the past week, they've been saying that they're trying to legalize cocaine down there they did in bolivia and they made they really making lipstick and face cream and all kinds of stuff yeah so uh i went uh i'd like to tell you how the uh

i think i might have already told you about the insurance company that they formed down there, and those fellows did and started. So they had just, so I went and got my airplane and flew down, and I landed at a banana plantation. And it was a long clay strip, and it was raining. And they put 300 kilos in there. And then they put the ugliest man you've ever seen, Neymar Hinaldo, and he got in the backseat of that airplane with a MAC-10 pistol.

He's going to make sure I went to Louisiana. Well, I took off. That fool didn't know I could have went to Argentina. He didn't know which way was north and south. There was no doubt in my mind. But anyway, we took off, and the little wheels on that airplane kicked up the mud, and the wheel wells are large, and it filled completely up with mud. I mean, I was weighted down with a load of mud, and the wheels wouldn't come up.

So here I am dragging along 100 miles an hour slower than I'm supposed to go. We are not going to Maitland Scam. So we got up about 1,000 miles with the wheels hanging down, and I told him, I said, we've got to land. I've got to strip in Belize that I can stop and clean this out and get some fuel. And, boy, he put that MAC-10 pistol in my head. No, no, I'll kill you. You're going to Louisiana, going to Louisiana.

I said, well, go ahead and shoot, fool. You're going to Louisiana, go into Louisiana. I said, well, go ahead and shoot, fool. You're going to die too right now. So we landed, and he was all upset. And there was a farm that had a nice long runway, Carter Ranch up in the Orange Walk. And old Mr. Carter there, he was a friend of mine, and he sent the boy out to wash the plane, and we went in with this guy, Ronaldo,

and I remember we had a nice big meal, and they cleaned the plane, filled it up with fuel. We took on off and went on into New Orleans and went on into Louisiana and landed. I landed on Interstate 10. That was the best landing strip ever made. They were making that thing all the way across country, and it took them 10 years going across Louisiana and Texas. And at Mississippi River, there was a counter-liver bridge, and about five miles from it, they had a detour, big red flashing lights, just like at the end of a runway.

I'd come over those and land on that runway. It was five miles long. Holy cow. And have the guy there with a truck to unload me. How fast would it take to unload? Five minutes, something like that. That's it? Oh, yeah.

So from wheels down to wheels back up, how much time? I would come in like a hawk. I mean, just silent and touchdown. And then the truck would come out the bushes and we'd throw it in. And the truck would leave, and I'd give him plenty of time before I took off because I'm going to make a lot of racket when I leave. And then I would go over across Lake Pontchartrain land, and then I'd get in the car and go back over there and scrub the tire marks out where I had landed because I wanted to do it over and over again. I didn't want the police sitting there waiting on me.

So you would be wheels down for a little bit? Yes, maybe 15 minutes till he got out of there. 15 minutes till he got out then? Then I'd take off. And as soon as he got back on the freeway, I knew he'd be back on the freeway in five, 10 minutes. So as soon as he got back into traffic, I'd be all right. I'd take off and make a lot of racket.

And I did that all the way across Texas. I just landed that interstate 10 as they built it. I had a big old truck. I was doing marijuana. It was because Antiques Unlimited down the side. Halfway down the truck, it was packed with nice antiques. You opened that back door, slid it up. The chairs and stuff would just try to fall out on you. We had bungee cords on them to hold them in. And then we had a wall built across there. I did it. And it was smell proof. It was sealed right up to the top. And then underneath by the driveway, I had cut four boards out and made a plate on the floor. And then I had a rack over the top of it so the marijuana couldn't fall on it. And we'd get under there by that driveway and shove that stuff up in the truck. I could put three tons in the front part of that truck.

Holy cow. And haul it all over the country. It didn't matter. We never even got stopped. But if you did get stopped, they're not going to take all that, unload all that furniture, not unless they already know. They're not just going to do it just as a normal talk. When would the payment happen?

When you land? Okay, on the cocaine? Yes. It would be about, marijuana and all was a week or two. Cocaine was usually about two weeks. So after I did the first 300 load, I went back and I said, it'll hold 500. No, no, senor, your good luck is 300. So they'd only put 300 on me. And so I was making, it was an eight hour trip in a turboprop air commander.

I was making one and a half million dollars for an eight hour trip. And I said, when do you want me to come back? We're waiting on you, senor. Just anytime I wanted to land there, I could have gone every day. But they'd get up about $7 million they owed me, and I'd stop. I ain't going to go no more until you pay me. $7 million? That's all the credit I'd give them. Okay, so how many loads would you do in a month? Later on, I did about one a week.

One a week? Uh-huh. So you're making about? About $6 million. $6 million a month? Yeah. What are you doing with that money? Piling it up.

Where do you put it? I buried it, and I bought farms with it, and I bought corn. I like buying rare corns. I bought the Brasher de Blum, and right now that thing's worth over $10 million, about the size of a quarter. Wow. It was made for George Washington by a guy named Brasher. He was the architect for Washington, D.C.

So those are valuable little coins. That was the best I did. And I bought land. I got into real estate investment. I had 21 oil wells. I bought airplanes and houses and mansions and anything else, but I always had to put them in other people's name.

And guess what? That money just doesn't come back to you. You give suitcases or suitcases to some good investor, and it's just like it's got wings on it flying away. I never saw one come back. How much money, if you don't mind me asking, at the height of your career, how much money, what were you worth? What was your net worth? I remember $60 million.

$60 million? What year? 1982. I wonder what the equivalent of $60 million today would be. Probably, I don't know, probably at least two times, double that. So probably $150 million, something like that, $200 million, I don't know. Well, I mean, a lot of things tripled with this new guy in office. But it don't buy anything.

Yeah, right. But, yeah, that would be interesting to know. $60 million. Did you trust anybody to manage it? I trusted everybody. You did? That was the mistake, huh? You can't.

When Mario and I first went out to California, we got a job. We were still living with my sister for a few months, and so we got a job managing a 40-unit department building. This guy, Jack Tripp, was a nicest man, and he said, now, Roger and Murray, I got something to tell you now when you got this job. Just remember that people are no damn good, and give them a chance and they'll prove it. We thought, how awful.

But after a lifetime in this business, I kind of think, Jack, I believe you knew something I didn't know. You give somebody a million dollars and he's going to figure out every which way in the world not to ever give it back to you. Particularly if you go to jail. Bye-bye. What was your most prized, other than the coin, what was your most prized investment? Wow. We had a couple of different homes in Santa Barbara. I bought a place up on Mission Ridge that was 16,000 square feet, counting the basement and all.

And it was something. I mean, it was so pretty until it was just like it was almost sickening. It was so pretty. And it had been owned by the Catholic Church after a while. It made back in the early 1900s, 1900 to 1907, and that thing was something else, but it had been run down. It was really run down. And I went in, and the Catholic Church had had it,

and they had little cubicles in there for the nuns to live in, little cells. But they weren't even to the floor. They didn't even nail them down. And so I took those out and cleaned that floor and painted that place up and made it. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt had looked at it for the Western White House at one time. What? Yes. And so we lived there. And I just went up to the place the other day to knock on the door to see if they had that. And I took some pictures of it.

I'll show them to you. But that was a prized possession. I had to run off and leave that. And I walked out with the—I'm getting ahead of myself, but just on that one little story. I just—having the floor redone, and we had to go get something. And I got, I just had work clothes on. I was working right with the rest of them. And I went out with the floor cleaners and got in a blue van and drove out.

And about that time, 50 agents stormed through the place, kicking windows and doors in. It was already open. And my wife was in the bedroom with a baby, and they kept her at gunpoint all day long as they tore that house apart. We had beautiful stuff that was over 100 years old in there. They just took axes to the cherry wood interior, just cut it up.

She said they just scrubbed a bed across the floor and just made gouges. Oh, don't you. It ain't yours no more, lady. All that sort of stuff. It was just awful. It was a sacrilege what they did to that place. Damn. That was probably the nicest property I ever had.

Then I took an option to own every foot of land there, what's now the city called Moreno Valley, California. And, of course, I'd have been a billionaire if I could have held on to that. But I had to run off and leave all that. Did you sell it or did it get confiscated? No, I just had it. The man I had it in his name, he ran into the side of a mountain and got killed. And it was just like when that old hairy hand of fate turns against you,

it turns all the way against you, whichever way you turn. Damn. Well, back to Transport to Cocaine. Okay, so I got above the fog one night. I was coming out of Columbia with that, playing 300 miles an hour, and I got out there, and I couldn't get down. Like everywhere, I only had maybe an hour or so fuel left

when I got back. And there was fog from New York to Dallas. I mean, it was white. All the way up to Chicago, closed, closed, closed. Everything's closed. When the temperature and dew point come together, you will have visible moisture. So ain't no way to get around it. And it was exactly the same. So it looked like it was about 500 feet thick and full moon on top of it. And I'm sitting up there thinking, I'm going to die. I can't get down.

So my only thing was, and I'm not much of an instrument flyer, I'm just more of a crop duster type out in the jungle flying. Anyhow, I had to go out. The only choice I had to save my life was to go out and come down the glide slope to New Orleans International Airport and land on the airport plane at night while the airport is closed. Oh, shit. I sat there on that runway all night long, got out, I bounced down. When I got down, there was enough visibility

to see a little bit, so anyhow, I got it down. But to have that nervous, to sit there all night, I sat there, it must have been about 12 hours. And the next morning, the sun came out, and I could see the sun through the fog, but you couldn't see 100 feet, 200 feet in front of you, if that. So anyway, I thought security or anything might come around, check these runways out. And I'm sitting right in the middle.

I was kind of off to one side. So I couldn't stand it any longer. It looked like it was breaking up a little bit. And I took off and I went across Lake Pontchartrain, just 30 miles away, and I had a runway over there, St. Timothy Aviation. And I could see it through the broken fog, but it was still, I knew when I got in it, it was going to be blind.

So I just got off the end of it. It wasn't that long of a runway. And I pulled the power and pushed the nose down. And when I got that thing stopped, I knew I was finished. I had enough money. And I says, all right. So the fellow I gave the cocaine to in Miami, Lito, nice, this fellow. And I just says, I'm it.

Y'all pay me up, I'm through. Oh, no, Roger, no. Because they were making money by, when I give it to them, they was probably getting $1,000 a kilo or something from Escobar and them. So they had their old organization that was just letting them through. I'll back up a little bit and just tell you how I got it from Louisiana to Miami. I had to deliver it to Miami. So I had two people going to automobile auctions.

They're in Florida, around Orlando and Tampa, and they was buying three big LTD Fords or Marquis Mercurys because they had big trunks. And they put the air shocks on them and they put these tires that couldn't go flat and new hoses and fan belts. I said, i don't care if they look new put new ones on there we do not want this car to stop so then you could only get 100 kilos in the trunk of those cars because it was so fluffy and so had drivers to drive it and then the colombians i would give them the car i'd sell it to them for $5,000. They complained. I said, listen, man, you ain't going to get anybody else in the world that's going to get you

cars that can't be traced with all the paperwork on it. It's in great shape. So then they really liked it. I said, I don't want that car going to your stash house and coming back to me. I don't know who's looking at you. So, I suppose we bought hundreds of cars.

So over the time that I worked with them. So anyhow, they really liked the car deal. So that was something that I. So they says, don't you know anybody? Anyway, so I had met Barry Seal. And I'll tell you how I met Barry. I was looking for a place of my own about halfway between Columbia and the United States. And so I went to Honduras.

And I went to San Pedro Sula and took my wife and the children down there. And we went up into the mountains. There's a lake up there called Lake Azul, and it's really pretty, really, really wonderful place. And they have largemouth bass. And the largest largemouth bass was caught in Montgomery Lake, right close to my house, about five miles away. And there was some bigger than that washed up when they had an earthquake on that lake and I liked fish so I thought now that's

pretty so we went up and did look at her at a ranch and it was just it was just beautiful it's anyhow my wife didn't want to be up there so we decided we came on back and our clothes was all muddy and dirty from being up on that ranch for a few days. And we put them in the cleaners, and we had a reservation to fly back to New Orleans. So we went to the cleaners to get the clothes, and they said, oh, they're not ready. We'll have them in the morning.

So our plane's like at 9 o'clock. So I tell my wife, you go to the airport and get on the plane because it would be easier for me to get out and stand by. All the planes are full. Then it will be for all four of us. So I went to the cleaners and got the clothes, and there was a big stack of them all in there, plastic. And I got a taxi driver, and I said, go faster, go faster.

And I gave him $100 to go all the way faster, and he just blew the horn faster. He didn go faster, go faster. And I gave him $100 to go all the way faster. He just blew the horn faster. And we got to the airport and I jumped out of the taxi and went around the building and here's a brand new 727 taxiing out. And I waved with all the clothes on my back and I waved to the pilot and he waves back. And then I see Murray's face in the cockpit. And so I see the front tire. He puts on the brake and it goes down and he's laughing. And he puts the air stair out for me to get on. And then I come running for it and he takes off like it's a hitchhiker. And he gets up there a few feet and he stops again and laughed. Anyhow, he puts it all the way down and I get on the airplane with all those clothes on my back. Well, all the people just clapped real

big for me when I got on, and I went on back about halfway back, and my daughter Miriam, she was about nine years old, eight or nine years old. She was sitting in the middle, and I sit on the seat after I got those clothes taken away. And there was a man sitting there by the window. Nice-looking fellow, clear blue eyes. And I thought, oh, I wonder what he is down here. So the plane took off, and the wheels came up with a thud and went on a little bit further and got up about 5,000 feet, and they were just a little click, click.

And Miriam said, what was that, Dad? I said, he just turned his autopilot on. The fellow reaches over and he says, you fly these things, huh? I got a few hours, mister. My name's Barry Seal. How you doing? No kidding. I got talking to him. He said he just

got out of jail that morning. I said, uh-huh. I bet you did. Trying to get me to talk. I ain't saying nothing. So we went on, and we got to be big buddies. He said he just got out of jail that morning. What was your initial impression? Did you think he was a good guy? I thought for sure he was some kind of a government agent.

He just looked like he was princely. He looked. Well, he was. He wound up being one kind of man. Well, I know he wasn't. He probably was before that, too. But he just had a princely. He looked. Well, he was. He wound up being one kind of man. Well, I know he was, and he probably was before that, too. But he just had a princely look. He had a demanding presence.

Nice-looking fellow. And I didn't believe him a bit. But I talked. We talked flying and whatever. And he said he'd just gotten out of prison that morning. He'd got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine in Honduras, and they'd taken his airplane. He just volunteered all that, right?

Well, we just talked. Yeah, I reckon he did. On a flight? Just on the flight over. A little light conversation on the way home? Two or a couple hours. We had a nice chat across Miriam. So when he got out, I certainly didn't believe him.

