Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel #199

Transcript

00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Roger Reeves,

00:00:03 one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.

00:00:06 He worked for Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa,

00:00:10 the leaders behind the Medellin Cartel.

00:00:13 Roger was the employer and close friend of Barry Seal,

00:00:17 the infamous drug smuggler who was the main character

00:00:20 in the movie American Maid.

00:00:22 Roger transported countless tons of cocaine and marijuana

00:00:26 covering six continents.

00:00:27 He escaped prison five times,

00:00:30 was shut down in both Mexico and Colombia,

00:00:32 and was tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison.

00:00:36 Through all of this, his wife Mari, the love of his life,

00:00:40 was there with him, and when he was in prison,

00:00:43 she waited for him.

00:00:45 He recently got out of prison where for many years

00:00:47 he worked on his memoir called Smuggler.

00:00:50 This podcast is an exploration of his story.

00:00:54 Quick mention of our sponsors.

00:00:56 Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN, Four Sigmatic, and Aidsleep.

00:01:01 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

00:01:04 Let me say a few words about Roger Reeves,

00:01:06 Pablo Escobar, and the war on drugs.

00:01:09 This conversation with Roger is unlike any I’ve ever done.

00:01:13 In the eyes of many, including the law,

00:01:15 Roger is a criminal, a bad man who was added

00:01:18 to the suffering in the world.

00:01:20 But he never directly engaged or participated

00:01:23 in the violence.

00:01:24 Unlike his bosses, Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa.

00:01:29 His crime was the transport of drugs.

00:01:32 I thought about this, and about Pablo Escobar,

00:01:35 who was at once both a brutal murderer

00:01:38 and a Robin Hood figure who helped the poor

00:01:40 and was loved by thousands, if not millions.

00:01:44 We sometimes idolize murderers and destroy good, honest men.

00:01:48 We give power and money to corrupt politicians

00:01:50 and dictators that starve and murder their own people.

00:01:53 Given this, I think about what makes for a good man,

00:01:57 and what makes for a bad man, and who decides.

00:02:01 Sitting across from Roger, I saw a complicated man,

00:02:04 but one who has kindness in his heart,

00:02:06 a love for money and adventure, and a disdain for violence.

00:02:11 Again, his crime was the transport of drugs.

00:02:14 Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost U.S. $1 trillion.

00:02:20 Marijuana legalization alone would save

00:02:22 and make $13.7 billion, that could send

00:02:26 more than 650,000 students

00:02:28 to public universities every year.

00:02:31 Then there’s the human stories of the 500,000 human beings

00:02:34 sitting in prison for drug related offenses,

00:02:37 and the 1.1 million on probation and parole.

00:02:40 Their life is damaged or ruined beyond repair

00:02:44 due to the prohibition of drugs.

00:02:46 There’s a lot more to be said about the damage done

00:02:48 by the war on drugs, but when reading about Roger’s story

00:02:52 and talking to him, I couldn’t escape the thought

00:02:55 that while society wants to label him a criminal

00:02:57 and a bad human being, there are much worse men out there

00:03:01 who we give a pass to, even give power to,

00:03:04 even men who hold political office or run companies.

00:03:09 I also think about my role as an interviewer,

00:03:11 sitting across a man like Roger.

00:03:14 In these interviews, in life,

00:03:16 in many ways I continue to be myself,

00:03:19 a person who like Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot,

00:03:21 seeks the good in all people,

00:03:24 but is hurt by it on occasion,

00:03:26 and maybe is destroyed by it in the end.

00:03:29 I’m not naive, but I’m also optimistic

00:03:32 and have hope for humanity.

00:03:34 That’s who I am, and that’s what these conversations are.

00:03:37 I hope you join me, and I hope you understand

00:03:40 that I come from a place of love.

00:03:43 This is the Lex Friedman Podcast,

00:03:45 and here’s my conversation with Roger Reeves.

00:03:48 You are one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.

00:03:54 What would you say motivated you?

00:03:55 Money, power, the thrill, or was it something else?

00:03:59 Money.

00:04:00 But isn’t there a point where you’ve had more money

00:04:04 than you can possibly know what to do with,

00:04:06 or is it always more money?

00:04:09 You know, I had plenty of money several times,

00:04:13 and I think it’s sort of like if you was in Las Vegas

00:04:17 and you had the slot machine handled down,

00:04:20 and the gold coins was tumbling around you,

00:04:22 and you had sweepers bagging them up,

00:04:25 when would you let it go?

00:04:27 But isn’t some part of that the thrill then?

00:04:29 Oh, there was a lot of thrill, sometimes way too much.

00:04:33 You made certainly tens of millions of dollars,

00:04:35 probably much more.

00:04:37 What memorable experience

00:04:38 did having that much money make possible for you?

00:04:41 So there’s one thing is the money,

00:04:44 and the other thing is what that money can buy.

00:04:47 Well, I bought everything that I could hide.

00:04:50 I bought seven farms.

00:04:52 I owned the city,

00:04:55 the land where the city of Moreno Valley, California is.

00:04:59 I had an option on that land.

00:05:01 Did the planning and development of that.

00:05:04 The most expensive coin in the world.

00:05:09 Yachts, ships, airplanes galore.

00:05:12 Did that bring you happiness?

00:05:13 No, absolutely not.

00:05:16 In fact, I think I’m happier now.

00:05:18 I know I’m happier now.

00:05:19 So looking back, would you do it the same way all again?

00:05:24 No way.

00:05:26 Really, even the thrill of it?

00:05:28 Not even thrill of it.

00:05:29 It wasn’t worth 33 years in prison,

00:05:31 being away from my lovely family.

00:05:34 So money, what about the power?

00:05:37 Just being on top of the world where nobody can,

00:05:41 not the governments, the police,

00:05:46 all the big, bad agencies chasing you,

00:05:50 and you could do whatever the heck you wanted.

00:05:52 As far as having to look over your shoulder

00:05:54 everywhere you went and every phone call you made,

00:05:58 make sure that you was naked with somebody in the ocean

00:06:00 before you talked.

00:06:03 It’s rather uncomfortable.

00:06:05 Yeah.

00:06:07 I like to make phone calls the same way.

00:06:09 What was it like meeting and working with Pablo Escobar,

00:06:15 the leader of the Medellin Cartel?

00:06:18 He was just, just seemed like a gentleman when I met him.

00:06:21 He was just like you and I, sitting here, shook hands,

00:06:23 and I had flown one load for a fellow,

00:06:26 and it didn’t work out well.

00:06:28 The fellow that I gave it to got shot,

00:06:30 and it took a while to get my money,

00:06:31 and they didn’t put as many kilos on the plane

00:06:34 as they’re supposed to,

00:06:34 and so I wasn’t gonna work with him anymore,

00:06:37 and my contact down there introduced me

00:06:39 to Jorge Ochoa, and we went up,

00:06:43 and in Vigado, we went up and the gate opened,

00:06:45 and we was escorted in.

00:06:47 There must have been 50 men out in the yards,

00:06:49 hitching a rail on an old house,

00:06:52 and we was escorted right in,

00:06:54 and there was a beautiful woman in there.

00:06:57 I mean, gore, drop dead beautiful,

00:06:59 and she made us a cup of coffee,

00:07:02 then ushered in to see Jorge Ochoa,

00:07:06 and he had 12 telephones on his desk,

00:07:08 and all of them was a different color,

00:07:09 and he shook hands, was very friendly, spoke English,

00:07:13 and he said that each one of those telephones

00:07:15 represented another city in the United States.

00:07:18 This is Chicago, and this is New York.

00:07:20 If I ring, I knew who was calling,

00:07:22 and so we chatted a while,

00:07:24 and he asked me what type of airplanes I had

00:07:28 and what experience I had flying across the U.S. border,

00:07:31 and I told him he seemed pleased with it,

00:07:35 and he called the lady in, and she went next door,

00:07:37 and in came Pablo Escobar,

00:07:39 and he introduced me to Pablo Escobar,

00:07:41 and he asked the same questions again,

00:07:43 and I answered him, and I asked him how much he paid,

00:07:49 and he paid $5,000 a kilo to haul it,

00:07:53 and so I said, how much you put on the plane?

00:07:55 He said 300, 500, so that’s one and a half,

00:07:59 two and a half million dollars for an eight hour trip.

00:08:01 Sounded pretty good to me.

00:08:02 And we’re talking about cocaine.