I thought he was just fishing for information from me. Well, there was 15 people or more, maybe 20, meeting him when he got out. There was an old mother there, and there was a pretty wife and little children hanging on him and crying, grabbing his by the leg, Daddy, Daddy, and this and that. Man, he had tears in his eyes, and it's like, that sucker's telling the truth. and that. Man, he had tears in his eyes and it's like, that sucker's

telling the truth. So I wrote my name on a little piece of paper and I said, Barry, I may have some work for you and come out and see me in Santa Barbara. So I went out to Santa Barbara and he called and he came out.

So I told him what I had. I said, I might have some work flying Coal King. Yes, sir. He'd be interested in it. I said, well, let me see if you can fly or not. So I took him out, and I had a 690 Arrow Commander B, rather new, 1-3 Tango Victors, 13 TV.

I bought it from Channel 13 in Los Angeles. And Barry took off with that thing, I mean he was an ace I'm just I get him for one place to another but I'm the waste I mean he was like a aerobatic Blue Angels flight flyer oh wow so he just rung that thing out I told him that's enough he was upside down backwards sideways that's enough he about me i'd be sick so anyhow he said let me show you something so he cut cut both engines over the end runway and he came in and they called a flying leaf bob hoover did them at shows and come and just so i knew he could fly anything he wanted to so i gave him a job and he took off with my plane he said he had it uh

fly anything he wanted to so i gave him a job and he took off with my plane he said he had it uh that he had somebody in mina arkansas that could tank it see so i came after a week or something he called me and said come to baton route so i flew down there and stayed in his house in baton route and went out to the hangar and that plane was professionally tanked and uh all the way from the cabin back into the where the luggage and that thing would I guess would have probably went from Bolivia to Canada if it wanted to. Wow. So I hired him to fly

and I gave him a thousand dollars a kilo. So then he put now, so then I said hey I got I got a guy but let's put 500 kilos on there. So now then that's two and a half million dollars a load that we're getting. But I paid Barry the million dollars a load. So I'm still making the same amount that I was before. But I said, now, I got this place in Louisiana and I got the place on there. He said, no, no, my man. He said, I'm not going to land anywhere except in Mena, Arkansas.

Before we go into that, I just want to rewind. Yes. You meet this guy in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. You land, and what, a couple weeks later, he's in Santa Barbara. You're verifying that he can fly. He's doing somersaults, flying upside down, doing all the tricks. Did you ask him, hey, where'd you learn how to do this shit? No.

You didn't? I don't think. No, I know I didn't. He could do it, so I didn't care where he learned. You didn't care? No, he could do it. I can do most all that stuff, but I ain't no aerobatic pilot like that. All right.

So it was just normal. But he was exceptional. He was as good as any Blue Angel pilot out there. Did you ask if he was military or if he flew for anybody before? No, he told me that he had been a 747 captain with Trans World Airlines he told me that he had been a 747 captain with Trans World Airlines and that he had gotten in trouble over a load to, I believe, a DC-6, a DC-7, taking explosives to the Cuban Contras, and he lost his job over that. So he was a sport.

All right. So you're already my friend now with what you've done. Yeah. So anyhow, where were we? I went to his house and stayed with him. He's not going to land anywhere but Arkansas. That's right. Because he said, it's paid off all the way to the top.

It's going to cost you $50,000 every time my wheels land. What are you talking about? He says, I can't get caught in Mena, Arkansas. And later on, whenever I would, so he was working with, he had CIA connections,

I don't know where he'd flown with, and also Bill Clinton was the wrong man or the governor there, so I ain't seen nothing more about that. I hear that they call it Arkansas up there instead of Homestead. And plus, I don't know anything. I never met those gentlemen.

I didn't fool with it. That was Barry's end of the story. But anybody who wants to look, just read about what happened in Mena, Arkansas. And that movie that they made that they called America Made was written as Mena. And when Hillary was running for president, the Democratic Party stopped it. And even the director quit. And they changed part of the script and they changed the name to America Made. The whole thing's about me and Arkansas

and Bill Clinton and a couple of boys that got killed on a railroad track and put up there by the sheriff to get chopped up. There's some stories there. They got Clintoned. They claim it is him. I'm glad I didn't meet him. Looked like he was on a plane somewhere that he shouldn't have been here

recently, too. Yep. He's got a couple paintings down there, too, from what I hear. Yeah, and his brother Roger got caught with some cocaine, and he pardoned him, but he didn't pardon me. And Roger Clinton

says that Bill's nose was like a vacuum cleaner in that cocaine pile. But he didn't inhale. That's just a good point. That's, yeah, hey. Presidents are just such fine people sometimes. They are some very trustworthy individuals, aren't they? They'll put you in prison. He went in and he raised the penalty for crack cocaine 100 times.

They're just political prostitutes is all they are. Yeah. That's the word for them. I like that. I'm going to use that. So Barry was tied in with the Clintons, the CIA, and he had free reign to land wherever he wants. He's not going to get caught in Arkansas.

Absolutely. So it was a little far to go up to Mena, so I talked to Escobar, and they said, well, that's no problem. So I landed there myself to do a load, and they put a fellow named Benjamin Ben in the plane with me, and we went up to a landing strip there in Nicaragua. And I met the generals and all that, and they said, you can land right here.

Just come in. Don't say a thing on the radio. Just land any time you want to, and we'll refuel you, and you get food, whatever you want. We'll wash you, win children. You'll be on your way. How do you make these connections? I didn't make them in Ochoa and Escobar.

They're just giving you direction. Hey, you need to go to this spot. So that man flew with me up there to introduce me, and he went back and got killed in a helicopter crash. Real nice fellow down in Columbia. A lot of people died in this business. I'm telling you, I'm one of the only people I know still alive. So I'm blessed.

A lot of accidents happen, huh? And some of them really were accidents. A lot of them got killed, violent, and bad people in that business. And I told my friend, I had a friend, later on I hired a fellow in California, and I'll just say his name, Jerry. He's still alive, same age I am. And he flew. And so he was flying about once a week and then Barry was flying once a week and the Colombians would tell them that your California connections have got more than you are so there was a little bit competition with each other so I had two airlines going and both of my both these Panther conversions they was it called Panthers is all they was wonderful too

small 20-engine planes but you put 500 kilos in there and two pilots and way overloaded, and they'd fly from Columbia to Arkansas. So they were both cool. But anyhow, I was— How did you find out about those, those conversions? I think Barry came up with that. Barry did? I think they had used them over in Southeast Asia.

It was a CIA conversion of some kind of a Piper plane. It was a CIA conversion and they had access? Right, they had made it and that's what they was flying over out of Burma and Vietnam behind the lines over there. They're real quiet. They put big, heavy, wide blade propellers on them and put Q-tips and you couldn't hear the propeller noise. No kidding.

So I bought, I think, seven of them, $400,000 a piece. So were they open market? Yeah, you could buy them. They're still out there now. What do they sell? I mean, who do you buy them from? They look like any little executive airplane. They don't look like there was no big twin beaches and DC-3s.

They look, they little executive airplane. They don't look like there was no big twin beaches and DC-3s. They look, they fit right in. Just the only thing you can tell is that large prop and with the Q-tip on it, nobody would notice that. Somebody knows. So the people you're buying it from, are they, do they know what you're doing? I don't think anybody cares. It's all a sack full of money, and they don't want to report it either. Okay.

So it was, buying airplanes was that, and you could just put them in anybody's name. There was nothing to it back then. Okay. Now they've closed that loop, but back then it was just easy to get an airplane. So I had Jerry flying and Barry flying. And, I mean, I was putting at least eight carloads a week into the, to the Clemmons there in Miami. And the money stacked up, so I didn't hardly know what to do with it.

So it was, that was. How close did you get with Barry? We were buddies. Yes, sir. Best friends? We were friends, yes, sir. We're such good friends. We'd done staying at domini

hotel mario nine and our little boy ret was a baby and uh uh so barry we went out to dinner and come back and there's no rooms i was so barry come up stay in our room we had big two queen size beds up there and so barry come in there and stripped down to his polka dot under shorts and his T-shirt. He put the baby up on his belly and gave him the bottle. Ain't that good, right? Yum, yum, yum, yum. So we could spend the night in the same room, did each other. So that's what kind of friends we were.

So you built a lot of trust. A hundred percent. No way I didn't trust that man with my life. How long was your guys' relationship? About two years. So, yeah, Barry did exactly what he said he would do. I mean, just right on. But he was a stickler for his money.

He wouldn't fly again until he got paid. And he would bellyache in a kind of joking way, but he wanted his money. I don't blame him. And he no way, he wouldn't do another load until he got paid. So I owed him a million dollars, so I got it in a nice big box.

There's a store I saw these stay-free mini pads, ladies' feminine napkin. And I put them inside of it. And put a big pink bow on it and tied it up for him. He opened that up. He thought it was so funny he put those things on his mantelpiece.

They stayed up there as long as he lived. Yes, I love Barry. He was a friend of mine. I don't have many friends in life that was real good friends, but Barry was a good friend of mine. So I – Were you guys ever flying together? No. Always separate?

Just separate. Yeah, I flew a few times. We were just going somewhere, but nothing to do. Not working? No working, no. Is there a reason for that or just too busy? I didn't need anybody to fly with me. If anybody ever fly with me gets scared, it's contagious.

I'm not scared by myself. I've had some people really scare me on airplanes, crying, and we're going to die. It was particularly up in Alaska up in an ice storm I got into one time. So on something like that, no, I don't need anybody at all. Okay. How does it develop with Barry? He just developed into a friendship,

and he'd get his money and go about his business. I moved down to Key Biscayne, Florida, where I was closer to the people. I was the only one to meet those people, and the guy was Lito was his name. And I would stay at some Cuban shop, sandwich shop in line, and we'd meet, and I'd tell them where to meet me, and I'd point out the cars where they were parked.

And so that was how we did it. No talking, no phone calls, nothing. Just straight up, here's the keys. And yeah, so anyway, I'll regress here a little bit in that. Whenever Barry wanted the Panthers, then I had that Aero Commander that I thought it might be kind of hot, so I had parked it in a place in Toucan Airport down in Jamaica. So I don't know why I wanted to sell that thing

for half a million dollars, making more than that a day almost. But I took a, I wanted to get rid of it, something to do, so I flew down with a broker from San Antonio, Texas. And so we went out and washed the airplane and took the tanks out and put the seats back in it and we took off

and just the time we got to the end of the runway before that airplane went to turning in a circle it scared the living daylights out of me what in the world I thought that plane had got bent trucks hit this thing we ain't going to be able to land it we spiraling up going up that thing's land it. We're spiraling up, going up. That thing's got a lot of power.

Spiraling up in circles. Well, anyway, he's up here fooling with the trim tab, and somebody had sat in that airplane and just fooled the trim tab for the trim. And one of them little things that's just benign on your checklist, and neither one of us noticed it, and it had trimmed over, and it's got that plane flying in circles. Got that thing straightened out, but my knees was knocking. So we landed and went back to the Pegasus Hotel after our brush with death,

and we had ordered drinks out on the patio, and there was a table there over away, and there was a grandma, Brush with death. And we had ordered drinks out on the patio, and there was a table there over a way, and there was a grandma, and there was Mama and Dad, and two pretty girls in kind of like evening party dresses. Pretty girls. And so they was having a hard time. They was speaking Spanish, and they couldn't make the black waiter from Jamaica

understand what they wanted. So I went over to the table, and I said, I speak a little Spanish, could I help you? Oh, please. And so I told the waiter what they wanted. And then they asked us, come, come sit with us. So we moved over and sat at this table on the balcony with them. And they told me that they was there, that grandma had come from the United States and brought presents because it was the twins' 17th birthday.

And that's the reason they had the party dresses out on the balcony of that hotel. And they said that their whole family had gone to Miami or gone to Florida on the Muriel boat lift when Carter said that the Cubans could come any wanted to. And then Castro did a dirty. He emptied the insane asylums and all the prisons in Cuba and put them on the boats. But they just went with everybody else, and all their family went. But Papa was a professor, and he was holding back.

Let's see what happens on this. And then Carter saw what happened, and he closed that terrible mistake they made. So this family had gone to Jamaica hoping to get to the United States, but they were stuck there, and Papa was working in a machine shop for $50 a month, and Grandma had come down with gifts. They wasn't even making enough to live. So I asked the fellow that was going to buy the airplane,

I said, would you in for a little adventure? And he said, yeah. So I said, I'll take you to the United States tomorrow. How? What? I said, don't worry about it. I can get you there. Well, they didn't believe me. So anyway, they called all night, and they had the boss call,

and somebody else called up to my room. And I said, go to Air Jamaica tomorrow morning, and each one of you just bring one bag, one suitcase. Don't bring any more than one. And so when I cranked up and filed my flight plan, I filed it to Merida, Mexico, because I didn't know. I certainly had to stop somewhere. So I went into Air Jamaica, said I need some hydraulic fluid,

and I went in and they jumped in, but they had one little travel case. They had misunderstood me. So they got in the airplane and shut the windows, and I reversed it and backed out. I'm going down the taxiway, and somebody told that these people had gotten a plane. And the Kingston Tower says, 1-3 Tango Victor, hold your position.

Rather hard. And I, uh-oh. And I nodded to the co-pilot and I says, I said, Kingston Tower, your transmission is broken and unreadable. Good day. From down the taxiway, I went and took off. Nice.

I got about 30,000 feet and the landing gear came down and the flaps came into the I was out of hydraulic fluid the line had been sitting up maybe a year and it just got loose so wow I had to land straight ahead

and I landed at where I took all the money. Anyway, I can't think of it right now. What's the island right between Mexico, the British Island, where all the people go for the money? I just can't think of it. Anyway, I landed there. Virgin Islands?

Pardon? What did you say? The Virgin Islands? No. I can't think of it, and I know its name as I know my own. know, I can't think of it, I know his name as I know my own. Where was it, that money place at? Cayman. Grand Cayman. Grand Cayman Island. I landed straight

ahead at Grand Cayman. Thank you. My pleasure. I've been in there 40 times, I can't think of it. Anyway, I told him, get out and go around behind and get some coffee and hamburgers. They went around. And here come the British police with their guns and their little pistol, which is unusual. And they searched the airplane. And my contraband's at the table. So anyway, we get the hydraulic fluid fixed.

And I get back in. And we file a flight plan to Merida. Now then, I can't go into Merida. I don't know what they're going to do with the Cuban people with Cuban passports. So we stop at Chichen Itza, and we get out, and we just walk into a wall of rain halfway down the runway. And the other pilot from San Antonio takes off, and I'm going to leave there with Mom and Dad and the two girls. So we walk out.

We get soaked, and we walk back about a mile to the highway. It's a small highway coming across Mexico there, and we wave and wave all afternoon, and I was so close. The cars wave back, and I pull out a $100 bill, and I waved it, and they waved back. And late in the afternoon, an old school bus made in Fort Valley, Georgia, stopped, and they got pigs and chickens, and we all sitting there steaming. And we get to Merida that night about Mexico, and that pilot just stayed up, and they got to cook for us, and somebody washed and ironed our clothes.