00:08:04 Cocaine. And we’re talking

00:08:05 about Colombia.

00:08:06 Colombia, and cocaine, and Medellin cartel.

00:08:09 And Jorge Ochoa was one of the, what would you say,

00:08:12 founding members of the Medellin?

00:08:14 He was probably the brains behind the whole thing.

00:08:16 The brains, and spoke good English.

00:08:17 Yes.

00:08:18 And they were nice people.

00:08:19 Really nice people.

00:08:21 Were you scared?

00:08:22 Not at all.

00:08:23 What’s wrong with your mind that you weren’t scared?

00:08:26 Here’s some of the most dangerous men in this world,

00:08:30 and you weren’t scared.

00:08:31 Well, I knew I was gonna do exactly what I said

00:08:33 I was gonna do.

00:08:34 Murray and the children were down there.

00:08:35 They went down and they stayed in the hotel,

00:08:37 five stars, treated royally on my first load.

00:08:40 And they just did ask security to make sure

00:08:42 that I wasn’t a DEA agent.

00:08:44 So I did the first load,

00:08:47 and they can say they were hostages,

00:08:49 but they really weren’t.

00:08:51 It was just insurance.

00:08:53 So there was some integrity to the way they operated.

00:08:56 Completely.

00:08:57 I mean, straight up.

00:09:00 The money was ironed and banded,

00:09:02 banded and just right.

00:09:04 And the numbers were never once anything wrong with it.

00:09:09 What would you attribute that honesty to?

00:09:11 Within their own moral system and their own set of rules,

00:09:17 why weren’t people crossing the line

00:09:20 and shaving off the top and injecting chaos

00:09:24 into the system to where it would be unpredictable

00:09:28 and people would be dishonest and greedy

00:09:30 and all those kinds of things?

00:09:31 That’s true.

00:09:32 Most people are, but there’s certain people

00:09:34 at the top of the food chain that they don’t need that.

00:09:37 And if they’re completely honest,

00:09:40 then they don’t have to think of,

00:09:41 remember the lie they told.

00:09:43 And plus they’re just honest to start with.

00:09:45 They’re making plenty of money.

00:09:48 They was making as much money as I did.

00:09:51 I’ll tell you how that came about.

00:09:54 I understand that 10,000 people were killed every year

00:09:57 in Medellin, Colombia, and what they were doing,

00:10:00 they didn’t have any organization.

00:10:03 And if one fellow had 10 kilos

00:10:06 and he wanted it shipped to New York,

00:10:08 he would tell his friend and his friend says,

00:10:10 sure, I’ll ship it.

00:10:11 I have a pilot and I’ll ship it up.

00:10:13 And then he would look in the newspapers,

00:10:14 oh, 40 kilos was busted in New Jersey.

00:10:17 I’m so sorry, yours got busted.

00:10:19 Bang, bang, he’s dead.

00:10:22 So here comes Jorge Ochoa and the three Ochoa brothers

00:10:26 and Pablo Escobar and Gacho.

00:10:28 And they decided that we will make an insurance company,

00:10:33 that we will charge you $10,000

00:10:35 to take it to your contact in Miami.

00:10:39 If it gets lost anywhere between the time I put it

00:10:43 on the airplane or the time you give it to us

00:10:45 and the time we give it to your man,

00:10:47 we will replace it in Colombia for you.

00:10:50 So there was no way anybody could lose.

00:10:52 And I understand they got a hundred tons piled up

00:10:56 under that insurance program.

00:10:57 And I was right there the first day.

00:11:00 So I had all the work I could do.

00:11:03 I would land and I said, when do you want me to come back?

00:11:05 We’re waiting on you, Senor.

00:11:08 Well, let me ask a difficult question.

00:11:10 Some see Escobar as a brutal murderer

00:11:14 and some see him as maybe a Robin Hood like figure

00:11:17 who helped the poor.

00:11:19 How do you see the man?

00:11:20 Both of them.

00:11:22 I think he started out to be honest with help the poor.

00:11:25 And then they had a war down there

00:11:27 and they blew up and killed his people.

00:11:29 And the country was divided almost equally three ways.

00:11:32 They had the military.

00:11:36 They were just as much into it as anybody.

00:11:38 And then you had the FARC guerrillas.

00:11:40 They had about a third of the country.

00:11:42 And then you had the Contras.

00:11:43 It was like the white farmers

00:11:46 and they’re the ones that I was dealing with

00:11:48 and they were at war with one another.

00:11:50 And so if one of them started killing their people,

00:11:53 well, I’ll kill some of yours too.

00:11:55 So that’s how it happened.

00:11:57 And then when I heard about Pablo Escobar

00:11:59 blowing up that airliner

00:12:01 and killing those women and children,

00:12:02 I was sorry I ever shook his hand.

00:12:05 That’s brutal murder.

00:12:07 So you would say Escobar is not a good man?

00:12:10 Not at all.

00:12:11 He’s terrible.

00:12:13 Now, looking back on it, when I met him, he was good.

00:12:16 Did just exactly what he said he would do.

00:12:19 Could he be a bad man and a man you can trust?

00:12:22 Are those the things you…

00:12:23 Absolutely you could trust him, yes.

00:12:27 So from your perspective, in terms of business,

00:12:31 he was reliable, he was honest, had integrity.

00:12:35 You could work with him and he felt safe.

00:12:38 Completely.

00:12:39 We flew up to his ranch

00:12:41 and we brought out motorcycles to start with.

00:12:45 And can you ride a motorcycle?

00:12:46 Of course I can ride a motorcycle.

00:12:48 So I took off across the grass

00:12:50 and there was a little ditch there

00:12:51 and the front wheel dropped in that thing

00:12:53 and I must have slid across that grass 20 feet

00:12:56 before I got stopped.

00:12:57 He almost fell off of his bike waiting

00:13:00 because they knew what it was gonna do.

00:13:01 And then we got on horses and we went out there

00:13:04 and pretended to round up some cows

00:13:06 and he put a Mac 10 machine gun pistol over my shoulder.

00:13:09 Do you know how to use this?

00:13:10 Well, I never had, but it was all right.

00:13:13 I think it was like, okay, you got 10 bodyguards,

00:13:16 what do you need me for?

00:13:17 So that’s the kind of time we laughed and talked

00:13:19 and drove some cows over the stumps.

00:13:23 You said Jorge Ochoa was perhaps the brains

00:13:26 of the Medellin cartel.

00:13:30 What was he like?

00:13:31 And why do you say he was the brains?

00:13:35 Well, he was a gentleman.

00:13:37 And I suppose he shipped,

00:13:39 and don’t tell me how many more times of cocaine

00:13:41 than Pablo did.

00:13:43 Just him and his brothers,

00:13:44 you could tell by the, they had on each load,

00:13:47 they was in duffel bags and his big football shaped

00:13:52 fluffy stuff made with ether.

00:13:55 And they would have three horns on it

00:13:58 or a rattlesnake or four Xs on each bag.

00:14:02 You kind of got to knowing which was which

00:14:04 and they shipped a lot.

00:14:07 So, and he was just a gentleman.

00:14:09 I took the family, we went one weekend to his ranch

00:14:12 or his palatial place out near Barranquilla

00:14:17 and oh, he just treated the family.

00:14:20 His family had, his younger brother made a bull fight

00:14:24 and we had skiing and little airplanes on floats

00:14:30 on the water.

00:14:32 He was really nice and he was really nice.

00:14:36 How do you make sense of the tension

00:14:39 that a man could be a gentleman,

00:14:42 can have integrity, but also be a murderer?

00:14:44 Well, murder is a stronger word than killing.

00:14:50 Can you explain the line,

00:14:52 the gray area we’re talking about?

00:14:55 I mean, I’ve just talking with Jocko Willing,

00:14:57 can we talk a lot about killing in the context

00:15:00 of military conflict in the context of war?

00:15:05 So there, there’s a line between murder and killing

00:15:08 that you can draw.

00:15:09 What’s the line that you’re referring to?

00:15:11 It’s something similar.

00:15:13 If people are shooting at you

00:15:14 and you shoot back and kill him,

00:15:16 that’s not murder whatsoever.

00:15:17 He’s trying to get away or out of the situation.

00:15:22 But if some woman don’t pay you

00:15:25 and you send a hit man over to kill her

00:15:27 and her children, that’s murder.

00:15:30 Was Jorge involved in those kinds of things?

00:15:33 I don’t think so at all.