I remember we had pepper steaks, and they got a cook for us, and somebody washed an hour and an hour of clothes. I remember we had pepper steaks. And we went to bed the next morning. We went out, and he filed a flight plan to New Orleans, and we had the big truck come between the flight planning office and the airplane, and we slipped in. So he filed it for one. So we fly across the Gulf of Mexico, and we land in a cane field there in southern Louisiana. And we jump out real quick, and the pilot takes off and goes on in and clears customs in New Orleans so he won't get in trouble.

Well, we look down, and it looked like it's a mile both ways of canal with scum on it. And I thought, well, it might be about knee deep. Let's don't walk all the way around. There was a junkyard across the way there. And so we get down in that water, and pretty soon it's nearly up to them girl chint. Green scum all over them. And that little

suitcase up over their head. It's wading across the water. Wading away across this thing. It's way deeper than it looked like. Anyhow, that's twice we've been soaked wet and coming. So I'm bringing my charge on so we come out to the uh junkyard on the other side and there's a man uh with a old buick with a fender off front fender off and it's got rust all over the plant track and i said mister i give you a

hundred dollars to take me to bourbon street in new orleans you got a deal he opens the door and one minute later we're doing 80 miles an hour through the cane fields of Louisiana with these girls. Anyhow, we come down there, and we needed some clothes, and we went shopping. Went and stayed in the Queen Anne Hotel, one of my favorites there in New Orleans, and took them shopping, and they were so meager,

and they'd just bring me back the little change. No, no, just go shopping. So that night, they called everybody in Miami that we were going to come down on the Delta the next day. And so we got in there, and we landed in Miami the next afternoon. And there were so many Cuban people sitting there, I mean, with cameras flashing, and we got off. And they had so many Chavis Regals

until I couldn't tote them. The girls was covered in flowers. And they took me to Opelika out there, and they had a street barricaded off. And they was barbecuing hogs and goats out there. What a party. They would have put me on my shoulders and taken me. So anyway, I had some money in my pocket, and I took it in the front room,

and I gave it to Mom and Dad, and they just stood there and cried. So some years later, I jump ahead 40 years, and I went to prison pretty close after that, I'll tell you, and I lost contact with them. And so somebody read my book here a few months ago, or they did. And I was in Miami, and I went to see them. And what a joyous reunion. They hugged my neck. They lived in a gated community. They're children with PhDs and blood spatter stuff for the city of whatever that business is.

And we just had a wonderful fiesta there with them here. This is the video you just showed me on the break. I showed you that video. That's amazing. Yes. So anyway, they said, you have a house here as long as you live. That was 20 years? 40 years ago.

40 years you hadn't seen that. Almost exactly to the day. Man. So that was it. Well, let's take a little break. Let's take a break. I want to give a big thank you out right now to all the Vigilance Elite patrons out there that are watching the show right now. Just want to say thank you guys. You are our top supporters and you're what makes this show actually happen. If you're not on Vigilance Lead

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I appreciate it either way. Love you all. Let's get back to the show. Thank you. All right, Roger. Before we get into dropping the money in the Grand Caymans, we're always going to Louisiana. Yeah.

Always dropping loads in Louisiana. I'm just curious. Why is it always Louisiana? Okay. You know, I told you that I figured out how to get the marijuana into the United States by going way out 300 miles off the coast of San Diego and coming around behind the Santa Barbara Islands. Well, I went down to New Orleans and I would, excuse me, I cleaned the Russian grain ships. And I'd go fishing out there and I saw all those helicopters coming in from those oil wells. There's hundreds of oil wells off the coast of Louisiana. They go out for 100 miles or so.

That Mississippi River flooded that out and I believe it's 6,000 feet deep of muck under that gulf there. That's where all those shrimp, and they go out shrimping, and those oil wells are there, and they just punch it right through that muck. Nothing. And then right down into the oil and the gas. And every afternoon, there's a dozen or 20 helicopters going back forth changing crews. They're just like fireflies everywhere out there about dark coming in. And I said, no, that's all right. You get in amongst them, you won't be seen.

So when I started flying, coming out from the other way and landing out of Columbia, I said, hey, I'm not going back across that border into Texas or California. Of course, it's further. So I'm going straight into Louisiana because it's exactly north. Just put your compass north and it's north. And so I would come over Merida, Mexico. I'd stay out in the Caribbean off of land, off of Nicaragua particularly and off of Cuba. I'd fly up in the channel between Mexico and Cuba and cut across part of Yucatan.

Then when I got about 200, 300 miles out from the United States coast, the ADIZ zone, where they do have defense, I'd put that baby on the ground, on the water, and slow it down and come in with a way just after dark. And I'd come in slow with those helicopters, and I know they couldn't see me. And those oil wells, some of them are several hundred feet high. And I'd come in, some of them may be higher than I was. Wow. And weave in and come on out there and land.

So I knew I wasn't on anybody's radar. I guess they could have. There's too much going on. But they would bug my airplane sometime, but I'd always find the bugs. They was mad. That was in the court records. Those things cost $17,000 apiece, and I had a collection of them. They had to put them.

I put them behind metal, and there's only a few places on an airplane that's got not metal, like glass or rubber, and that's where they'd put them. And you could see right where they had taken the screws out, put it back in, tried to cover it up. I'll be damned. So that's why I went to Louisiana. Makes a hell of a lot of sense. Yeah.

So Grand Cayman. Grand Cayman Island. Money's piling up. I mean, money's piling up by the millions. And where are you putting all this? I'm telling you, I bury it in the ground a lot of times, just bury it in the sand in paint cans without hoops on it. And so at this particular time, I had about $15 million.

And it was too big for me to carry, so I hired, I believe it was a Falcon Jet out of San Antonio and went out to California and picked up some and come back to San Antonio and got some more and then we went to I had to lay on top of the money I'll tell you

that a bill, a United States bill from one or a hundred dollars, they weigh one gram so you got a thousand bills A bill, a United States bill from one or $100, they weigh one gram. So you got 1,000 bills is one kilogram. So anyhow, a million dollars in $100 bills is 10 kilograms. So that's only 22.2 pounds but if you put them in hundred in one dollar bills it's one ton two thousand two hundred pounds

i think it's funny that you know this so yeah you weigh your money you don't have to count it you just weigh it and you just about dead on if you just clip through it and see if it's all 20s or 50 and put it on the scale it it's right there what you got. Okay. And it's right. It's just about as right as you can count it. Okay. So got where you didn't even have to.

Those people, their money was correct anyway right to it. So anyhow, I'd weigh the money. So I must have had a lot of 20s. Anyhow, we packed that plane so full where the pilots had to get in first and then finish packing it up. Then I crawled and laid up on top of the money and we went to Grand Cayman Island.

And the van would back up, unload the money in it, and then the pilots could get out. And we'd go to the bank and and and they pretend to count it and there's about 20 people behind it 20 men and women all in the starts iron shirts and ties and if I had my $2,100 bills ahead yes the ground on the other side you know they stole I mean most every load they steal at least $40,000 out of it. There wasn't nothing I could do.

Yeah. Later on, they stole it all. Banker just took it and went out of business. Now he's over in Bakersfield, California. Accountant says, the Reverend Stephen McTaggart, he got a house over there with a moat around it. Made it look like the English style, feeding the deer and the turkeys on my money. Wow. I went over to see him, and the turkeys on my money. Wow. I went over to see him, and they said, we don't know you. We don't want to talk to you.

He'd have put me back in prison in a flash if I'd have said something. Damn. I wonder how many people that happened to. I don't know. Most people would have done something to him. That's why I'm asking. He knew I wasn't a killer, her so just did it yeah ah how long was it there for for all one went away uh about three years and i was making 14 interest so i bought bought gold, cougar ends by the ton, I reckon.

Damn. With that. That was how I got the money down to Grand Cayman Island. How did your relationship with Ochoa and Escobar develop through the years? Ochoa and Escobar developed through the years? Ochoa invited my family, myself, and we went to his ranch. It was just north of Barranquilla. That thing was a paradise.

It looked like Africa. And he had all the, you know, what I was most impressed with was a big aviary with all the birds in it. It had birds from all over the world in there. I like birds. And then we went out there, and there were the giraffes and the zebras and all this stuff. And he had little ultralights on floats. I flew that around. He had boats to take you water skiing, and it was just fun.

We spent the weekend with him. He had his great old big 400 duck found father and his mother and his brothers and sisters. His brother put on a bullfight, a real bullfight too. I mean, a guy could play a little Fabio. So that guy got with him. And Escobar, I never had any real social meeting like that with the family. Escobar, I never had any real social meeting like that with the family. I remember we got in his plane and we flew to, he must have had a lot of farm, but he had bought some place to come across it.

And it was just a regular place and house. We had some coffee there. And he asked me, you ride a motorcycle? Yeah, I ride a motorcycle. So they had these dirt bikes out there. And I think, and so I, boom, boom, boom. There's four or five of them ready to go. And I just took off.

And there's a little ditch out there about knee deep and about that wide. And my front field fell in there, and I went skidding across that. They knew I was going to do it. It was like a trap. It was a setup. It was a setup. Of course it was. So we rode around the motorcycles a while,

and then we got on horses. And he wanted to know if he had a machine gun pistol. You know how to use this? Yeah. Never seen one before. I hung on my shoulder. And so we rounded up some cows and bunks and stumps and stuff and pretend like we cowboys and i went on back and and flew them back to medellin and so that was one time with him and um when you're around these guys what's their entourage look like? Is it you and them alone?

Is it 50 guards around them? Ochoa had one pistol arrow. Kind of a stout fellow. I bet he was a crack shot, though. And that was the only one. When he was driving, whatever, I went with him sometime and went to a funeral with him. But Escobar had several bodyguards. Did he?

Yeah, he was, wherever we went with him, there was about three or four fellas there that you know was well armed. So, but you didn't see it. He was just like a bunch of. You just knew they were around. They were there, for sure. They were there to protect him. Because he, I suppose he'd killed a bunch of people. He's a murderer.

Yeah. because I suppose he'd killed a bunch of people. He's a murderer. Yeah. And so I only met him, I guess, four times. But I went down there one time and saw him, and I said, listen, man, that runway is just too short in the jungle. We're having trouble getting off there.

The next time the boys went down there, they said it looked like L.A. International. They cleaned the jungle down. They had bulldozers down there and all clay, and it was smooth, 5,000 feet. So he got it done if you asked him to do something. Okay. It was a lot. I don't know. That was like $15 million worth of coke there coming out twice a week.

Yeah. So they was interested in keeping me happy. I mean, it's kind of a mystery on who was in charge of the Medellin cartel. They was no leader. They was, I suppose, the only ones that I ever knew was Pablo and Jorge. Okay. And Jorge was the one that was my handler, let's say. And I know, I mean, because they was right there next door, and I knew the uh the cocaine

come and they would be a i believe 25 kilos in a duffel bag and the duffel bag would have a lock on it and they would be um what the people used to brand their steers that their animals with it would look like brands on those duffel bags okay three rattlesnakes or three X's or whatever that they had. And I kind of learned. So I know that Ochoa was shipping a lot more than Escobar was. Was he? Yes. There was three of them.

There was three brothers and an old man. And I don't know, but certainly they were, from my opinion, they were a lot bigger. But each one of them was individual. And I told you about how it was an insurance company with a $10,000 guaranteed. Yes. So that was why they had so much of it, that they just, whoever they wanted to, coming out of the jungle. So I'm just, I'm curious about the structure of the Medellin cartel.

Is it, is the Medellin cartel like an umbrella company? And then you have Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar as subsidiary companies? No, they were nothing like that. It was just individual people, just like you and I, and Tim over there. And we come and says, all right, we got enough money. We big enough. Let's just make this. We got this organization. They big enough. Let's just make this. We got this organization.

They call it a cartel. We got a loose agreement that we will, the people of Columbia, you give us your cocaine, and we will ship it for you for $10,000 a kilo. Now, they become just a shipping agent. Now, they paid me $5,000 to carry it, so they made $5,000 just receiving it from the little people, 10 kilos, 100 kilos, putting it in my airplane. And then their people in Miami, they had a lot of safe houses. No kidding. houses and... No kidding. So essentially, at this time, the Medellin cartel is essentially just an illegal logistics company. A shipping outfit. Just five guys got together and said, listen, we got enough money, let's stop this killing. 10,000 people a year are killed right here in

Medellin over this cocaine. Let's stop that. No reason for anybody to kill anybody else ever again. So they did that to stop the violence. To stop the violence. And plus they got a million dollars out of it. Listen, we're making $5,000 every time you bring us one. And all we got to do is put it in Roger's airplane and he gives it to my man Leto in Miami.

Leto gives it to whoever they tell him to give it to. That's it. Well, I mean, then it developed into more than that because they started killing everybody. Well, Ochoa, I don't believe, ever got into it. I think they might have had Bear Seal killed. But other than that, Escobar was a killer. Nobody else, the rest of the fellas didn't. Okay, the best I understand it was that there was three organizations in Columbia

that was in the cocaine business. The military was one, they weren't as big, and then they had the FARC guerrillas that owned a third or maybe almost half of the country, particularly all the Amazon area, and they were the growers. And plus the people from Bolivia and Peru were shipping their base up because they could get the ether up there to manufacture it. So the FARC was big time in it,

and that's where they got their money to try to take over the government. They were communists. But then you had the, I'll call them the white Colombians, the landowners that owned the ranches up in the highlands all throughout Colombia. Well, they were dead against the FARC because the FARC was wanting to take their land. Yeah.

So they was at war to some scale with the FARCs. Now the military definitely was wanting the FARCs out of the way because they're going to take over the country and get rid of the military. Now the military was in the cocaine business too. That's for sure. You can't say they weren't. I don't know how big they were, but they were shipping it. But the white Colombian landowners was big too.

So there was kind of a three-way war going on there. Okay. And where did the cartels fall into this? Well, they were the white landowners. They were the white landowners. Yes. So what about the Cali cartel versus the Medellin cartel? Okay, now, after the Cali cartel, I mean the Medellin cartel got in trouble, then Cali sprung up.

trouble. Then Cali sprung up. And I spent four days in the house with Miguel, I can't say it, Aurelio, the one that was the big, they owned drugstores down there. Okay. I'm not familiar. No, anyhow, I'm not either, but I never did any business. But I went to Canada to unload a load for 20 tons for them. To Cali or to? For the Cali cartel later on. Okay. I was up in Canada and ratted the millennium.

And so I was waiting on the boat to come. I had a big boat to go out and meet it and two big dump trucks to put it in and all that. I was going to make $40 million for one night's work. $40 million for one night's work. I paid $2,000 a kilo to unload this ship. It was a big boat coming out of Lima, a big container ship, and one of the containers was going to be on the back,

and they had a big rope, and every of the containers was going to be on the back and they had a big rope and every six feet or so was a hook with 20 kilos of marijuana, of cocaine to it all in waterproof bags and it would be string out a mile and then I had a salmon boat with a reel on it

to reel that in and put it in the fish hole. Oh wow. So anyway I got all that, and like an idiot, they wanted to give me some money. I said, no, man, I'll take care of that. Well, I called my friend down in Mario. Where's the boat? We ready. We're waiting.