00:15:34 I mean, he was just such a gentleman.

00:15:36 He had a restaurant before and he was just smart.

00:15:39 I understand that the first 10 kilos he sold,

00:15:42 he was sitting on a motorcycle in the sidelines

00:15:46 in a parking lot and when the DEA come in,

00:15:48 he sped away.

00:15:49 So he didn’t come back to America.

00:15:51 He was just smart.

00:15:52 Some people just are savvy.

00:15:53 And he was such a gentleman.

00:15:55 And the whole family, the mother and the father,

00:15:57 the two brothers, their sister,

00:15:59 I was there when she was kidnapped.

00:16:01 And finally, he kidnapped our, I guess,

00:16:05 100 leaders of the FARC and said, all right,

00:16:10 when she don’t come back,

00:16:11 none of these are gonna come back.

00:16:13 So they made a deal.

00:16:15 Is there something you can say about the power structure,

00:16:17 the hierarchy of the Medellin cartel

00:16:20 that you interacted with?

00:16:21 Was it a dictatorship where Pablo ran everything?

00:16:26 Was there a bunch of power centers?

00:16:28 Was it like a company where you have CEO, CTO kind of thing?

00:16:32 And then there’s like managers

00:16:34 and all those kinds of things.

00:16:35 How did it run from a leadership perspective?

00:16:39 I understand that about five of them got together

00:16:43 and made this, I would call it an insurance company.

00:16:46 And now known as the Medellin Cartel.

00:16:50 And I didn’t see any difference.

00:16:51 Each one of them had their own business.

00:16:55 And their people from the jungle or wherever made the cocaine,

00:16:59 gave it to them and they shipped it.

00:17:02 And so it didn’t seem to be any power play

00:17:05 between them at all.

00:17:07 But my main contact was Jorge Ochoa

00:17:10 and Pablo Escobar was right there.

00:17:12 And I saw plenty of stuff for him too.

00:17:16 It’s strange that they didn’t betray each other regularly.

00:17:20 You know, greed makes men betray each other.

00:17:25 How do you explain that?

00:17:27 How much betrayal did you see?

00:17:29 I didn’t see any, absolutely none.

00:17:32 If they shipped his 100 kilos, he got paid for it.

00:17:36 And if the other one shipped his,

00:17:38 I’m sure they got paid for it.

00:17:39 How do you explain that?

00:17:42 Well, there was no need to.

00:17:43 The money was just unbelievable.

00:17:44 You think about 500 kilos in the plane

00:17:47 at $50,000 a kilo at the time.

00:17:53 And they paid $5,000 to ship it.

00:17:57 And they made 5,000 without even touching it.

00:18:00 They just had somebody to load it on through the airplane.

00:18:03 I gave it to their man in Miami.

00:18:05 They gave it to whoever it belonged to

00:18:07 by the marks on the duffel bags.

00:18:10 So they was making just untold millions.

00:18:14 Just no reason.

00:18:16 But greed can blind men.

00:18:20 It’s still strange to me

00:18:24 that there was not more betrayal.

00:18:26 It speaks to something else perhaps

00:18:28 that’s bigger than money.

00:18:31 Maybe not.

00:18:34 But it seems like just like in the casino,

00:18:36 like you mentioned, we get accustomed

00:18:40 to whatever level of money we have,

00:18:42 we get accustomed very quickly.

00:18:43 Yes.

00:18:44 And then there’s a tension that’s natural

00:18:47 between human beings.

00:18:49 And when that tension combined with money,

00:18:52 combined with power,

00:18:54 combined with, like you mentioned, beautiful women

00:18:57 and a bit of violence,

00:18:59 it seems that betrayal should be commonplace.

00:19:04 But it’s not.

00:19:05 It wasn’t, not at all.

00:19:07 Carlos later, I don’t know if he betrayed anybody,

00:19:09 but he started that.

00:19:10 He was running cocaine through the Bahamas

00:19:13 near the island.

00:19:14 I didn’t go.

00:19:15 I was offered to fly with a DC3 with that,

00:19:17 but I didn’t like it.

00:19:18 So I had my route through the old wells in Louisiana.

00:19:22 And so I wasn’t gonna change,

00:19:24 but he talked a lot and I don’t know if he betrayed,

00:19:27 but they didn’t like him.

00:19:28 Yeah, so as you expand,

00:19:31 there could be tensions that lead to conflict.

00:19:35 Columbia was, like you said, an ultra violent place.

00:19:40 How did you survive?

00:19:41 Who protected you?

00:19:43 I was a hero.

00:19:44 They liked me.

00:19:45 I mean, I was just treated royally.

00:19:47 All I did, I would come over El Banco.

00:19:49 There’s a radio station at the Forks of the Magdalena River.

00:19:52 I believe it was 720, if I remember right, on the AM.

00:19:57 And I’d fly in at 10,000 feet

00:19:58 and I’d see below me there’d be a Cessna.

00:20:01 And I’d wiggle my wings and he’d wiggle his

00:20:03 and I’d fall in behind him and we might go 100, 200 miles.

00:20:06 I’d land on some jungle strip or some banana plantation.

00:20:11 And they’d fuel me up.

00:20:13 I could eat steak in the night.

00:20:15 It was just like treated royally.

00:20:17 And I mean, take off the next morning whenever I wanted to.

00:20:21 It was just like that was protected.

00:20:22 And I was honored guest.

00:20:25 It wasn’t anything like in that movie,

00:20:27 putting a gun to your head

00:20:29 and taking your sunglasses and betting.

00:20:31 So one time I complained to Jorge Ochoa

00:20:35 that the runway was pretty short that they were using.

00:20:38 And I went back down and it looked like

00:20:39 Los Angeles International.

00:20:41 They had bulldozers in there.

00:20:42 Had that thing 5,000 feet long.

00:20:44 Just like, just the next week it was all done.

00:20:47 The jungle was gone and clay put up there.

00:20:50 And all the while you were not afraid.

00:20:53 You were treated like royalty.

00:20:54 Yes, there I was.

00:20:56 I was afraid when I landed in the United States.

00:20:58 Well, maybe let’s go back to the beginning.

00:21:01 What was the first time you flew an airplane

00:21:04 with drugs on it?

00:21:06 Tell me the story of the first time you smuggled drugs.

00:21:08 All right, I flew down to Jalapa, Veracruz

00:21:13 with a Cessna 182.

00:21:16 And we landed at the town.

00:21:18 It was a lovely town and just an old town.

00:21:20 Looked like Bible times.

00:21:22 People, women were washing your clothes in the streets

00:21:24 and with stone basins and the stream running through.

00:21:27 I just was just dumbstruck.

00:21:29 It was just so pretty.

00:21:30 And I went in a church and a Catholic church

00:21:32 and it had the stations of the cross

00:21:34 all carved magnificent.

00:21:36 I’d never seen that.

00:21:37 And I come home and told Mary about that.

00:21:39 That just almost brought tears to my eyes.

00:21:41 It was so beautiful.

00:21:42 And three o clock the next morning

00:21:44 I went out to the airport and taxied down to the taxiway

00:21:47 and there was a guard came out

00:21:49 and wanted to know what I was doing.

00:21:52 And I pulled out, I was on the fire department

00:21:54 at Redondo Beach, California.

00:21:56 So I pulled out my wallet and in it was

00:21:58 the fire department badge.

00:22:00 And oh, he shook my hand and was so glad.

00:22:02 So I taxied on down there and we loaded up

00:22:05 about 400 pounds in the plane.

00:22:07 And came on back and I was running to headwinds

00:22:11 more than I thought and I landed on a little strip.

00:22:14 You’re talking about on the way back?

00:22:16 On the way back, on the way north

00:22:17 after we loaded up early in the morning.

00:22:19 And that’s the only time I ever got vertigo.

00:22:22 The mountains were coming down at a 30, 40 degree angle

00:22:25 and the Milky Way was overhead.

00:22:28 And somehow I wanted that airplane

00:22:29 to be level with the stars.

00:22:31 And it got me, it’s a phenomenal pile of vertigo.

00:22:35 It’s the only time I ever had it was on that load.

00:22:37 So anyway, the wind was on the nose of that system.

00:22:40 I wasn’t gonna make it to the dry lake where I had fuel.

00:22:43 So I landed on a little bitty strip

00:22:44 and there was a little house.

00:22:46 It was caved in and it was a little boy named Lazarus,

00:22:49 about six or seven years old.