He said, Leyla and Leticia, read the newspaper. So I went and got a newspaper. 700 arrested worldwide. And there's the people I'm working for, number one, two, three, four, five. Oh, man. I got rid of that stuff I had. I sold it at a fire sale the same morning. We're having a liquidation sale over here.

I went and bought me a car, and we headed. I didn't want to come across the border or nothing. We went east all the way to Montreal before I got stopped. Holy shit. That's how close I came to it. Wow. Damn. We had ditches in that thing from all the way back.

That was a Cali cartel, and that was my only dealings with them. Okay. Did you go down to Cali at all? Oh, I stayed in Cali for months. I just stayed down there, and I enjoyed it very much, yes. You know, I lived in Columbia for five years, roughly, in and out of there. And I'm just curious, what was your favorite part of Columbia to go to? Was it Medellin?

I think so, yes. And then we got on Medellin and out in that area there. Yes. I like the mountains behind Santa Marta. You go up to the mountains, it's got snow on it. You go up there and the Indian people, it's so nice, and the little coffee farms. And you look down on the sailboats and the ocean, and we'd take mules and go back into the backcountry. And, I mean, it was just, oh, there'd be mule trains, 50 mules,

some guy on the front of it. And at night, they'd pass each other. And I remember those two guys, and one of them, they both have cigarettes. And you'd see a cigarette glow, and those guys with a deep voice, adios, adios, and I'd walk the world saying goodbye. And I found out the adios means to God, a deep voice adios adios and i put the world saying goodbye and i found out the adios it means to god to god adios yeah so i said all right and then you see some little boy with a switch bringing up that last donkey in the back them huge bales of marijuana all on it that was just so romantic it was just beautiful you go into a place that they must have like 400 or 500 mules, donkeys.

And they'd have a tack room there that you just couldn't believe with the saddles and work saddles. And just go out and lasso what you want and go. Did you ever buy any property in Columbia? No, I did not. Did you ever want to? No. It was lawless when I was down there.

I know it's better off now, but it's not. Back then it was just like, good gracious, you don't know. Yeah. I actually had a, my best friend bought a condo in Cartagena and got ripped out right from under him. And that was about 2015, maybe. But I wanted to buy some stuff did you ever go down and look at when I was going down to Medellin

I dabbled in a lot of cocaine and I would go did you ever go look at Pablo Escobar's grave no I didn't I've never been there since then oh I did

when I got out of prison in germany well i'm getting ahead of myself i went to columbia again did you yeah it's interesting i i went to his grave and uh it's really i was expecting something like this huge shrine or something. And it's just a little, I'll put a picture up on it right now, but it's just a little tombstone, just a little headstone. It doesn't even come out of the ground. And his family's buried next to him.

And on one side of this cemetery is all the mafiosos. And on the other side is all the politicians, the police officers. Did he kill? Yeah, it's really weird. And, yeah, we'll go over there. And I just wanted to see all this stuff, you know, so. It's history. Throw a little cocaine on his tombstone and blast a line off of it.

I wonder if he even did any cocaine. I do, too. I don't think he did. It didn't seem like the fellow to do it. Well, you knew him better than I did. But, yeah, some wild times down there. I don't think the Ochoas ever, ever. I stayed there several days at their house with my family.

Not even a cigarette was smoked. Just gentle people. Really? Just really nice people. You just wouldn't think. It's like I am. I'm not a bad person because I did that stuff. So, I mean, they weren't either. Just people that fell into it.

They were restauranteurs. They had money. They was just people that fell into it. They were restauranteurs. They had money. They were good people. And hey, you give me a million dollars to move that chair from one side of the room to the other, well, I'll see if I can't get it across there. Yeah. Why do you think, I mean, Escobar got labeled the richest man in the world, the most wealthy man in the world at one time. But then I'm sitting here talking to you, and you're saying that Jorge Ochoa was shipping out way more than Escobar. Do you think that Jorge just didn't give a shit about being in the limelight and maybe Escobar?

He didn't want it at all. And when they built that prison, he stayed in the prison. Like, lay down, Escobar, lay down. He wanted in the limelight. He was going to be in it, I reckon. But when I met him, he didn't seem like it. But later on, I mean, I'm sorry I ever knew him. I'm sorry I ever shook his hand. He was an evil man. I mean, somebody blew an airline and killed all those people. I mean, I can understand in war you're fighting somebody to kill them, but just to kill babies and women and children,

just an airplane full of people flying along and just get blown out of the sky. Yeah. There ain't no place in hell hot enough for him. They have tours now in Medellin where you can go, and they give you the tour on all the government buildings that he's blown up and the church, all this stuff. It was awful. Went to the, there's a church where all the sicarios or the assassins go to pray before they do their hits. It's still a very interesting culture down there if you can dig in.

It's satanic, diabolical. Same thing with Putin right now doing over what he's doing. What are these people? When the world gets in their mind to do something like that, to kill all these wonderful innocent people, or kill them, anybody, whether they're innocent or not, that just takes lives. It's just precious. It's just no people. Yeah. Or kill them, anybody, whether they're innocent or not. That just, take lives, it's just precious. There's just no way.

Yeah. So when you were involved with the Medellin cartel and doing transportation for them, did you see the violence start to develop? I didn't ever see any violence. Any violence happen to me. Or hear about it, I mean. Well, I told you about the violence start to develop? I didn't ever see any violence. Any violence happen to me? Or hear about it, I mean. Well, I told you about the blood spattering on me when somebody shot the dog and shot the man. I mean, even in Miami.

Miami became. Yes. Miami was a war zone in the 80s. I was living there when they shut up that liquor store down there. But you had to know that all this was centered around cocaine. Of course it was. Miami was just thriving. But it just seemed like when we was in Vietnam, you're in a war out there,

but you're not in Vietnam, you don't see it. Did it bother you at all? Did it bother you at all that, because I mean, from the time you met Escobar to, I mean, things have developed and changed so much. You know, did you, were you glad you weren't dealing with Escobar? Were you glad you were dealing with Ochoa? Did it bother you how much violence was starting to pop up about, you know, because of drugs? I didn didn't know much about any violence, and I didn't feel it or I didn't see anything. With me landing in an airplane and getting the windshield wiped and putting the gas in it and throw that stuff in there and taking off

and flying back and getting it out of the airplane, it was just like I was worried more about getting caught with the DEA and those planes that was out there with me, and I wasn't even thinking about those people down there. Well, they had that covered. Okay. So he was just, he landed in Nicaragua. The generals there and everybody there,

and just like it was all, y'all would have been hauling corn. Nobody cared. It was just like this is money. money and i didn't i didn't see any violence and i i mean i as far as cocaine at that time it was not killing anybody not that i've ever heard of now people say that it did and people may have a heart attack from it making you go uh the heart go too fast but uh i I don't now I understand with the crack and stuff they put with it it'd kill you but pure cocaine

is from what I understand is not all that bad for you and plus it was just rich people doing it and I was a hero for bringing it to them and then later on it did change completely changed but I was in prison during

those years. At some point, and I'm not sure where this fits in with your story, you moved to 130 foot yacht, I believe. Yes. I don't know which one you're talking about. Well, there we go. You moved 100 tons of cocaine. Oh, no.

That was way, way later. Don't skip that. That's going 20 more. Okay. Get some years in front. I took an 80-foot sailboat and went around the world and got three and a half tons of hashish. Did I tell you about that? I took it into Canada and went around from Pakistan.

Then I think I mentioned that. Then I bought a 125-foot Coast Guard cutter and was going to take it to Thailand to get a load and bring it back. The crew abandoned it in Kauai High Harbor. They got scared. And I found out from the newspaper that a mystery ship abandoned in Kauai High Harbor. And dragging it. And hippies had gone over there and claimed it for salvage. And we went over there, and it took a month or two to get that thing straightened out.

They had stole every piece of brass off of it, all the instruments out of it, and sold it. That was a crew. Thank you, Paul Ray. Paul Ray Gibson, my man out of Florida, did that to me. So I've had some. So anyhow, that was that one. That was the two that I hold. But you were on the boat from Pakistan, correct?

Yes. How long did that take? It took several months. What are you doing on there? How did you stay awake? There's four of us. I'm just kidding. You're shipping a thing of cocaine.

I'm asking how do you stay awake. I like country music, and the other three was rockers. So anyhow, I think I had some of my stuff, Hank Williams. I'm missing a Hank Williams tape. They've thrown it overboard. So I threw two of theirs overboard. And by the time we got to Gibraltar, they wasn't a tape on that boat. There was four of you.

Yes, uh-huh. We didn't know what we were doing. I went and took eight tracks and plugged it in and learned to navigate celestial. So I'm a celestial navigator. Incredible. Incredible. I got us around the world.

Well, let's fill in the blanks then before we hit the 130-foot yacht. All right. Yes, there's a lot of them. Oh, yes. All right. I took a load of money down, another load of money down to Grand Cayman Island, and I decided I'd just fly back commercially. And I had the little receipt for how many millions of dollars I had in my pocket. And I got to Miami, and there was a warrant for my arrest, and they took me into the little office and said, you've been arrested, and it's from L.A.

And I thought, is that Los Angeles or Louisiana? And I didn't think too much about it. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't been caught doing nothing. I hadn't done nothing in a while. So anyway, they took me back in the customs thing and said yes. And so I went into the bathroom and I got rid of that receipt for that $15 million or whatever it was, flushed it. And they took me to jail, and I found out it was. I was charged with continuing criminal enterprise,

which carries up to life without parole for marijuana importation. And I was the number 41 person in the United States to ever be charged with that terrible crime. John Gotti was number 42, and he died in there. Most of them do die, they just get charged with that terrible crime. John Gotti was number 42, and he died in there. Most of them do die, they just get charged with that. I said, what do you mean? What's it, 848, Title 21? Well, you have to organize three different organizations with five people or more.

I said, I've never done that. He said, who was the mechanic on your airplanes? Who gassed it up? Who put the marijuana in there? Who unloaded it? Who sold it? We can think of a dozen that's in that

chain that you were responsible for. Wow. So I hired Albert Krieger, I guess the smartest and best lawyer I've ever heard of. And my bill was $5 million. $5 million. And I had it near about back pocket money, but it called nebby to hearing. And you had to prove where it come from.

Well, I'm not getting out of jail no time soon. So anyway, I give up my property. I give up millions and millions of dollars to the government and pay the cost of prosecution and whatever else they wanted. So I wound up with 35 years, with a five-year sentence and 30 years special parole probation. Mr. Reeves, oh, and the prosecutor got up there, Lane Phillips, and had a hole in his shoe, and he's preaching. Your Honor, Mr. Reeves is not a drug dealer. Oh, he was like he was a movie star,

and I know he practices in the mirror. Your Honor, Mr. Reeves is not a drug smuggler. Your Honor, Mr. Reeves is a drug industrialist with a fleet of planes and a navy of ships at his disposal. He spanned the globe for three decades with his death and destruction. We asked for nothing but a life sentence. The little judge gave me 35 years, and I think he was on my side, but he had to go along with the prosecution.

So anyhow, and then he gave me 30 years of parole probation and pay the cost of prosecution. And so I wound up, and I had to do two years, a little over two years on that five years. So I went to prison and oh boy I would down at terminal island and I was in rather interesting that John DeLorean came in on cocaine charges and he was in the cell next to me and Mario pretty woman 39 years old with a baby,

and she came and we had a new Mercedes. And John DeLorean's wife, what was her name, Christine Ferrari, she looked, they had similar features, and she had a Mercedes just like we had. So when my wife would come to the jail, the helicopter would flop on her. All the news people would get out. Anyhow, they got their own beauty. Anyway, I got to be friends with John DeLorean, and so I saw him with those lawyers coming from New York

with the sharkskin suits on, and he didn't know what to do, and neither did I. So I said, John, I don't know, and I wouldn't advise nobody on a lawyer, but when we go to court, that judge, I got my lawyer from Florida, paying the big money, but we got a little lawyer named Howard Weitzman that for $10,000, he's the lawyer for local attorney that we have to use to go. And the judge says, how you doing, Howard? How's the wife and the young'uns and that dog have puppies yet? And

I said, man, they get along fine. I said, if I had anything, I'd get rid of that big lawyer and get that little lawyer. And he said, well, you introduced me to him. And I said, yes. So I called Howard up and he got John DeLorean as his lawyer. And they won that case, the biggest entrapment case ever in history where the DEA had tried to entrap DeLorean. He didn't know anything about it. They just put him in a room with a lot of cameras all hidden. This stuff is more valuable than gold, isn't it? How many kilos can I have to have?

A hundred? Only why you could get a hundred. He won. Anyhow, John DeLorean sent me a Christmas card every year for as long as he lived. No kidding. So I made friends in there with that. Then after I got sentenced, they put me on a bus going north to Plasington. Plasington Prison, I never heard of it.

Well, I was in there, and they had like 40 little cages. They had a guy in the front with a driver, and then they had another one with a shotgun with a banana clip, and then they had another one behind us with a banana clip. And we took off and went to Long Park Penitentiary. And I, wow, well, they put off a couple of guys and picked up a couple, and they went across the street to the farm and picked up a couple. Then they went on up to Plasanton. I had no idea. And went in that gate and man, there's pretty blonde women

in their clothes and long dress and they waved to us. This is a co-ed prison they put me in. There's 400 women in there. Young, good looking, they, all federal. Most of them were bank robbers, not really robbers. They were in there. They worked in banks across the United States, and they were secretaries to the president of the bank.

Well, they had boyfriends or husbands that needed a loan to build a house for $400,000, so they signed the president's name. And the boyfriend got the loan. He didn't pay it back. And they got about five years apiece. And they were just coming in there regularly. Anyhow, they let us wear our own clothes. And we could walk with the girls.

The girls had two chalets and the men had one. There's 200 men in here and 400 women. And those women was rather frisky. But I'm telling you what. So I went in, and we went into our chalet, and they showed me my cell. And so there was a nice guard lady, tall woman, thin, and about 30 years old, and she gives us an induction. Well, she just comes from where we started, and she opened the first door. I mean, I've been there an hour, and I'm having induction.

And when she opens that door, there's two guys in the compromised position with their pants around their legs, around their ankles, and they look like George Bush when they told him. It's the trade center. Their eyes look like two owls turned that way. And she said, Senor Flacco, would you please uninsert your penis from Senor Gordo's rectum

and come to my office? But clean up first, please. And she shut the door. And I thought, damn. I mean, is this what prison is going to be like? But after 33 years in prison, it's the only time I ever saw something like that. Well, that's good. So anyway, that's the homosexuality that I saw in prison.

So it went on down. Anyway, that was a delightful time that I spent in that prison up there. Those women, I mean, we had, I guess there was a woman there. Every month they'd have a dance, and the band would come in. You could dance with the girls on the big store. This is prison? This is prison. We wore our own clothes. I had a trench coat with a scarf around my

neck. They had guards that would slip up in the wheat and they had binoculars on their days off trying to catch people having sex. If they did, they'd put you on a bus, and they called it diesel therapy, and they put you on a bus nonstop for six months.