00:22:50 And he was herding some goats.

00:22:52 So we put the marijuana in that house

00:22:54 and the man stayed with it while I flew into some town

00:22:57 and got fuel and came back and we sat down

00:22:59 with the lunch that I brought back

00:23:00 and little Lazarus sat there and ate with us

00:23:02 and we had a good time.

00:23:03 We loaded on back and came on home.

00:23:05 Oh wow, I wonder where he is now.

00:23:09 So what was it like to fly,

00:23:12 maybe describe the details of, do you have to fly low?

00:23:16 Is there details that are unique to this experience

00:23:21 of flying an airplane with drugs on it, on board?

00:23:24 All right, well, one of the mistakes

00:23:26 that just thousands, hundreds and hundreds

00:23:27 and thousands of pilots make,

00:23:29 they don’t stop at the border,

00:23:30 going down and get their permit.

00:23:33 Once you get a permit to be in Mexico,

00:23:35 you’ve got it for six months.

00:23:37 You can go anywhere, any fishing village,

00:23:39 any little town, any little place,

00:23:41 show them this and you’re welcome.

00:23:43 If you don’t have that, you go straight to jail.

00:23:46 So you go down there and you think,

00:23:47 okay, they’re gonna have fuel for me to come back

00:23:49 and so forth.

00:23:50 Oh, sorry, Senor, that had a rusty leak in it.

00:23:53 We don’t have any.

00:23:54 Well, you better be able to go to town and get it.

00:23:57 So that’s what I did.

00:23:58 And when I was coming back for several years,

00:24:01 I would fly up at Mexicali and cross the border

00:24:06 right at Calexico.

00:24:08 I would act like I was landing on the Calexico side

00:24:10 just after dark and then I’d zip across the border

00:24:13 and I’d go over to the Salton Sea

00:24:14 and go below sea level, 100 and something feet,

00:24:17 I believe 170 feet, and come on up

00:24:19 and go out there above Palm Springs

00:24:21 and land at 29 Palms in the desert

00:24:24 and put my stuff under a Joshua tree

00:24:26 and fly into town and get my pickup

00:24:28 and go on back out and get it.

00:24:29 And that was fun.

00:24:31 And then it got really dangerous.

00:24:32 They had Operation Starlight, I believe was the name of it.

00:24:36 And they called a lot of pilots coming across the border.

00:24:39 So I changed it.

00:24:40 And by that time I was flying bigger planes.

00:24:42 I was flying Beach 18s.

00:24:44 And I would refuel in Mulahe halfway down

00:24:47 on the Baja Peninsula.

00:24:50 And then over in the middle,

00:24:52 20 miles from the nearest road was a goat ranch

00:24:55 where they milked goats and made cheese.

00:24:58 And I would go there and unload the load

00:25:00 coming up out of anywhere in Southern Mexico.

00:25:02 And I would land there and a guy named Juan

00:25:05 would put the marijuana under the trees

00:25:09 and I’d fly into Mulahe and they’d wash my plane

00:25:11 and gas it up and I’d eat a lunch

00:25:15 and rent a room for a few hours and take a nap and a shower

00:25:18 and then go back in the afternoon and fill up.

00:25:20 And then I would go Northwest out of there

00:25:23 and fly 200 miles off the coast of the island of Guadalupe.

00:25:27 And from there I would fly on a more Northwestern heading

00:25:29 about 300 miles out over the Pacific.

00:25:32 And then I would come in behind the Santa Barbara Islands

00:25:35 down low and then I’d come up and go out in the desert land.

00:25:38 And I did that for the rest of their marijuana trips.

00:25:44 What was the hardest part about flying those routes?

00:25:49 The hardest part was getting good in marijuana.

00:25:52 So the hardest part isn’t the flying.

00:25:54 No, it’s the flying.

00:25:55 It’s just like driving your car down.

00:25:57 But then I had people that would bring me on strips

00:25:59 that were just unworthy of an airplane.

00:26:02 Like when I’d land on a highway and in the rainy season,

00:26:07 I would come back to land again

00:26:08 and the guy wouldn’t think about it.

00:26:10 And he’d have like little hills on both sides

00:26:12 and the wings were out there.

00:26:14 Well, the grass and the weeds would grow up

00:26:16 and it sounded like, I mean,

00:26:18 it sounded like tearing the airplane apart

00:26:20 when those wings hit.

00:26:21 Mowing the grass down both shoulders of the airplane.

00:26:24 The weeds would grow up high in the tropics.

00:26:26 So some of that stuff was bad.

00:26:28 And oh, getting bad gasoline and telling me

00:26:31 that land here in the night

00:26:32 and knock the wheels off when you land.

00:26:35 Oh, you should have landed a little further up here,

00:26:38 Senor, they ditched down, that sort of thing.

00:26:42 What was it like landing on a highway

00:26:43 and when did you have to land on the highway?

00:26:46 I landed on the highway most of my life, most of the times.

00:26:49 In Mexico, first time I went down,

00:26:51 there was a place called Pichalingi

00:26:54 and it had a 900 foot strip.

00:26:56 And I would fly down and I’d carry gasoline wing with me

00:27:00 and Maury and I would go to the grocery store

00:27:03 and buy all kinds of little goodies and candies

00:27:05 and toys to bring to the children.

00:27:07 And that sand strip in the bend of a river

00:27:13 was just too short to take off with a load.

00:27:15 So there was a young man there named Pedro,

00:27:17 must not weigh much over 100, maybe 120 pounds.

00:27:20 And he’d get in a plane with me

00:27:22 and he’d direct me 20, 30, 40 miles away to a highway.

00:27:27 And the people walk in and the people would pull out

00:27:30 in a two ton truck with a machine gun on it

00:27:32 and a bunch of guys with arms with us

00:27:35 and they’d block the road

00:27:37 and then another one would block it up about a mile away.

00:27:39 And I’d land right over that truck

00:27:40 and they’d load me up and it looked like a bucket brigade

00:27:43 with the marijuana coming.

00:27:44 I’d shake hands with all of them

00:27:45 and I’d take off right over the other trucks.

00:27:48 And sometimes maybe 20, 30, 40 cars lined up.

00:27:51 One time I remember a patrol car, a highway patrol car,

00:27:55 he didn’t have his lights on, took off right over him.

00:27:57 And then when I started flying to Louisiana,

00:28:00 the bridge over the Mississippi River,

00:28:02 there were several contractors that went broke

00:28:04 and that thing was out for years.

00:28:07 And about five miles from the river

00:28:08 was flashing red lights and a detour.

00:28:12 And then they swamp on both sides of it

00:28:14 and the middle of it we’re growing up with 20 feet trees

00:28:17 and that was like an international runway

00:28:20 from anywhere in the world.

00:28:22 So I landed on that and over and over those red lights

00:28:25 just like the end of a runway.

00:28:26 And then the next morning we’d go out there

00:28:28 and scrub the marks off the highway where I’d landed

00:28:31 before daylight.

00:28:33 Wow.

00:28:34 Let’s go to somebody you’ve known well,

00:28:38 somebody who’s also a drug smuggler is Barry Seal.

00:28:42 Who is Barry Seal?

00:28:44 How did you meet him?

00:28:45 Barry Seal is a friend of mine.

00:28:50 Murray and I and the children went down in Honduras

00:28:53 and we went up Lake Azul, I believe it was,

00:28:57 and we were looking at a ranch to buy.

00:28:58 I was looking for something in Central America

00:29:00 where I’d have a halfway place.

00:29:03 Oh, it was lovely.

00:29:04 We stayed up there for some days and our clothes got muddy

00:29:06 and we went in the river and all kinds of things.

00:29:08 So we got to San Pedro Sula

00:29:10 and we was going back to New Orleans.

00:29:13 So we went to the cleaners to get our clothes

00:29:17 and most all of them was in there.

00:29:19 And they go, oh, Senor, they’ll be ready tomorrow morning.

00:29:22 We’re not ready now.

00:29:23 Well, the plane leaves at nine o clock or whatever.

00:29:27 So I told Murray for her and the children

00:29:30 to go into the airport because it’d be easier

00:29:32 for one just on a standby flight.

00:29:35 So I went to the laundromat for the clothes

00:29:39 and they were ready and there was a pile of them.

00:29:41 And I put them on my back and got in a taxi

00:29:43 and the old taxi would drive him with it

00:29:44 and I’d give him a hundred dollars to go faster

00:29:46 and he just blew his horn more rapid.