It'd go like to Phoenix, and then it'd go to Portland, and then it'd go to Chicago, and then it'd go to Miami. And you'd come into a jail somewhere out in the country, and they'd hose you down with a hose and give you a jumpsuit. A few hours later, you was up with a sandwich and some tepid coffee. And on the road again, you didn't have a chance to write letters. You didn't have a chance to write court documents. They called it diesel therapy.

And those big bad men were broke after six months. They'd cry to get off that bus. Damn. broke after six months, they'd cry to get off that bus. Damn. And also, if you got caught having sex with those women, they'd send you a letter to your family, to my wife, and say, your husband has been caught having sex with another inmate.

They didn't say which. Oh, man, a woman. Oh, man. So I behaved myself. Anyhow, my wife came to see me with the children. It was a really beautiful place. But it was sad. Some of those women have babies, and the government would take it.

The prison would take it from them and never know what happened to them. They'd give them up for adoption. So that didn't last long, and they took the men out of there. But that was the first prison I went to. For how many years? I stayed there about a year, and then I begged to go to Lompoc Camp because it was near home. What a mistake. I came out of a, oh, let me just tell you, I got another story.

I had my roommate named Mike Nix. He was a strong young fellow, maybe 25 years old, and he could take a big telephone book that thick, even with the plastic on them, and rip it down, just tear it apart like that, any of them. And he didn't do much, but he was a soldier in Germany, and he got in some trouble, and his paperwork was all in a little courthouse, like a little shack, and he set it on fire. So he got 25 years for burning down a courthouse. Oh. But anyway, the girls loved him, and he talked to them. He wrote the ugliest letters back and forth to them,

and he'd slip into a women's dorm and service two or three of them at a time. So one time, he'd come back in the cell, and his nostrils was blaming. I mean, he was wild. They had locked the women's dorm while he was in there. And he knew somebody had told. So there was big picture windows there. They was like six feet by four. And he had kicked that out with a brick working all and got out of there and came back around and got in our unit.

Damn. And there's one more story about Mike. The last time I ever seen Mike, I guess we had breakfast together, and he went over to slip into the woman's – no, he wasn't. He worked in the kitchen. And a lot of girls worked in the kitchen. So they went into the freezer unit, and there was a table in there, and they was having fun.

and there was a table in there, and they was having fun. And so the woman guard, I remember her name, she was a really nice old lady, she came in and she said, get down, Mike. And him and the girl just laughed and shook their head. They knew it was over. So he just kept going on. And so she had to call back up, and them guards said that they took six of them to pull that stagging off and said when he did, his pecker was just steaming

in that cold. And they put Mike on the bus, and I never saw him again. What a wonderful guy. So that's the way my prison life started off, with John DeLorean and a bunch of women. And then I came to the camp, and what a letdown. Oh, my goodness gracious. So, sagging bunks and guys farting and jacking off all night long all around you.

It was 100 people in a dorm, and it was old. Anyway, they put me, I got a job as a cowboy, well, not a cowboy, fixing fence out on the Vandenberg Air Force Base. And it was just rifle rattlesnakes. And they were docile rattlesnakes, and I don't mind rattlesnakes at all. And I'd catch one in each hand, make his mouth open, and I'd run the guard with him. Guess what? I'm in the kitchen the next day washing dishes. So I had fun there. And I, after when you're one year short of your release

date you can get a furlough from a federal prison camp. So if you go over a thousand miles or over 500 miles, I believe 500 miles, you get seven days. And if you're local, you only get five days. They give you travel time both ways. So I went to Georgia and my wife and children was all on the airplane on Delta and they all over me and hugging me. And the stewardess says, what is going on here? And my wife said, he just got out of prison this morning, and we're on furlough. And she went back and brought us two big bottles of champagne. So when I went back, the guys wanted little sunny televisions,

those little things with a little one-inch square. You don't even remember them, but that was back in 1983. So I brought back a sack of those, and I got caught coming back in with them. Bam, I'm shipped back to the prison in Terminal Island. What a mess. So I found up that time with that. And I got out of prison after a little over two years, and I'm so happy to be home. I'm in front of the television

they got it in the kitchen in the morning and there's Ronald Reagan's blue eyes and he says we have absolute proof that the communist and an Easter government of Nicaragua is in the cocaine running business cocaine trafficking and there's Barry's plane the the fat lady, bellied in on the runway. And I thought, oh, shit, Barry has done it again. I'd heard he had switched over and gone with the police. You'd heard that? I'd heard it. Somebody told me that Barry may be working with him. I don't know who told me, but somewhere, I think.

So before we get into that, then, because how did you guys just, did communications just fall off? Because he was working for you. Yes. Well, whenever I got arrested, Barry went and got the lawyers. And he sent a lawyer there from Baton Rouge in and robbed me. And then he got Albert Krieger, the best lawyer that I've ever seen. And he did a whole crew.

And he had, I believe, three of my airplanes. And he gave Mari the money for them 100%, helped her whatever he could. But then I wasn't there, and I was just cut out of the deal. Okay. So he just kept on flying. So, of course, he knew the people by then. It was too much together. I couldn't keep it apart.

Didn't even try to. But now he's crashed his plane on the Nicaragua 1 runway there where we refueled, and the phone rang. And he said, Roger, I've got to see you. I'll come out tonight at a French restaurant. I forgot the name of it. He says, I'll be there at 9 o'clock. All right, Barry.

So I went in at 9 o'clock in the room. Not a very big restaurant. Maybe 10 or 15 tables. All of them looked like 30, 40 years old. Leather skirts and sports coats and blue jeans. Barry's leaning upside the wall at the back. He's gained weight. And I walk up to him and I say, Barry's leaned upside the wall at the back. He's gained weight. And I walk up to him and I say,

Barry, are you wired? He said, no, I'm not, Roger. I said, well, you just talk. I'm going to listen. And he said, all right. So I sat down with him and he went to talk and he said, Roger, I was protected there in Mena. You know about that.

He said, they all, when the shit hit the fan, they all ran. Left me holding the bag. And I was indicted in Miami, in Florida, Louisiana, and Arkansas, facing three life sentences. And so I've told everything. I've been before Congress. I've told everything. I've been before Congress. I've testified to everything that was going on.

But you're under my umbrella. I told them I would not testify unless they protected you. So you're, you and I are partners. He said, you've got to come to Miami and testify before a grand jury. Wow. I said, the all DEA agents? He said, every one of them. I said, well, bring your head honcho over.

He put his hands over his eyes, and the tears run down between his hands. He said, I just couldn't do it, Roger. I just couldn't do it. I'm so sorry. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do life in prison. So that's when I told him, bring your fellow over. I felt sorry for him. I mean, I really did. So the guy came over, lanky fellow, crop duster, Malabama, I believe, Jake Jacobson. He's the

one that was in that crashed airplane in Nicaragua. And he told me the same thing. He said, well, you can come tomorrow. He said, well, you can come tomorrow. Well, we had some Chavis Regal and got a little pie-eyed, and I liked him. He said we was on different sides. He said, you can come tomorrow to Miami in first class with Mari, or I'll take you down in chains, and the only place you're going to ever see your family again as long as you live is in a federal prison visiting room, I promise you.

So I'll make sure to come first class. So I did. Mario and I went down to Miami the next day, and I went in to see a lawyer. I went to see Gould is his name. I didn't realize his partner had been blown up and killed because he's representing a snitch. But he's supposed to have been the best at the time, and I went in to see him and he just says you know, he says I'll represent you for $600,000 but I don't talk to snitches I said I'm not a snitch, he said well that's what you're talking about

I said no I'm not, I'm just trying to get he said listen man being a snitch is like being pregnant you either are or you're not he was nasty once you start talking if you don't tell them everything This is like being pregnant. You either are or you're not. He was nasty. He said, once you start talking, if you don't tell them everything, you will receive a life sentence because everything you've ever done,

everything else they said about you will be used against you. He said, you've got to go. You've got to tell everything, day one to now. And so I left his office, and I thought, damn, that guy. I went to see another, and he told me the same thing. I said, listen, man, I've got to say something. I've got to. He said, you can't.

If you're going to do it, you've got to do it all or you will be convicted and get life. So I went to the, that afternoon I went to the courthouse. And I was going to tell them I, and so I spoke to me to Mike at 3 o'clock. And I was standing, it was hot, and I was standing behind a pillar, big marble pillars there at Miami Federal Court. And I was up the stairs, and here come the three cars. They had about four of them with their machine gun pistols in the front, and I think two in the front and two on each side of Barry in the back.

They was looking out this way and that way. With Barry as they come to the court, and Barry's car pulled right up and stopped beside me. And I just stepped down that step and hit the top of that car. Wham! You should have seen them. They tore that car up trying to turn around. I said, see how easy it would be?

They didn't appreciate my humor. So I said, listen, I'm having trouble with lawyers. I'll get one tomorrow. And Barry said, use mine, use mine. I said, all right, give me your car. So he gave me the car, and I had no intention of it. So anyhow, I just tried to put it off so I didn't get arrested that night. So anyway, I went to a festival restaurant there and Carl Gable's my favorite restaurant at that time still is I think it's

closed now and I was having dinner and of course Barry knew it was and he came in with Debbie and we had dessert together and I said Barry they're gonna kill you friend oh no listen I know there's five of you's in jail no chosen ended up this and other and the other. Five of you was in jail, no choice, and then this and that. I said, Barry, they're going to kill you. There's no way on earth you're not going to get killed. And I hugged his neck. I might have kissed him. I said, Barry, they're going to kill you.

And I took Mari and the children, and we fled to Brazil. And we was down there about six months, and I got worried that Barry was dead, killed. And I shed some tears, told Mari and Miriam, and they cried. And we were, I mean, the biggest snitch in the world is dead and I'm facing life sentence, but I'm still sorry they killed him. But he should have known. Who killed him?

The guy that flew up on the first load with me with a machine gun pistol he's one killed him he's still in Angola there was four of them one of them died and three I'm still left up there they're doing life never gonna get out Ronaldo was your name had ugly man I mean he was ugly I'm sure he still is ugly yeah yeah I Yeah, that's who killed Barry. How long were you down in Brazil? Six months, you said? No, it was a little over a year.

Over a year. Yeah. And we had nice Brazilian passports. And I left there and went down to Argentina, all the way to Ushuaia. I was looking for a home. Ushuaia, Brazil would have been good, but then I had Brazilian passports. I didn't speak Portuguese. I was afraid if I made investments in soybeans and all that, somebody would come take it away from me.

Yeah. Did you still have all your money in Caymans? Pardon? Did you still have your money? Yeah, I moved some of it out by then, but that guy done stole it. Most everything. A lot of the stuff is gone. How much money do you have left at this point?

About $4 million. $4 million? Yeah. So you went from, were you at the height already? Did you go from $60 million to $4 million? To $4, yeah. Shit. I was talking about $60 million because I had invested all kind of money in real estate deals.

And hydroelectric plants and oil wells. All that just got wiped away when that guy got killed. And so, and it just got taken by the government and bankers and lawyers. Everybody touched me, stole it. They just wholesale. You go to prison and your money's out there, it ain't there when you get out. Yeah. Not unless you're a bad fellow and want to kill somebody.

And then kill them, you go back. So it was just like, all right, you catch 22 there. How was Maury doing down there? Maury did fine. She just kind of let it, she didn't get involved. She stayed away from it. I didn't tell her much. She just thought I was bulletproof. And I said, I'm going to go do it.

I'd go and come back that night or the next day. Did she ever get frustrated with all the moving around? Well, we didn't move so much, you see, until then. Now, when we owned it, see, the gummers done kicked in our door and held her hostage all day long and took her home from us twice. So she's not too happy with them either. And so now, see, I've never been caught with a dollar nor one gram of marijuana. And I get 35 years just because everybody got caught, sometimes five, six, seven years

later, pointing their finger at me. Roger did it. Roger did it. Roger did it. Until they build a case against you. Well, you don't have to. And like I told, they had me for bringing that money to the Grand Cayman Islands. I said, some of that money, I never even touched it. The lawyer said, you don't have to fondle it to be guilty.

So it's like anything else. They don't have to catch you shooting somebody for murder. Two people say you, they saw you do it, you're gone. So it's the same thing with marijuana. They say you did it. And I pled guilty to a lie. There's a guy that, I don't know why he told them. He said he drove by my house and saw 400 pounds of marijuana in my garage.

You can't even see the garage from my house from the highway. And I've never had anything in my house. Never. Not even an ounce of marijuana at my house or on the property. I don't use it and don't have anything to do with it except fly it. So that's where she was. I will tell you a little. Mari did get involved in the marijuana business one time.

Didn't she? I'll let you tell that. I flew into a little airport over there, over the mountain, Sante Nes, and I landed, and the unloader was supposed to be there to unload me. And it was, I don't know, about Christmas time. And I had a ton of marijuana in the airplane. And so I got out, and there's nobody there, nobody.

There's a little runway way out in the country, and I was so angry with him. What in the world? What am I going to do with this load? The guy with the truck is supposed to be here. So I think I had $2,100 bills in my pocket but I didn't have a dime to use that phone so I had to walk to Solvang it's about five miles away and I took off walking

and I got to Solvang and I called Mari I says Mari come over here as quick as you can pick me up and come sign some kind of little truck or something so we can move this stuff. So she borrowed a little El Camino truck with a little low body from a friend of mine,

and she came over, and we went back out, and the plane was empty. I said, oh, man, this unloader, Wild Bill Dunn stole that load. So we went back home I didn't I didn't know what had happened I thought they might have gotten it but it's about two o'clock hey I got a nice Christmas present Roger oh da da da da da and I thought you rascal you and he said we saw we saw you landed eight o'clock we thought it was an airliner had that big lights on that plane we didn't know your plane was so big so we went to McDonald's to get something to eat.

We come back, man, the president was there. And he left me hanging for about six hours. So anyway, the next morning, we took that little truck and went back over there just at daylight. And I got in there. I said, well, wait just a minute, Marty. Let me see. Let me sweep this thing out because I know they didn't.

So I got in there. We're sweeping the plane out. I had linoleum all in the planes, right up to the windows, so the seeds couldn't get in there. They convict you on a seed or two. So mine was, I had a professionally linoleum from one end to the other. I get up in there, and there was a little spot there where the stewardess make coffee and stuff, and under that was a big bag of sticky buds, maybe 60, 70 pounds. I said, oh, maybe 60, 70 pounds. I said, oh, the idiots.

Oh, my goodness gracious. I'd be convicted like this, though. We're the same load. So I drugged that thing out, and I tried to put it in that truck, and it wouldn't go in. So I throwed it up in the back. I got to get out of here. And I said, Mario, just go get rid of it. She said, I can't lift it. I said, just let the tailgate down and back up and slam on brakes.

I don't care. Get rid of it. So she took off with it. And I took off, and I flew across, and I landed at the airport, and I had a hangar. And I went in the hangar. So she came up, and I said, you get rid of it, all right? She said, yes, but you're not going to like this. I said, what?