00:29:48 So finally we got to the airport

00:29:53 and I jumped out and ran around on the tarmac

00:29:55 and here’s a brand new 727 taxiing out.

00:29:59 Oh no.

00:30:01 So I’m waving to the pilot and he’s a young fella.

00:30:04 He waves back.

00:30:05 Then I see Murray’s face in the cockpit

00:30:07 and the nose goes down where he puts on brakes

00:30:09 and he laughs and he puts some stairwell out.

00:30:12 And I run for the stairwell and he pulls it back up

00:30:14 and goes like a hitchhiker going to pick you up

00:30:16 and go again.

00:30:18 Then he put it out and I got on and the whole crowd clapped

00:30:21 and I’m coming home with that load of clothes.

00:30:26 So I go way down in the middle and the plane’s full

00:30:29 and Miriam, my daughter, was about nine years old then

00:30:32 and she was sitting in the middle

00:30:33 and by the window was Barry Seal.

00:30:35 Of course I didn’t know it.

00:30:36 And I sat in the middle and we took off

00:30:39 and the wheels come up with clunk

00:30:42 and then I got up about 5,000 feet

00:30:43 and we had a little clunk and she said,

00:30:45 what was that, daddy?

00:30:46 And I said, he just turned on his autopilot.

00:30:49 And that fella reached over and I looked at him.

00:30:51 I said, he looks like CIA or FBI, something.

00:30:55 He ain’t supposed to be here.

00:30:56 Clear blue eyes, gentleman looking man.

00:30:59 And he said, you fly these things?

00:31:01 I said, I got a few hours, mister.

00:31:03 He said, I’ll fly them too or something.

00:31:05 And he said, my name’s Barry Seal.

00:31:06 And he reached over Miriam and shook hands

00:31:08 and we got to talking and I thought,

00:31:11 there’s no choice of seats on this.

00:31:13 It’s just open seating so I don’t believe him one bit.

00:31:18 And he started talking about,

00:31:19 he just got out of jail that morning.

00:31:21 Just got out of prison.

00:31:23 And I said, uh huh.

00:31:26 And he told me that he’d been a pilot

00:31:28 with the TWA and this and other.

00:31:31 And told me what he was for.

00:31:33 So we had a nice conversation

00:31:35 for a couple hours to New Orleans.

00:31:37 I didn’t believe him.

00:31:39 So he got off in front of us

00:31:40 and what a crowd of people to meet him.

00:31:44 An old mother and a wife and little children

00:31:46 hanging on to him, crying and hugging and kissing him.

00:31:49 I said, he was telling the truth.

00:31:53 So I reached over and gave him a little piece of paper.

00:31:56 I had Murray to write it out with our address.

00:31:57 I said, Barry, I might have some work for you.

00:32:00 Come on out.

00:32:00 What was he in jail for?

00:32:01 He got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine in a small plane.

00:32:05 And so he served a year.

00:32:07 And that was from Colombia?

00:32:10 I don’t know where it come from.

00:32:11 He got caught in Honduras, probably refueling.

00:32:14 But he’d been in prison down there before

00:32:17 for bringing explosives to the Cuban Contras.

00:32:21 And he lost his job with the airlines.

00:32:23 And then later on, I found out he was ex CIA

00:32:25 and George Bush Sr.’s protege

00:32:27 and had a thousand parachute jumps and was there.

00:32:32 He was a hot shot model.

00:32:34 There’s a million questions I wanna ask here.

00:32:37 But maybe can we linger on a little bit longer?

00:32:41 What was your relationship with him like?

00:32:44 You were a drug smuggler.

00:32:47 He’s a drug smuggler.

00:32:50 Your friends, how often do you guys talk?

00:32:53 How often do you work together?

00:32:56 What was the relationship like?

00:32:58 Well, I’ll back up and finish where I started off there.

00:33:01 I gave him the things, Barry,

00:33:02 I may have some work for you.

00:33:03 I know I got some work for you.

00:33:05 And I said, come out to Santa Barbara.

00:33:08 And so I don’t know, a week or two later,

00:33:10 he flew out and went to our house

00:33:12 and stayed with us a couple of days.

00:33:14 And I had a almost brand new Aero Commander 690B.

00:33:18 That thing with turbo prop and it was hot.

00:33:20 It was the hottest thing I’d ever had.

00:33:22 So I said, let’s go Barry, let’s see what you can do.

00:33:26 So I’m sorry I said that.

00:33:27 We got about 10,000 feet.

00:33:30 And he was like one of them blue angel pilots.

00:33:32 He rung that thing out.

00:33:34 And I said, that’s enough.

00:33:35 And then he did a falling leaf.

00:33:38 That’s where you cut the engines

00:33:39 and the plane falls from side to side.

00:33:41 And I saw Bob Hoover do that in the air show once.

00:33:43 And that’s the only person I ever saw do it.

00:33:45 And I was, my hands was white knuckle hanging onto the seat.

00:33:49 You shut off the engine?

00:33:50 Yeah, he shut off the engines

00:33:51 and landed flying side by side like this.

00:33:54 How do you explain that?

00:33:55 Was he just a wild man

00:33:58 or was he sufficiently skilled to work?

00:34:00 He was sufficiently skilled.

00:34:01 Absolutely.

00:34:02 He knew what he was doing.

00:34:05 I can get a plane from one spot to another

00:34:06 and I guess I’m known as a good pilot,

00:34:08 but that guy, it was an aerobatic.

00:34:10 So anyway, he stayed with us a couple of days.

00:34:15 And then I told him, I said, this plane needs tanking.

00:34:18 And I said, I got some work down in Columbia.

00:34:20 It needs to come back to Louisiana.

00:34:21 And I need 2,500 mile range.

00:34:23 He said, I got somebody in Mena, Arkansas

00:34:25 to do that and keep their mouth shut.

00:34:27 So I gave him $10,000 and he flew away.

00:34:30 And in a few days he called me and says,

00:34:32 come to my house in Baton Rouge.

00:34:35 So I went out to his house in Baton Rouge

00:34:37 and I stayed with him for a few days.

00:34:39 And that plane was tanked.

00:34:40 I mean, beautiful from stem to stern.

00:34:43 I could went from Bolivia to Canada with it.

00:34:47 So then I hired him to fly.

00:34:51 And he was funny.

00:34:52 I paid him a million dollars a trip.

00:34:54 I paid him $2,000 a kilo, so about a million dollar trip.

00:34:57 And I didn’t get paid until the people received it.

00:35:01 They had to ship it to Chicago and New York

00:35:04 and then the money come back.

00:35:05 So it was a couple of two or three weeks pipeline.

00:35:07 Well, I always had to pay him before he’d go again.

00:35:10 I mean, and he barely ache.

00:35:12 I mean, he had moaning room.

00:35:15 So one time I gave him a million dollars

00:35:19 and I put it in a box real nice.

00:35:21 So how big is a box that contains a million dollars?

00:35:23 So we’re talking about a hundred dollar bills?

00:35:25 A hundred dollar bill, it’s not very big.

00:35:26 You can put it in a large briefcase.

00:35:29 It weighs exactly 10 kilos.

00:35:31 Each bill weighs a gram, so you can weigh your money

00:35:34 and almost get it exactly right.

00:35:36 20 something pounds is a million dollars.

00:35:38 22 pounds.

00:35:39 22 pounds.

00:35:40 A hundred dollar bills.

00:35:42 But in one dollar bills, it’s one ton, 2,200 pounds.

00:35:48 We didn’t even accept them.

00:35:49 Were you the one that introduced Barry Seal

00:35:51 to Pablo Escobar?

00:35:53 No, I didn’t introduce him at all.

00:35:55 And our deal was that you don’t meet my people.

00:36:00 I mean, we just kind of crossed your working for me

00:36:02 to fly the airplanes.

00:36:03 So he wanted these Panther conversions

00:36:05 that cost $400,000 each with a storm scope and radar.

00:36:09 I bought anything you want.

00:36:11 What’s that mean, sorry to interrupt,

00:36:12 Panther conversions?

00:36:14 Panther conversion was, these people called Panther,

00:36:18 they took everything out from the firewall,

00:36:20 the instruments and all and converted them

00:36:22 and put Q tip propellers on them full bladed

00:36:25 and you very quiet and the CIA developed those

00:36:28 in Southeast Asia for running behind the lines.