She said, I heard it went in water. I said, honey, there's nothing but a desert between here and Santa Ana. How did you get it in water? She said, I don't know. I did what you said. I backed up to a cliff, and I put on the brakes, and it went a long way down, and I heard it hit water. I said, let's go see what you're talking about

She had backed up to a cliff Six or seven hundred feet high And slammed on brakes And that thing went down Through the poison Open poison I mean it hit a little stream down And bounced out

I had to get ropes and everything up Because I always laughed about her On her one marijuana trip So she did do it once. I'll be damned. Yeah. Well, back to Brazil. All right.

So you were down there for about a year. About a year. Then you went to Argentina. Yes. And then we went on down to Argentina. And I didn't find it there. And Mari said, if I die in this in this place Roger please don't leave my bones here I was not looking at a place to grow soybeans so I said all right so

we bought a ticket and went to Amsterdam and we stayed in Amsterdam for a while and then they went to the south of France and we lived there for a year and had a nice time and then my friend Jerry the one that used to fly for me he came over and he said let's go to I want you to introduce you to somebody don't you to introduce you to Howard Marks so we went to Mallorca Spain and I met Howard Marks which was my Waterloo biggest mistake I ever did in my life was meeting that man. So he knew everybody. He had been traveling around the world, and he had a guy named John Denby

that had walked across India and China, and that guy knew a lot of people, and Howard was using him. And so he hooked us up to, I went to Pakistan and, again, hooked us up for a 10 ton load out of there and I think I put a million dollars or so up and we hauled the load and it was so bad stuff it was too much yak fat in it wouldn't stay lit couldn't hardly sell it so just one one back after another with him so I So I don't know how. Well, let's take a quick break before we do this. Yes, sir.

Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes, and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, Roger, we're back from the break. You're starting to get involved with Howard.

Oh, boy. Howard, my Waterloo. That's right. So I was living in the south of France there in Biott. And my friend Jerry come over and met me. We had a nice time reunion. He'd been the one that had been flying the same as Barry. And he came over with his entourage.

And so my daughter, Mario, was there, and she wanted to fly with them. They had chartered a private jet and was flying around the world. And she flew with them to Mallorca, Spain. Well, it was M. Reeves, so the DEA thought they had a lead on me, and that I was living in France, because M. Reeves, Maury Reeves, got on a plane with Jerry Wills to fly to Mallorca. It caused me to leave France. Anyway, we went over and met Howard, and I liked Howard all right. He had a lot of contacts, and so he said that he could get all kinds of stuff out of Pakistan. So anyhow, I was the one

wound up buying, paying for, I gave him a million dollars to pay for a load of, yeah it was a million or two million, yeah a million dollars I gave them to put down on another load of hash each. So they pulled a big scam on us. We had to boat over in the Maldives. It was a hundred and, I believe a hundred believe, 108-foot Alaska king crabber. Almost knew that thing was nice. And so they went over there, Howard and his guys, Dobie and Hobie, and they put a bug on it.

And they says, all right, we have information there with the CIA, there with the DEA, and there's a bug on that boat, and for $250,000, we'll tell you where it is. I said, oh, shit, I ain't paying you nothing to find that one. I can find a bug in a few minutes if it's on there. Oh, sorry, we've already took it off. Here it is. And I've given them $250,000 a year.

And that's when I about come undone with Jerry. I said, Jerry, I ain't putting up with that. That's just a scam. So he took me out in the hall and said, Roger, this deal's worth $20,000, $30,000,000. Don't mess it up for $250,000. They already got the money anyway. So anyway, we did the fool around. Then he says, oh, mileage can't get the hash and this and the other.

But I got a deal for you in Thailand. Thailand? Thailand. Thailand? Thailand. We can get the military to load you 200 miles off the coast. But we need $2 million. The military's going to load you? Yeah. With what?

Marijuana. So I went over to Thailand, and I gave the other $1 million. Now he's already got one, but we can't transfer it, and this gave the other million dollars now he's already got one but we can't transfer it and it's another so he the boat came and they loaded this with I went looked in marijuana it was good stuff his half of it was in nitrogen seals so it stays fresh but I understand it deteriorates pretty quick after you open it but when you open it's just like it come out of the field. Anyway, we put the 17 tons on the boat. The military went out and loaded it with a military cruiser.

And the boys took it on across the Pacific right quick. So Howard wanted me to stay. He says, Roger, I got a guy named Rummy here, and he's got an 85-foot wooden wooden sailboat and he wants to get loaded and when you put some money on it I said Howard if I put any more money I would uh I would uh put it on my own boat oh but anyhow I flew him back to Mallorca we'd done moved there near Howard a few miles 20 30 miles away but Howard was well he could ten days later and he stayed over and loaded that old

boat with a wooden boat. Got it somehow. And the unloaders unloaded our boat and were selling it. They said, don't take it to the United States. Just sell it up here. We can get $1,400 a pound. Well, that's about $50 million for that load. My friend Jerry

and Ron said, okay. Let's do it. so they're staying in they're staying in a nice condo or hotel and money's coming in two or three million dollars a day every two or three days they rented a

storage place and they got six, seven, eight million dollars in there and it's got the little tag in Ron's pocket and they got three million dollars in the hotel room and two or three million dollars downstairs in his car. And Howard sends John Denby, his old friend, that's hooked up with the Cray brothers out of England and he lands in Vancouver

and of course with him comes a telex to the Mountie police, this is a notorious criminal who's entering your country. So they followed him, and he happened just out of chance to go to the same hotel that Ron and Jerry are staying in. No way. And they hug in the library, and click, click, click click click click all the pictures on it now then they're watching Jerry and Ron so they all eat and drink

and have a good time and they got people with pointy shoes and plaid pants following them around holding hands and taking pictures of them so now the old wooden sailboat comes in and the same unloaders that have unloaded us and selling are unloading. And

they swarm on them. There's a DEA agent on that old wooden sailboat. I don't know if Rummy's a DEA agent or one of his crew is, but they arrest them all. So they put them all in jail and everybody's out the next day,

all the Canadians, for a $100,000 bond for marijuana. But Ron, Jerry, and Denby can't get out. So they keep them in jail six months, and the lawyer comes in for the unloader and said, everything's going fine, we're selling it, we're doing good. So after six months, Jerry and Ron get deported to the United States, and Denby gets sent back to England. Well, my boys wanted to see about the money, and they says,

Bucky, we don't owe you nothing. You brought the heat on us. $50 million, zip, gone. Wow. So Jerry hires a guy from the Assad to go and collect it. So the guy meets him in the Belvedere Wilshire Hotel. He said, yeah, I'll get it for $250,000. How do you get in contact with that?

I don't know. So anyhow, they got in touch with somebody that was going to collect that money. That guy didn't stay there. He stayed there with the girls for four days and called Jerry, come here and get your money. I got it. So Jerry goes down there and he comes

and sits down and puts a glock to his head. He said, they don't owe you anything. If you don't give me $250,000, I'm fixing to blow your brains all over this hotel room. Jerry calls Ron. Pay me $250,000 quick. Now he's lost $50,000.

He's lost $250,000 on top of it. And he says, I don't want nothing to do with it. Goodbye. Damn. So anyway, that's gone. But anyhow, in the meantime, I've been arrested there in Spain. I've been extradited up to Germany. And I'm serving time in a German prison.

Yes, that was another load. I get them mixed up with Howard. But anyhow, Howard owed me the $2 million to hold that load out of Morocco, and he wouldn't pay me, and he turned me in. So that was my time with Howard. He turned you in. He turned me in completely. After all that, he didn't want to pay.

He knew he was fixing to go down, so he didn't want to pay and turned me in. So where did the yacht come in, the 130-foot yacht with 1,000 times? Okay, I'm up in Germany. And in 1990, I'd escaped. I tell you about getting out of Germany, the Spanish court jumping on the car. I told you that. You did. And then I went up to Germany.

Did I tell you about escaping from that prison? You didn't. All right. So I believe it was 1990 that I'm in Lubeck Penitentiary, Lubeck Prison, a fortress with gun towers all around it. They had the Red Brigade and the people in there from all kind of bad folks And they put me in there with that And after one year I escaped from that prison. I went between the bars You did mention this got all of it that woman tried to run that over me. Okay, I

Think you had mentioned you want to prison in Spain, too Yes, I spent 17 months there. We did not talk about Spain. Wasn't much to talk about. Yeah, I did some tourist talk about. Since I jumped on the car and got away, they had me naked in Mallorca in the cell day and night. They wouldn't let me have any clothes. They thought if I didn't have any clothes, I could escape.

That's when they put, everywhere I went, they put my handcuffs over my shoulder. Anyway, I got up to German, and they sent me to Madrid. And rather picturesque, they put me in, there was a modern prison there. I mean, it was modern. And they had modulos, and each modulo had 50 prisoners in it. And it was a modern prison there. I mean, it was modern. And they had modulo's, and each modulo had 50 prisoners in it. And it was nothing much to do. There was a thing about small tennis court and a spot there where you could buy coffee and cupcakes. And you could buy three kilos of food a week. And they'd bring it in, and you had prison money. And there

was about five or six of us had a lot of money and we'd give the other poor people the money to buy theirs. And we just had copious amounts of food, salmon and jams and salads and stuff come in. I guess they brought it in two or three times, I forgot. But we had a big table out there where everybody could just eat all they wanted to. And one of us would pay for the coffee one day and the little cakes. There was a cake fighter there from Turkey, and he could keep ordering at which little store. And they throw the domino chips down, and they just made a lot of rackets. And if they played backgammon, which I played backgammon, they wanted a wooden box so it could make a lot of noise where the dice rolled.

They wouldn't roll it on felt. So that was the church I was in with. Anyhow, wonderful people. So I spent 17 months there in that place. But I was bored, and at the end of it, at the end of that place, was a little wall about knee-high, and on top of it had a chain-link fence just to keep you in that. Beyond that was a big wall with catwalks on it and towers and guards up there with guns but uh and then they had like a moat with all

electronic wires i don't think no way in the world get out of that thing so it was it was impenetrable so but anyway there was a little place there maybe 10 feet across it was dirt and the boys they got little cups for your coffee and they'd poke them through that chain link fence. And I guess there were thousands of them there. And I decided I wanted a garden. I didn't have nothing else to do. Let me make a garden. I'm a country boy. So I took a maw panel and I made it sharp and I stuck it through those cups one at a time and brought it back up and squashed it through the fence and brought it back until I cleaned the spot about four feet wide and then it was hard hard red dirt rather hard and I guess it was all the other end of the place was a spigot and I got a five gallon bucket and I

and I poured for a week I poured water on it until I got that thirsty soil softened up. And then I made like a spade on the end of a big heavy mop panel and stuck it through there. And I pushed it down in the soil about six or eight inches and turned it like a turning plow until I did it all the way across. I guess I get maybe not less than 60 or 70 feet across there. 60 or 70 feet across there. And then out of the vegetables that we bought from the grocery store, I put little jar lids and put dirt in them in my windowsill, and I got plants started.

And then I would dig a little hole over there, and I'd put that little plant on top of the end of the stick with some dirt on it with a little bit of mud, and I'd put it in that hole and break the dirt back around with the stick. I'm working through a fence. It's like trying to build a ship in the bottle. Yeah. And then the mop panels come with a plastic tube on them, and I'd take that and take a cup and pour the water around my plant.

And so I got all kind of plants growing on the other side of the fence, watermelons and cantaloupes and zucchinis and just about anything that you can imagine that we could order in the grocery store. I got the seed and planted it. Well, those plants grew and I would cut all the vines off but one and bring it to the fence and weave it in that chain link fence until I had big watermelons hanging and cantaloupes and eggplants and squash and zucchinis and just tomatoes and all kind of bell peppers. I just had a garden that was just unbelievably beautiful hanging in that

whole fence was covered with it like a mosaic of fruit. And the warden came and stood in front of it and there was a newspaper article about it. There was a newspaper article about it? About that garden in the prison. So of course they didn't let me stand in front of it. But I had to almost fight to keep the other prisoners from... They laughed at me for a while, and then they wanted to pour water on it. And I said, go drown it. Get out of here. This is my garden. So that was in Spain. And it's pretty nice there. It really was.

Do you want to get into the fishing out? Into which one? The 130 footer with the thousand tons. Okay. I got out of, so after I escaped from the German prison, I went back to South America to

see about collecting that three and a half million dollars that Joea owes me. Well, he wouldn't see me. And my friend helped keep me from getting there, I believe. So anyway, I left that. But anyhow. Helped keep you from getting where? Getting to Ochoa, getting to the money.

He knows something. They all know something, but they're not telling me what's happened. They done divided that money up. So he said, let me introduce you to somebody. So he introduced me to somebody, and the guy said that he had paid me $20 million to take a shipload of cocaine to Australia. I said, well, sign me up. Here I am, a fugitive.

So I... Where do you put $20 million when you're a fugitive? I don't know. I was going to get it in Australia, and I figured it out after I got it. But it's better not having it. I would have got it probably and put it on a... I would have bought a sailboat and probably went to Dubai, right up the Indian Ocean.

Why Dubai? I think that they have less DEA, U.S. influence than some other place. I've been afraid to go into India. They would have probably just taken it. Yeah. But I think Dubai would have probably, you could have hid the money on a boat and taken it off and put it in the bank. I think that's what I was thinking about. What's another

safe haven for When they're well known for the their banks not being influenced I think all the heroin came out of Afghanistan and all that Pakistan goes there and laundered. Yeah that's this a haven but that that wasn't that't the problem was getting it. So anyway, they bought an offshore supply vessel. I found it there in Louisiana. And those things were $12 million.

But when they get 40 years old, about 39 years old, at 40 years old to the day, they can't get insurance to go anymore. So these Exxon and all these different places own these oil wells. And these ships have to be insured to go out there, these offshore supply vessels. And I think this one had been in the North Sea. And it was like five or six stories high and had all the oil well firefighting equipment on it. And I mean, that thing was palatial. It was nice. You could eat dinner off the floor in the engine room.

It was sparkling. And so I bought that thing for $300,000. It's the price of scap crap. Wow. At that time. for $300,000, it's the price of scrap crap. Wow. At that time. And I took that thing and I went to Cape Verde Islands

and put some more fuel on and it was supposed to load up the cocaine there. And I went back out then I had to go back a thousand miles towards Columbia to meet the boat. And finally they didn't show up, had me going around under the satellite for four or five days, three days. And then finally it came and they put a thousand kilos, a ton of cocaine on it.

Just threw it overboard. Now he had that on it. And there was one Colombian got on there with us and then had me and another fellow from Georgia there. And so we took it and I went around. What does a thousand tons of cocaine look like? 1,000 kilos. 1,000 kilos.

2,200 pounds. Okay. Now kilo used to be real fluffy and big, but now it's made with, they do something with microwave ovens. In those places you'll see 200 or 300 microwave ovens, and they cook it in there so it's oily and dense. So it's almost as dense as water. It'll almost sink.

So one cubic meter, 39.4 inches cubed is one ton. So this much and this much is a ton. Okay. So this stuff would just float just above the water, so it's a little less. So you might say 50 inches cubed. Okay. That's how big it is.