00:36:31 And that’s where Barry had flown those things

00:36:33 so he knew about them.

00:36:35 So that’s what he wanted and that’s what we got him.

00:36:38 How does that connect to Pablo?

00:36:39 And so he worked for you and you got those upgrades.

00:36:42 I think he flew about 30 loads for me

00:36:44 and then I got arrested and was for everything in the world.

00:36:48 Got 35 years sentence.

00:36:51 But let me back up a little bit.

00:36:52 Barry was our friend.

00:36:55 Mari and I are both friends.

00:36:57 We should pause real quick and say Mari is your wife

00:37:02 and hopefully we’ll convince her to join us in a little bit.

00:37:07 She’s the love of your life and sort of she weaves in

00:37:11 and out of many of these stories that you tell.

00:37:13 Yes, she was there.

00:37:15 She was behind the scenes.

00:37:16 But I kept her out of it completely.

00:37:18 And then also you mentioned Mariam as your daughter.

00:37:21 Yes, our son was a baby.

00:37:25 And I remember we went out to a festival,

00:37:27 was my favorite restaurant in Carl Gables.

00:37:29 Oh God, it was good.

00:37:31 And Barry knew about it.

00:37:32 Anyhow, we went out to dinner

00:37:34 and so we came back and there was no rooms.

00:37:38 So Barry will spend the night with us.

00:37:40 So he goes to our hotel room with us

00:37:42 and we got two big beds in the Omni Hotel

00:37:45 and he lays over there and he gets down

00:37:47 to his stripy undershorts and his T shirt

00:37:49 and he puts the baby up on his belly

00:37:51 and gives him the bottle and said,

00:37:52 mm, ain’t that good, Red?

00:37:54 Oh my, my.

00:37:55 And he just feeds the baby.

00:37:56 We laugh and talk and that’s how close we were

00:38:00 that we could all stay in a hotel room together.

00:38:03 And would you say he’s a good man?

00:38:04 Oh, wonderful man.

00:38:06 A gentleman, Southern gentleman.

00:38:09 Just looked after his mother, his family,

00:38:11 everybody around him, everybody loved Barry.

00:38:14 He just had a little smile on his face always.

00:38:18 So you got arrested and then what happened to Barry?

00:38:21 Well, Barry knew the people that unloaded.

00:38:26 Of course he sent the cars down and all that.

00:38:28 So he met the unloader, a guy named Lito,

00:38:31 Luis Carlos Bustamante of Venezuelan.

00:38:35 So he just kept on flying.

00:38:37 But he, I believe he had three of my airplanes

00:38:40 at $400,000 a piece and they owed me some money.

00:38:42 Well, he collected a lot of that and gave Marie the money

00:38:45 and put it in his safe and took her to his house

00:38:48 and all after I got arrested and sent a lawyer in.

00:38:50 He got me the best lawyer in the country, Albert Krieger.

00:38:54 He was head of the defense team for all of America.

00:38:56 Wonderful man.

00:38:58 Can you tell the story of the months

00:39:03 that led up to Barry’s assassination?

00:39:05 What did you know, what did you sense, what did you think?

00:39:10 Okay, when I got out of prison, I hadn’t been out long.

00:39:12 I was eating breakfast and there was Ronald Reagan’s face

00:39:16 right in the television.

00:39:18 We have absolute proof that the communist

00:39:21 Sandinista government is in the cocaine running business.

00:39:24 And there was that fat lady, the C126 on the runway

00:39:29 with the belly down and I thought, oh God, he had done it.

00:39:34 So I had heard that Barry might’ve been working with him.

00:39:38 So it wasn’t long before.

00:39:39 Working with?

00:39:40 With the DEA or whoever, he was no longer on our side.

00:39:45 So can you clarify how you got that

00:39:48 from the Reagan making a statement about we’ve heard.

00:39:52 Okay, there was his plane.

00:39:54 There was Barry’s plane and okay, on the way north,

00:39:57 we could stop in Nicaragua and land on a military base

00:40:00 or on a base that they used as crop dusters and all

00:40:03 and refuel and so that shortened our trip.

00:40:06 We’d go further into the jungle and come up

00:40:08 and that was what Pablo Escobar and Ochoa and them

00:40:10 and they was associates with the people in Nicaragua.

00:40:15 So Barry was, if that plane was there,

00:40:19 that means Barry was feeding the DEA information.

00:40:22 He was working with them at that time.

00:40:24 But let me back up a little bit.

00:40:25 When I was flying and I told Barry,

00:40:28 we would refuel in Trange Airplane,

00:40:31 the loads in Belize where I had a spot up there

00:40:35 and then that’s when they told me

00:40:37 we can refuel in Nicaragua and then you fly all the way

00:40:42 and Barry couldn’t believe it.

00:40:44 He says, all right, but I wanted you to land.

00:40:46 I had a place in Louisiana for $10,000

00:40:49 that I could unload and the sheriff and all them was paid off.

00:40:53 And he said, no, no, no.

00:40:56 I can’t get caught in Meena, Arkansas.

00:40:58 I said, what do you mean you can’t get caught

00:41:00 in Meena, Arkansas?

00:41:01 You get caught anywhere.

00:41:02 He said, I can’t, but it’s gonna cost you $50,000

00:41:06 every time my wheels touch the ground.

00:41:09 Why, can you explain why he can’t get caught

00:41:11 in Meena, Arkansas?

00:41:12 He said he was hooked up with him at the very top

00:41:15 and he even said, I’m gonna have dinner

00:41:17 with the governor tonight.

00:41:19 That’s at that time.

00:41:21 Meena, Arkansas.

00:41:22 Mr. Bill Clinton.

00:41:23 Undoubtedly.

00:41:25 And it’s like, did Bill Clinton,

00:41:26 did you give him any money?

00:41:27 And I said, no, I never gave the man any money,

00:41:30 but it was like the money that I had

00:41:31 that went to Grand Cayman Islands

00:41:32 and I told my lawyer, I said, I never touched that money.

00:41:35 He said, you don’t have to fondle it to be guilty.

00:41:38 So.

00:41:40 So what, I mean, there’s a lot of conspiracy theories

00:41:43 around the relationship between Barry Seal and the Clintons.

00:41:46 Absolutely.

00:41:47 What evidence do we have?

00:41:50 What would you say from your best understanding

00:41:55 of what was the relationship

00:41:57 between Bill Clinton and Barry Seal?

00:41:59 Barry said, and he knew that he couldn’t get caught

00:42:02 in Meena, Arkansas.

00:42:04 And when that movie was gonna come out,

00:42:05 be called Meena, somebody stopped it.

00:42:09 I mean, they stopped it dead in the tracks

00:42:11 for two or three years and the producer even quit.

00:42:14 You mean the American Made with Tom Cruise movie?

00:42:16 It wasn’t American.

00:42:17 It was gonna be called Meena?

00:42:18 It’s the name that was written and produced in Meena.

00:42:21 And waiting on Hillary to be elected,

00:42:25 they would not let that movie out.

00:42:27 And that movie was changed drastically.

00:42:30 But to push back on that,

00:42:31 that doesn’t mean there’s truth there.

00:42:33 That means they were worried about

00:42:35 the power of the conspiracy theory, which stuck.

00:42:39 Exactly.

00:42:40 But I don’t know.

00:42:41 I mean, you know, some conspiracy theories,

00:42:44 just because they’re popular doesn’t mean they’re true.

00:42:47 And ones that, but it also doesn’t mean they’re not true.

00:42:51 And there’s ones that are not very popular

00:42:53 that could be true.

00:42:54 But that one really stuck.

00:42:58 I mean, what’s your sense?

00:43:00 Well, I paid one and a half million dollars

00:43:01 for Barry to land at Meena, Arkansas.

00:43:03 So I was pretty well assured that he couldn’t get caught.

00:43:08 And I said, well, I can’t get caught in Columbia.

00:43:10 We can’t get caught in Nicaragua.

00:43:12 I guess we got a license.

00:43:14 So we went for it.

00:43:15 Oh, so when you say I can’t get caught,

00:43:17 just to clarify, there’s a sense

00:43:19 where this is a safe place to land.

00:43:22 Yes, like completely safe.

00:43:23 So you don’t think he was referring

00:43:25 to some kind of, you know,

00:43:29 like my grandfather who fought in World War II

00:43:33 would talk about bullets can’t hit him.

00:43:36 So it’s almost like believing.

00:43:39 He was taking that $50,000 and giving it to somebody.

00:43:41 And Barry was honest.

00:43:43 So he wasn’t just taking it from me

00:43:45 because he was making a million dollars.

00:43:46 He didn’t care for the $50,000.

00:43:49 Oh man, taking the story forward,

00:43:53 the months leading up to his assassination,

00:43:55 what would you understand why he was assassinated?

00:44:01 Who were the players involved?

00:44:04 Maybe could you have stopped it?

00:44:08 Well, I’ll tell you, after I saw Reagan’s face

00:44:10 on the television saying we have the absolute proof,

00:44:13 the phone rang and it was Barry.

00:44:15 I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of years.

00:44:18 He said, I’m coming out tonight, Roger.

00:44:21 And I, oh boy.

00:44:23 So he came out and he said,

00:44:26 I’ll meet you in this French restaurant.

00:44:28 I don’t even know it in Santa Barbara.

00:44:30 And I walked in, there’s about 20 or 30 people in there.

00:44:33 And they was all 30, 40 years old,

00:44:35 women with plastic or leather skirts

00:44:38 and me in the blue jeans.

00:44:40 And I looked around and Barry was at the back.

00:44:42 He was leaned up, he had gained weight.

00:44:45 And I walked up and I said, Barry, you wired.

00:44:47 He said, no.

00:44:48 I said, well, I’m not gonna talk to these DE agents.

00:44:51 He said, every one of them.

00:44:53 So.

00:44:53 Oh, with jeans and skirts, I like it.

00:45:00 I said, well, Barry, I’m gonna set you

00:45:02 and you just talk to me, buddy,

00:45:03 and tell me what’s on your mind.

00:45:05 And he sat there and he just went to talking.

00:45:07 And he told me about, he was left holding a bag.

00:45:11 And it.

00:45:13 What do you mean by that?

00:45:14 Like that nobody’s supported him?

00:45:16 Well, I think it’s something or another.

00:45:18 He was, and I don’t know this.

00:45:21 I mean, this is just what happened, putting it all together.

00:45:25 He had some CIA buddies that was pretending

00:45:28 we’re going to supply all of our Northwood arms.

00:45:32 And with that, you can land cocaine back here by the ton.

00:45:35 So he’s taking his little planes and putting some AK 47s

00:45:38 and maybe ammunition or whatever,

00:45:41 and takes it down to the Contras

00:45:44 against the Communist Party of Nicaragua,

00:45:47 where we’ve been landing.

00:45:49 And Oliver North was involved in this.

00:45:51 So when all that, and so his CIA buddies

00:45:55 was certainly involved, and we know they were.

00:45:59 And Barry had been in the CIA earlier

00:46:01 when he first got out of school.

00:46:04 So when, as I say, the shit hit the fan,

00:46:10 they all fled and left Barry holding the bag.

00:46:13 The CIA and the DEA.

00:46:15 Yeah, not the DEA, the CIA.

00:46:17 The DEA wasn’t in on it.

00:46:19 The CIA was selling that cocaine, bringing it in.

00:46:22 And.

00:46:23 Just to clarify, what’s Iran Contra scandal?

00:46:28 What was the alleged involvement of the CIA

00:46:31 in using drug trade to fund things?

00:46:37 What do you know?

00:46:38 What do you think is true?

00:46:40 What should we know?

00:46:42 Well, I know what I knew was true,

00:46:44 that Barry was taking a small amount of arms

00:46:48 back to Central America and giving them to

00:46:50 whoever Oliver North group were.

00:46:54 Who’s Oliver North?

00:46:55 Oliver North was a colonel that got implemented

00:46:57 and almost brought the government down.

00:46:58 And so they said, all right,

00:46:59 we’re getting the guns from Iran

00:47:02 and we’re taking cocaine to pay for them.

00:47:04 And since Congress won’t give us money to fight this war,

00:47:06 we’re gonna circumvent it.

00:47:10 So that was a whole thing.

00:47:12 So it was a CIA’s effort to circumvent

00:47:16 the funding mechanisms of government by selling drugs.

00:47:20 Yes, but it was a handful of renegade CIA agents

00:47:24 that were Barry’s friends that was making a load,

00:47:28 a load of money, tons of it come up.

00:47:31 If you would like to read the book,

00:47:33 The Big White Lie, The CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic,

00:47:37 the CIA put, according to this,

00:47:40 the book and Michael Levine,

00:47:43 I didn’t remember his name last time I talked,

00:47:47 wrote that book and he was a head CIA agent,

00:47:50 he was a head DEA agent that exposed this.

00:47:53 And the CIA tried to kill him.

00:47:55 And he says, they put crack cocaine, they developed,

00:47:57 their chemists developed crack.

00:48:00 And they put it in every city in the United States

00:48:02 on one weekend.

00:48:04 So they were bringing it up by the tons

00:48:06 and that’s for sure.

00:48:07 And Barry was bringing it.

00:48:09 Can I ask you a small tangent question?

00:48:12 Do you think the public should trust the CIA and the DEA?

00:48:18 Do you think they’re mostly good people

00:48:20 that are carrying out a good mission?

00:48:23 Because this kind of makes it sound

00:48:25 like there’s renegade agents that are just doing

00:48:28 whatever the hell they want

00:48:29 and with sometimes no regard for human life.

00:48:34 Well, that’s certainly true.

00:48:35 But that’s not everybody in there.

00:48:36 That’s just, sometimes you get a few policemen

00:48:39 in the department that do these things.

00:48:41 I don’t believe, I believe that our government is good.

00:48:45 I think we’ve got some fools running it.

00:48:46 I don’t know how we get them there,

00:48:47 but I don’t think I know.

00:48:51 Okay, so what was Barry’s involvement here?

00:48:54 So Barry leaned back in that chair

00:48:56 and he told me that he got caught with one and a half tons

00:49:02 and he bellied it in the runway in Nicaragua

00:49:06 and had cameras flashing inside and out.

00:49:11 And he flew it back to Homestead with an agent there

00:49:14 and he brought the agent over, Jake Jacobson.

00:49:18 Really nice fellow, I think he was a crop duster.

00:49:21 And we’d have got along if we’d have been on the right side.

00:49:23 And so we sat there and drank Chevy’s Regal

00:49:26 until I got pie eyed and Barry told me about it.

00:49:29 He said that he went to see Edwin Meese.

00:49:31 He flew his, he got out on bail

00:49:33 and he flew his Lear jet up to Washington

00:49:35 and went in to see the Attorney General, Edwin Meese.

00:49:39 And they run him out of the office.

00:49:41 The next day he went back and said,

00:49:42 I have absolute proof that the CIA

00:49:45 is bringing tons of cocaine

00:49:48 or they’re running tons of cocaine into the United States.

00:49:50 And Edwin Meese put him up with this agent Jacobson.

00:49:53 I believe it was.

00:49:54 And they went down and got one and a half tons.

00:49:56 And on the way back, they bellied it in

00:49:59 and Pablo Escobar and some of the other ones

00:50:02 on general there in Nicaragua,

00:50:04 you can see them toting it from one plane to the other

00:50:07 in the book called The Big Kings of Cocaine.

00:50:11 It’s got a mention of me too.

00:50:13 And also the other one has a mention of me in it.

00:50:16 Said I’m in more files for the DEA than Noriega.

00:50:19 So who was wanting to get rid of Barry?

00:50:23 Is that, who wanted to get rid of Barry more?

00:50:25 The cartels or the CIA?

00:50:28 The cartel.

00:50:31 But so Barry leaned back and he told me the story.

00:50:34 And the tears came down between his fingers

00:50:36 as he put his hands over his eyes.

00:50:38 And he said, I just couldn’t do it, Roger.

00:50:40 I just couldn’t do three life sentences.

00:50:42 So I’ve told him everything.

00:50:43 I went to Congress and I’ve testified before Congress.

00:50:46 He testified before Congress

00:50:47 for all these things that he had done.

00:50:49 And he said, I told him all about you,

00:50:52 but you’re under my umbrella.

00:50:54 You got to testify with me before grand jury in Miami.

00:50:58 And so the guy said, you can come down,

00:51:00 the DEA said you can come down tomorrow with Mari,

00:51:03 first class, or I’ll take you down in chains.

00:51:07 And if you don’t testify with Barry,

00:51:09 the only place you’ll ever see your wife and family again

00:51:12 is in a federal prison visiting room.