Yeah, I hid it on the boat and made it in a fuel tank. And I took it and went around, went way down, went down on the Brazilian side of the Atlantic Ocean because in the southern hemisphere, the oceans, like in your toilet, they turn counterclockwise. And in the northern hemisphere, it turns turns clockwise so the oceans run that way and that only equator is zero you got a little boy over on the equatorial hotel in Kenya burned down but he's there and he'll put a he got a five gallon bucket with a

funnel and he said come over here and he pours in jug water and it goes he goes over here and goes and it goes straight zzzz. And he goes over here, and it goes, zzzz. And he pours it, and it goes straight down. He said, now that's the equator. So that's how sensitive that force is around the world. That's interesting. So anyway, I was following the current down, and then we went way south of Cape Town, of the Cape of Good Hope, and went down.

And I kept going south. I wanted to stay out of any traffic until no boats or ships ever saw me after I left the traffic off of the coming out of South America. There was a lot of traffic that I crossed. Got down there. We didn't see anything. And one morning I woke up and the swells was just monstrous. I can't tell you how big they were.

I fished in Alaska. They were babies compared to this. They were coming off of that Antarctica, swirls around there. I don't think a swell gets 100 feet, but they looked taller than that. It looked like they were just falling down on the back of the boat. I remember on the old sailing ships that they had to put a blind up there so that the man on the wheel wouldn't run. And they put two men on there.

It's phenomenal to see that much water standing up behind you. And the boat would come up, and when it comes to the top, the two big propellers would come out of the water, and that boat would surf down that wave. Wow. And it'd go like 25 knots on the GPS. And the nose would stick under about a third of the boat, and it would just stay under there for a while,

and it'd slowly come up, and that water would rush off the back of it. And I thought, huh. I thought that was nerve-wracking. This boat might not be made for that. It was made for the Caribbean. So I turned and went north out of there. I was going to go under Melbourne, but then I saw the place that the Colombians had chosen from had a lot of shoals, and he just looked at it from the sea. And I said, it will never do if it's any wind

or any southern wind, which it may be. We could never get ashore there. So I chose a spot up near Sharks Bay in western Australia, about halfway up or up the side of it. And I went and we came in at 2 o'clock at night, and I saw an airplane up there blinking too slow. Uh-oh. And I said, all right, we've been watched. And so I went ashore, put the cocaine. I had two 20-foot rubber Zodiacs and I left the big boat out there with my friend Joel on it. And me and the Colombian went ashore. And that guy

talked a big talk, but I put it in. and so I told him to get in the other one, no, no, no matter how, I can't drive, so I had to hook them together, one behind the other, drag them, and we went in, there was a surf, and it was pitch black, I went over that surf, and went inside like a lagoon, and then, no, you couldn't see, and I tried to come back over that surf and finally got over to the side and one of the zodiac busted we got out and I got to carrying the cocaine up up a cliff up to high so we could see and it was dark it was raining couldn't see anything what we was doing so finally I got it up there and my sandal got tore off and the whole bottom of my foot got torn off. I had to have new skin grafted on the bottom of my foot. So I got that stuff in a hole. And then I went to go back to get the boat and to go get Joel.

So one of the zodiacs had busted and was tied up there. And the other one had drifted away. And it had the motor on it that's how in the world I couldn't do so I jumped in to swim now this place is called sharks Bay it's got thousands and thousands of sharks out there it's just a bay in there where they come in the hole so as I'm swimming the the boat just drifting just a little bit faster than I can swim. Oh, boy. This never turns out well.

No, it not. That thing's going away from me. And a fin cuts the water, sticking out about that high. Get the hell out of here. Are you serious? Cut around me. Well, I draw my feet up, and I pray, Lord, don't let it happen now. Don't let it. Oh, I don't even hardly breathe.

I'm trying to stay up like this. And he cuts his fin around closer. Then that sucker comes up and he blows. I like to laugh my head off. There's a dolphin looking at me. I didn't have any problem catching that boat. I don't want to dove over it when I got to it. Gave you a little extra motivation to swim faster. I didn't have any problem catching that boat. I almost dove over it when I got to it. Gave you a little extra motivation to swim faster.

I didn't know I had. So we took it out there, and I went in and got me a hot shower. They had some coffee on the cup, and I took a cup. Then I cut a big hole down the side of the ship and reversed all the pumps and then I got in the Got to Zodiac with Joel and going 12 knots. I couldn't even untie it I had to had to cut the cut the rope and I nearly dove over when it stopped and I went back in and We covered up the cocaine real good with blankets and rocks and brush.

And it rained and we got under kind of a rock. Some fishermen at daylight came and they had a cable that they must have put out and they were catching these great big red snappers, about 20 pounds, and he was pulling them up the cable. They put something to go over their mouth once they catch them. And that brings them up. And they was taking them off one after the other. Dang, what fishing. put something to go over their mouth once they catch them and that that brings them up and they was taking them off one after the other dang what fishing and then it was down down down you sons

of bitches they knocked me in the head beat me up by my groin treated me real bad and there was three of them they were called the trg and they were stealing that cocaine like crazy they was throwing it back in the surf where it was rushing back around. I said, I hope they get it all. They had a gun to my head. Don't you look. Don't you look. Damn. And then after a while

I saw the federal police coming. So they arrested us and took us down to Geraldton and stayed there for a day and then they put us in a Brinks truck and took us to a prison in Perth.

And I got 25 years. And then I testified that Joel, who I put the boat in his name, didn't know that it was cocaine. And he thought we was going to sell the boat in Indonesia. And when the cocaine come, he couldn't swim 1,000 miles. So after three trials, he won his trial. And he went home. And they appealed my sentence and raised me to life. So they said they was going to do it if I testified.

So anyway, I got a life sentence for testifying. But they put it 18 years as a minimum before I could apply for parole. But whenever they found out that I had escaped from all those prisons before and the police, they come and arrested me in the prison and put me in what they call the shoe. And I was in the shoe there. There was only three other ones when I went in there. And that was the worst of the worst. I mean, it was like the silence of the lambs.

Really? Just exactly like that. And they had one-way mirrors that they looked at you, five or six cars, and we cooked our own food. They came at 6 o'clock in the morning, opened the cell with about six of them with truncheons. They was ready to beat you to death if you moved. And it was quite boring in that place.

I stayed in there just a little over a year. But there was a computer in there. And after I got life, I thought, you know, my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, they never know who I am. And some of these stories, I believe I'll tell them about when Grandma bought me a little pony. And I started, I didn't know how to turn that computer on, but I could type. And it grandma bought me a little pony and I started I didn't know how to how to turn that computer on but I could type and it didn't have a program on it it just had a thing called paintbrush and so I I got to typing and I painted over a million I print over a

million words before I quit and so then when I got out of there I got a computer and got it got to a computer and it took me I reckon a year to figure out what I'd wrote. It was all red, yellow, and green because I didn't worry about spelling or punctuation. I just wanted to tell the story. So I wrote the book there called Smuggler while I was in prison. Do you have any idea how long it took you to type a million words? About three or four months. Three or four months?

That's all I did. It didn't have nothing to do. Did you like doing it? Yeah, because some of the times, and it's a lot of the stuff that I put, I just cried and the tears come out. I think it did me like something good to remember my grandpa and grandma and my daddy

and the ghost stories that told around the fire and all that sort of stuff as a youth. It's like therapy for you. Therapy, yes, it did good. And I took all that out because nobody wants to read about my grandpa. But I just left the stuff that I did in it, in the truth. So that's what I did. And it was enjoyable. And then, of course, I couldn't send the book out after I got it all typed

together. And they allowed me to buy a computer for myself. And Australia's prison was more progressive than here, much more so. So I had the computer, and there was a skydiver in there, and he had an illegal telephone. And so he said, oh, you want to get that to your wife? What's her email number? Click, and in one second, Mari had that book in the United States that she published it for me while I was in prison.

That's amazing. Yeah. When did you get out of prison? I got out two years ago. Two years ago? I came back from Australia. I was coming up on the 18th year, and nobody hardly gets parole on their first year eligible. Anybody, no matter what they say, okay, you got life.

You got 50 years or 30 years before you can apply for parole. And most everybody, come back in five years, you're not rehabilitated. So I wrote my neighbor, Mr. Jimmy Carter, a letter, and I asked him, Mr. Carter, I was your neighbor, remember, back on the da-da-da. Jimmy Carter was your neighbor? Was your neighbor, was a neighbor, remember, back on the da-da-da. Jimmy Carter was your neighbor? Was your neighbor, was a neighbor, yes. So I had a farm there right close to his. So he wrote a letter to the Attorney General of Australia and said,

If appropriate, I would ask that you will, or hope that you will consider for parole my neighboring friend, Roger Reeves. And so things started rolling, and I got paroled. So they put me on a plane. On the day 18 years, I got out. Of course, I hadn't gotten any trouble. And I flew back laughing across the Pacific with three marshals from Australia. I think they knew what was going on. But anyhow, the plane emptied and I stepped out.

And five little Mexican-American Border Patrol guys grabbed me hard, slammed me into the wire, bruised my face, kicked my feet apart, handcuffed me, two leg irons on me, put the handcuffs on me so hard. There was one ugly woman there saying, eyes ahead, eyes ahead. I said, if I had a bulldog look like you, I'd shave his ass and teach him to walk backwards. They took me and put me in a chokie there in Los Angeles,

and I couldn't get out of there. I said, I've been in open prison for 16 of the last years. I said, what in the world? And the lieutenant says, I can't move you, man. So one day, the little window slid open, and a nice-looking man standing there said, my name is Assistant Warden Short. He says, we saw your National Geographic documentary,

and it does me pleasure to keep you in isolation. Click. I never could get out of there. I stayed in isolation for months. Just National Geographic did a thing, and I was part of it down in Australia. Australia's hardest prison. And I kind of bragged about cutting a hole in that place when it ran you. So that cost me.

Yeah. So the parole board's supposed to give you— there was parole for marijuana 43 years ago, and by law they're supposed to give you a hearing within 90 days. They never gave me one. I went to Oklahoma City to get a hearing, and I got there about 3.30, 4 o'clock, and a nice lady says, oh, you're Reeves? There was a man from Washington here, and he waited,

and he said that he'd come back next year. So there I got out on the floor, but I had to count, I had to register every two hours. I'd go back in to shoot when I was in Oklahoma. So I had to come in and sign a thing on the floor, right where I was. I was on like the 18th floor or whatever. So I guess they thought I was going to escape again after that. But anyway, she said, would you like to like me to ask for parole on the record? I said, I've never asked for it. I said, please do.

So the next day she's come and said, yes, I have your parole here. You'll get out in 90 days from today, and they're sending you to Terminal Island, California for the rest of your time. So they took me back, and it took me a week or two to get back there. What a mess getting back. When I was in, there's so much corruption. Let me just tell you how much corruption is in our government. It will make you sick.

Everybody in it is. When I was in Long Park Penitentiary, I watched them move dirt. About the 10th of April. They got big bulldozers and they're moving dirt from one place to the other, back and forth. Somebody's cousin's getting paid off. They want to use up all the money that they have so we can ask for more next year. I saw that in my own eyes.

Then on this, I saw a nice young fellow from down in South Georgia where I'm from. He said, where are you going? He said, oh, I got caught with two grams of methamphetamine. I got to go to Los Angeles for psychiatric evaluation. I've been here three months waiting for a plane. Then I meet another fellow. He said, well, I'm from Long Beach. And what about you?

He said, I got caught with two grams of methamphetamine. I got to go to Atlantalanta georgia for psychiatric evaluation i believe that fedair has 23 planes flying prisoners around the united states it's a canadian company you better not ask anything about that that's interesting it's like we had uh it's a Canadian company, huh? I heard it was. I don't know. I've never looked into it really, but I believe it is.

But anyhow, you know who it's owned by. It's owned by our politicians for sure in the wardens of the prisons. It's their retirement. It's the same thing with these places that make things in prison. You better not ask about them. You'll be put in a shoe and transferred. You better not ask about them. You'll be put in a shoe and transferred.

So they make office furnitures for, or cables for space stuff. All kinds of stuff in prisons are made. My prison labor, a dollar an hour. Yeah. So, I don't, where was I now? I regressed to the... You were getting transferred from Oklahoma. Yes, I got back there. And after a year, after three months, they let me out.

Oh, they put me in there. I got out and come out of the chow hall, and the guy said he had cut my hair. He said, when you come out of the chow hall, turn to the right. Well, I did. And the guy said, walk between us. And he went up like, boof. And I said, I bet I could outrun you. And they tackled me to the ground. Put me in the, choke you in the shoe. And wouldn't let me out because I threatened to assault an officer. So I'm in there. And I don't particularly want to get out, they got COVID coming out there,

and I'll tell you one little story, just about, they come, Bruce got somebody for you, so they put somebody in there with me, and it was a young young fella from El Salvador and his name he wouldn't be called Pablo I think he thought Pablo Escobar anyway he had he was a transient farm worker that had been five times caught and he told me that he was from a pineapple had a home in a pineapple plantation down there and they had a wife and children but he was a dullest knife in the drawer but uh he had some kind of a lot of them have psychiatric problems and he uh i guess sleeping on the ground in the fields here in washington the united states said he made 200 a day and

shipped it all home and he lay down and a bug got in his ear and they had to cut his whole ear out to take that to get that bug or whatever infection it was out of there and they bug got in his ear and they had to cut his whole ear out to take that to get that bug or whatever infection that was out of there and they put that in so he was still sick from the stitches and they gave him medicine and sometime he would just turn completely red just bright red and he just wring his hands and walk back and forth i said pablo sit down here how long has it been since anybody touched you? He didn't know. And I said, just sit down there.

And I just sat down and went to massage his shoulders. And he was, oh, oh, oh, just pitiful what people in there without love, without touching, without nobody, nobody for years. Yeah. And tell me, you see the color just come back to him. Oh, thank you, senor. Thank you. And it the color just come back to him. Oh, thank you, senor. Thank you. And it's just all mental coming to him.

And so I had a lock for my little container there, and it had three ways, like 8, 12, 14. And so he wanted to play with it. And so I said, okay, now come on, do it, do it by eight. And I'd tell him it'd pop open, he'd be so smiled. And then he wanted to write it down. I said, no, you can remember three things. So he worked at that thing and worked at it with him and helped him. And when that thing popped open, you should have seen the smile on his face.

For the rest of the time I was in there, that's what he did, open and close that lock. And so we wouldn't go out. He was very shy. We had to hang towels up for him to go to the bathroom or to take a bath. But neither one of us wanted to go out. Those guards was all covered up in cloth every which way, and it was just like dead men walking out there.

There was eight people died in there with us. Really? The most of any place in the United States was right there in Terminal Island, and we was in a sick ward and in the lockdown. So there was a little sink there with a bowl. You had to push water hard, real hard, to get a little stream of water. Well, we put a straw in it.

Now you could put a sock under it. We wash ourselves. Don't come in here. Just put the food through the slot. So we stayed in there for the last six weeks. And then they came and bummed me all up and put me out on the street. I got a ride home. I got a ride home. I come home and...

How long all at once were you in prison? Eight, 19 years at that time when I got out that day. So I got home and Mari was there waiting. And I had on the prison clothes. And of course, the first thing I wanted to do was just throw those things in the trash. And I went in there and just showered, scrubbed myself, shampooed, shaved and cleaned up. And I went to the closet and all my clothes from 40 years ago and older, as I got around there, 50 years old, was hanging in the closet. She had washed and ironed and so stark, just each one of them was hanging there so pretty. It made me cry. And my shoes, she had shined them shiny.

And I put those clothes on and I put those shoes on and I took a step and the soles of the shoes stayed on the floor. All the strings had rotted. Wow. So I got the shoes with no soles. Oh, man. And I went to the table, and I sit down. There's an oak table that over 50 years ago that I, with a carving knife,

I cleaned all the claws and took the paint off of it and stripped it. And there was a, she had made a meal for me and the placemats and the same plates that I'd left 40 years ago. Same pictures on the wall. It was a small apartment now where we used to have a mansion to live in, but it was still the same. She had saved it for me just like that. I'd just sit there and cry. I'd cry to tell about it right now. It took me three days. I still won't look at photographs of her and her children growing up. You will not?

I don't want to. It makes me cry. There she was, 40, 50, 60, and 70. I wasn't there for none of those birthdays. Sometimes I was out on the skate for a few years, and she had joined me, but it was like I wasn't home. Damn. She raised those children, and they did well. So whatever she wants, I do now. Yeah. Good for you.

Yeah. That's one hell of a woman. Yeah. That's amazing. I saw only three other people in all the years I was in prison. Their wives stayed with them when they got life sentences. Yeah, I'd stayed a long time. I said, what did you tell them?

She said, I just told them I'm not available. Beautiful woman. I joke and say, I thought for sure I was going to have to shoot a husband-in-law when I got home. But it wasn't one day, thank goodness. Do you regret anything? Of course I regret it. Yeah? Terribly, yes.

I wasted half of my life in a cage. Yeah. Couldn't you? I mean, yeah, I had 10 years of fun and 33 years of prison. My goodness, it's just not worth it. And I look back on my life. I was immature. I had good sense, but I was just immature.

And I trusted people. And I went through school with a lark. I didn't high school. I didn't study. I didn't have to study. And I went off to college and it was like i don't want to do this but if i had to train myself from young to studied my middle daughter is a doctor she just went through it skipped right through medical school and i could

have done the same thing i kind of wanted to i signed up for it but i didn't have the stick ability to sit down and study that stuff. And I wish I had. I'd love to help people all over the world. Yes, I would have loved to have done something like that. What in the world do I want to do this for? I want to farm. I want to farm and grow tobacco and cotton and corn. That's what I had in mind to do.

That's what I wanted to do. You think you could have got away with it if you would have just? If I would have just quit way back yonder, of course, I would have got away with it. Yeah. Like when they said I made $300,000. And you could buy in the United States, you could buy most any house you wanted for $3,000 down back then.

That would have been 100 houses. Yeah. Now, if you'd have done that in then. That would have been 100 houses. Yeah. Now, if you'd done that in California, that would have been $100 or $200 million now. And somebody else paid for it. Very true. Just that simple, nothing. It was just there. I just stuck my head deeper and deeper into the noose until it got pulled around it.

That was it. Damn. Damn. What went through your head when you found out that Pablo Escobar was dead? Damn. What went through your head when you found out that Pablo Escobar was dead? Nothing. I thought he got what he deserved. Were you happy?

No, I wasn't happy or sad. I think he should have been killed. I think he should have been executed. Anybody does what he does. But gives people like me a bad name had nothing to do with stuff like that. And the Ochoas and a lot of other people that give a bad name. The man was a megalomaniac.

You know, different than Putin. Different than Hitler. He just made some money and puffed his chest out and think, I'm going to rule the world. And everybody gets broke down. all of them. Yeah.

Yeah. He was a bad furlough. I'm sorry I ever knew him. I'm sorry he was ever involved in something like that. Do you have anything else you want to talk about? Yes. We should talk about the prison system. You want to talk about the prison system. You want to talk about the prison system?

Yes. It's so diabolically evil and unfair, unjust. It's full of poor people, poor, uneducated people. It's full of poor people, poor, uneducated people. It's full of people with mental illnesses. Ronald Reagan stopped the mental health program in the United States when he came in. Bam. Jimmy Carter had it for all people, for mental health. Reagan thought we don't need it.

Let's put that money somewhere else. And now tens of thousands of people are on the street homeless. They don't have any insane asylums. You have to be absolutely a babbling idiot to get into one of those places. So you've got all these people that are just everywhere you go. They're in the parks and in the freeways asking for money. I don't mind them asking for money, but those people, they need help just like a person that's got cancer. Their mind is cancerous. Something's wrong with them. And some of them look pretty nice, but

they're not. And they come into prison. They'll be sleeping under a bridge. And a policeman or DEA agent, I'm saying, they'll go under that bridge and they'll do drugs with them and got a big tattoo and tattoos all over them, big mustache. And they'll get one of them to sell another one, two or three grams of methamphetamine. It's real cheap. And they'll arrest both of them. Now, he's got two arrests. And he does that every month or two. Guess who makes captain? Guess who makes chief? The guy that does that kind of crap, such kind of terrible stuff,

just entraps these ignorant people. I'm not ignorant. They're mentally ill people. Alan, you've got a young lawyer, and he gets a job as a prosecutor. He wants to make judge and the judge wants to make governor and the governor wants to make president and they're working their way up.

So he'll lie, cheat, and steal anything. I want a conviction. So he gets that poor fellow that's got two grams and he says, you plead guilty to this today and we'll give you five years. If you don't, I'll guarantee you I'm going to get you 10 years. And that happens from two grams of methamphetamine right up to murder.

And the fellow that didn't murder somebody, they said, if you plead guilty to manslaughter, we'll give you 10 years. But if you don't, you're going to get the needle. You're going to get to electric chair. And it scares these people that are mentally ill. They don't have a lawyer. They don't know anything about how a court system works. They don't know anything about their rights. They get a public defender. They don't know much more than they do. So, and they plead guilty to these things and the prison system fills up. And the prosecutor says, The prison system fills up, and the prosecutor says, I have a 98% win ratio.

Yeah, he scared people into signing confessions. He's no better than the Mexican dude when they beat me and stuck chili up my butt. That's the way it works. It shouldn't be that way. We should be humane. We have a wonderful country here in America. We have it, and the people just don't know. And you look at these people and you think, I don't like those people.

They stink. We don't want them. Put them in jail. Lock them up. And that's what Mr. and Mrs. Nice out there think. They should look at them what they really are. So that's our prison system today and our judicial system. And it needs to change.

Those people need to come out of prison and they need to go to mental health. The people in there for drug offenses, all of them should be out of there. If two people sell each other something, yes, we can't have that. But it shouldn't be life in prison, 10 years, five years. There's punishment, and you've got your laws to do it. But the time should fit the crime. I agree with that. And take away from this penitentiary. Nobody's doing penance anymore.

That was Quakers. They're not. It's just like, it's just evil. I will shut you in a cage and treat you bad. In Australia, they tell you straight up. The warden says, when the judge sentence you, that's your punishment. To be away from your loved ones and away from your

society for this number of years. We are not here to punish you. Not so America. And the discontent between the blacks and the browns and the whites is just awful in there now. When I first went in there 40 years ago, we all got along. And they do to some degree. But I got sent down there. When I got sent to Terminal Island, I got in the misplaced. A lot of people in their wheelchairs and limping around and dying and bags on them. And I went into the TV room.

No, no, no senors, no senor. You white, don't know come here this is this is for the Latinos I said I speak Spanish I'll no senor por favor no really said no this is only for them Latinos and I go across and then one across the way what you doing this is black tell him Get the fuck out of here, man. Hey, Warden. What? We play chess out here.

Yeah, that's out there. But in here, it's black. You know I didn't. Don't come across that door. What? So I have to go plumb to the other side in another TV. There's old white men in there with the long hair and yellow

mustaches from smoking. They're in their wheelchairs and sitting around in there. And I come in and they says, show us your paperwork. Don't come in here until you show your paperwork. What are you talking about? I ain't showing you shit, man. Well, we'll take you out.

Well, you gonna take me out in that wheelchair? No, man. Don't come in here. You you got see you have you might be a pedophile you might be a snitch you might be A homosexual I said what they can't come in here. No They got their place down at the gym What in the world's matter with you people that's So that's what it's got to, just hatred between people for the racism of what they did. And in the chow hall, you don't dare sit at that table over there. Boy, that's the important boys.

And these over here, they are informants, and these over here are pedophiles, and these over here are these. And they're all separated there in the chow hall. They're all in prison. Of course, I can understand some of it, but it's gone way too far. Wow. That's the U.S. prison system,

and that's the U.S. how they got there. Do you think you will become an advocate for prison reform? Oh, absolutely. If anything, they got all kind of stuff that's going on. People worry about where a little boy's going to go pee-pee. I mean, they ought to be worried about something worthwhile. And prison is a good spot to start.

And mental health is even right up there with it. Those two things. And it's so simple to straighten out. Just absolutely. What do you think the solution is? Mental health programs? Money. A lot of money.

And trickle down to the right people. There's plenty of money. Yeah. Billions and trillions of dollars, these corporations. I'm completely against all this big corporations on everything. Whatever in the world happened to the store, the little donut shop, the little whatever? They all own by Walmarts and all these big ones.

How did we let them just take over? Nobody can make a living anymore with a business out there. What happened? That just, I don't know if that'll ever change, but it's wrong. I should be able to open a store on the corner and make a living. You can't. You can't compete with those people.

They buy out of China, get it shipped over here and have labor that's $5 a day, made it. You can't work with it. I had bees. I was a beekeeper. I had 500 hives of bees. And I was getting 42 cents a pound for honey and using pollination. And the government says, okay, we're going to free trade.

We're going to let Brazil and every other country ship. Honey went to 7 cents a pound. I couldn't even look after the bees. Had to give them away. Nobody wanted to buy them. So that stuff is happening to all kind of human being, not little people, people that want to work. So you get a job driving

a truck for UPS or whatever, 25 bucks an hour, man, my wife's got one too, and try to make a living that way. But it shouldn't be that way. But I'm not talking about big business. I'm just talking about the government should take some of these trillions

and billions of dollars that they spend and put it in the right position, right place. We talk about how much money was wasted in Afghanistan and the Middle East in that war. I don't say that it wasn't necessary, but they said when you talk about how much it was, I read you can't have any number when you get numbers with 10 or 9 and zero from here to the wall.

It doesn't make any difference. But I understand it cost in goods and services. It cost every human being, from a little tiny baby to the oldest person in the United States, a brand-new three-bedroom home. Now, you put it in that perspective, and you say, wow. Well, there's a lot of money being laced on a lot of things. Of course it is.

And everybody's complaining about school shootings right now, which they should be. Of course. And then they hired 89,000 IRS agents. Yes. They could have hired 89,000, I don't know, people to protect schools. Yes.

But they hired 89,000. Is it 87 or 89,000 IRS agents? To try to make sure. New ones. New ones. I saw that where in the world what did they come for we sent 54 billion

to Ukraine you know instead of spending it on our own infrastructure but I think it all just comes back around in these guys pockets you know little goes Ukraine funnels back in

you know obviously the IRS. Oh, it's so dishonest. Yeah. But anyway, if they would put up the money, first off, for mental health, that would, and I mean for sure, treat those people right. They don't have to pamper them. Just get them off the street and give them something to eat and clean their clothes up and give them a haircut and a shave. Oh, I mean, you know, just absolutely. Give them a prison cell for them.

Why in the world can't they make a little room for them somewhere? Outside of the town where they got a streetcar, a bus service right back and forth. And if they, the ones that need mental health medicine, the ones that need mental health nurses, doctors, get that, make it, go. Now then you're going to stop the influx to the prisons if those people have somewhere else to go. And then next go into prison.

See about those people. If they are deemed possible and not dangerous, and they got mental health, you put them in a facility out there that was made for that problem, not a penitentiary. Let them go. Let them get a little humanity. Let's just show some love in this country. Take care of our own. I mean, it needs to be done. It needs to be stomped hard down done. And we need to teach in schools family, family values, about how many children you can afford. How old do you have to be to have a child?

My daughter is a doctor, and she delivered a baby to a 10-year-old girl. Oh, man. Four generations in the visiting room, all of them on welfare, and all of them with a bunch of children in each generation. And I say, that little boy's like Elvis Presley's song in Ghetto. He doesn't have much of a chance. Poor, poor little things. I said, it shouldn't be. You have to have a permit to ride a moped in the United States,

and most anywhere else. How much more important to bring a child into this world? I say that a little sparrow builds her nest before she lays an egg. We don't have that much sense. That's very true. What was it like when you got out of prison? You made a video about this. It got, what, 6 million views in 12 hours or something? Yes.

And then they took it down. But I'll play the video right now. Hello, folks. I just got out of prison after 33 years of marijuana. And the first sign I saw when I come down the road, relax, we deliver your marijuana to you. But what was it like for you to come out of prison, and you'd spent many years in prison for marijuana, not counting the cocaine stuff, but for marijuana, and then you saw that sign, we'll deliver it right to your front door. It just made me smile all over, and I say how ironic,

how stupid the world is. I mean, it's just absolutely that. It was. It's just ridiculous. And how many people they shot and killed and put life in prison for marijuana. Yes. And now it's okay. Now they deliver it to your front door.

That's right. It was the same thing when I was making whiskey in Georgia. You go across the river in Florida, my wife couldn't understand it. You can go down there and buy all you want, and up here, they'll shoot and kill you. Yeah. It's one state to another. So I made the old moonshine.

And now, in every town, everywhere, same place, liquor stores, you go into a little store, and a little gal behind the counter can hand you a jug of whiskey just like nothing. Take the cigarettes off of the counter and just get them out. I mean, it's just so much stuff. It's just ridiculous.

Well, Roger, I want to wrap this thing up, but you have got one hell of a story behind you and for anybody listening I just want to say all the links if you're looking to get in touch with Roger or follow him on social media all the links are below

the book is linked below I hope your book sales go up and don't forget that book folks and what um what do you got coming up i know you got some stuff maybe in the works do you want to talk about that or nah yeah i'll just say that uh i want to make a series about this and and there's people looking into it but But I hope they do. And I had a couple of writers, and they say they have a deck laid out for 30. We'll see if it goes.

There's a chance of it. So I'd like to get the story out there. Well, it'll be a whole other story to watch. We'll be watching. And I just want to say it was real pleasure to meet you And your wife and hang out with you guys and and it was a real pleasure to get your story out And I thank you. I wish you the best of luck the likewise for us. It was really good to invite us Cheers We'll be right back. a new Jeep that you can count on. From the awarded new Grand Cherokee to the capable 2022 Jeep Compass,

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