00:51:14 Was that a difficult conversation?

00:51:16 Oh, my guts was just like ice water.

00:51:19 I can’t testify against my friends.

00:51:22 I just can’t do it.

00:51:23 How am I going to do it?

00:51:25 I just, I can’t work with people.

00:51:27 And he was honest with me.

00:51:28 How am I going to testify against them?

00:51:29 I can’t spend the rest of my life in a federal prison.

00:51:32 What on earth, what a mess, Barry, you’ve got me into.

00:51:36 So.

00:51:37 Is that a kind of betrayal there?

00:51:40 Yes, but it’s still, I wish he left me out of it.

00:51:42 I understand him getting in such a mess that he told,

00:51:49 because if the CIA and whoever else was behind him

00:51:52 betrayed him, then he’s going to tell everything.

00:51:54 So I says, all right, I’ll be in Miami.

00:51:56 So Mari and I flew down first class.

00:52:00 And I went to a lawyer,

00:52:01 one of the biggest lawyers in Miami.

00:52:02 And I said, man, I am in a mess.

00:52:06 This fellow’s told everything and I’ve got to say something,

00:52:09 but I’m not a snitch, man.

00:52:10 I mean, what can I do?

00:52:13 And he said, well, being a snitch is like being pregnant.

00:52:16 You either are or you’re not.

00:52:22 And he says, I don’t represent snitches,

00:52:24 but if you want to fight this case,

00:52:26 I’ll do it for $600,000.

00:52:28 And boy, my face turned red.

00:52:29 Well, I’m not a snitch.

00:52:31 He said, well, that’s what you’re talking about.

00:52:32 He said, let me tell you something.

00:52:33 If you go in there and say one thing and sign that paper

00:52:36 and you don’t tell them everything you know,

00:52:40 then they will convict you of everything you’ve ever done

00:52:42 and you tell them.

00:52:43 So you can’t do it.

00:52:45 So I said, Barry, I’m having trouble with a lawyer.

00:52:49 Give it, I’ll go to Mari, let’s go.

00:52:51 He said, all right, use my lawyer.

00:52:52 And he gave me his card, the lawyer’s card.

00:52:54 So Mari and I went to the festival restaurant that night

00:52:58 and Barry and Debbie came in.

00:52:59 She was dressed pretty and Barry wasn’t.

00:53:01 So we was already about finished.

00:53:02 So we had dessert together.

00:53:04 And I said, Barry, they’re going to kill you, friend.

00:53:06 He said, no, they ain’t going to kill me.

00:53:08 So and so, such and such is gone.

00:53:10 And this and the other.

00:53:11 I said, Barry, they’re going to kill you, man.

00:53:13 You can’t deny it.

00:53:15 And I said, I didn’t tell him I wasn’t going to testify.

00:53:19 So I hugged his neck.

00:53:21 I really, like, and we fled to Brazil.

00:53:24 But I took Mari and the children and went to Brazil.

00:53:26 So you decided there you’re not going to stay.

00:53:27 I knew, I didn’t know what I could do.

00:53:30 I talked to a lawyer.

00:53:31 I mean, I just didn’t, I didn’t know what I could do,

00:53:34 but the best in Miami said what he told me.

00:53:37 So I had to go.

00:53:39 And you went to Brazil.

00:53:40 We went to Brazil.

00:53:41 Did you have a conversation with anybody at the cartel?

00:53:44 I mean, that’s such an interesting moment

00:53:48 that tests the man’s character to not snitch.

00:53:54 And did you have a conversation with anybody?

00:53:57 No. Pablo with, about it.

00:53:59 Not at all.

00:54:00 So it’s just understood.

00:54:02 I just didn’t, couldn’t do it.

00:54:04 But how many men like you are there?

00:54:06 Not many.

00:54:07 I had all my friends testified against me.

00:54:09 I had 11 friends and every one of them put their finger up.

00:54:11 Roger did it.

00:54:12 And I was facing life,

00:54:14 continuing criminal enterprise care.

00:54:15 And still you couldn’t do it.

00:54:16 I just couldn’t do it.

00:54:18 Did you ever get respect from the cartels for that,

00:54:21 from the people in the cartel?

00:54:22 Oh, there was a whole time I got back and stuff.

00:54:24 They owe me money and I can’t get it.

00:54:26 So.

00:54:27 Well, that’s about money.

00:54:29 I just mean about human beings.

00:54:31 Oh, I think so.

00:54:31 I mean, I’ve been back down there and I’ve been welcomed.

00:54:34 I have my contact.

00:54:36 And when I was in Brazil,

00:54:38 I was trying to get this money.

00:54:39 They owe me three and a half million dollars.

00:54:41 So I called up there and he was going to pay me.

00:54:43 Oh, I got 600,000 today and I’ll get you some more tomorrow.

00:54:47 And then the next week I called,

00:54:48 hey, hey, got great news, great news.

00:54:51 Barry Seale has been killed.

00:54:53 So, oh no.

00:54:55 And I went back to the hotel.

00:54:56 We was up in the northern part of Brazil

00:54:59 and where was it, Marty?

00:55:00 It’s been quite a job.

00:55:02 Yeah.

00:55:03 And so I went back and I told Mary and Miriam

00:55:05 and they cried and I cried.

00:55:08 I really cried.

00:55:08 How is that great news from the cartel perspective?

00:55:12 Well, now there’s no case against me and him and them.

00:55:15 Do you know who killed them?

00:55:16 Yes.

00:55:17 I’ll tell you about that story.

00:55:20 On the first load I did,

00:55:21 I landed at a banana plantation and it was raining

00:55:25 and it was a muddy strip, clay.

00:55:28 And they put the 300 kilos of cocaine

00:55:30 and then the ugliest man you could imagine,

00:55:32 named Ronaldo got in there with a Mac 10

00:55:34 and he was making sure I took it to Louisiana.

00:55:38 So.

00:55:39 This is many years before.

00:55:40 Yeah, a couple of years before.

00:55:42 So anyway,

00:55:45 we took off and the mud got up in the wheel well

00:55:48 so thick until the wheels wouldn’t come up.

00:55:51 Well, I’m going 200 miles an hour

00:55:53 instead of 300 miles an hour with wheels coming down.

00:55:55 Well, I can’t go back there.

00:55:57 If I do, I’m gonna be in the same situation

00:55:59 until the sun dries it out in a few days.

00:56:02 And so, but in Belize, I had a runway

00:56:05 that had been used for $10,000 used to refuel.

00:56:08 So I told the guy, listen,

00:56:10 we got to land in Belize to refuel.

00:56:12 No, no, no, we put the Mac 10 and I’ll shoot you.

00:56:16 Go ahead, fool, you’re gonna die too.

00:56:17 So it was in a term.

00:56:19 So.

00:56:20 He wasn’t just ugly, he was also angry.

00:56:22 He was a bad, bad killer.

00:56:24 And so he’s the one to actually kill Barry.

00:56:28 The one that went up on the first load with me.

00:56:33 And Ronaldo, and he’s doing life.

00:56:36 He’s just a killer.

00:56:37 Yeah, he’s doing life in Louisiana.

00:56:39 I wonder who, is it known who made that decision?

00:56:44 The younger Ochoa brother, I understand, Fabio,

00:56:48 which one paid for the hit.

00:56:50 I don’t know that, but that’s what I’ve heard

00:56:52 and it probably sounds about right.

00:56:54 He’s done in Jessup, Georgia, doing a long, long time.

00:56:58 I think he’s about to get out.

00:56:59 He’s been in 30 years or whatever.

00:57:03 The movie American Made.

00:57:07 What do you think that movie got right?

00:57:09 What did it get wrong?

00:57:11 Almost everything wrong.

00:57:14 It was disgustingly wrong.

00:57:17 Okay, which parts?

00:57:19 Can you maybe elaborate?

00:57:23 It’s about Barry Seal and it just didn’t even,

00:57:26 it was nothing, whoever wrote it had no idea

00:57:28 who Barry Seal was.

00:57:30 They sat in a rocking chair and just tried to think of

00:57:32 what was some baby bashing drug dealer doing.

00:57:37 And it’s just like, God, you just don’t have any idea

00:57:40 of the spirit of the man.

00:57:42 So they wanted just to try to tell a fun story

00:57:45 without actually studying the story.

00:57:47 They didn’t know him, they just had no idea.

00:57:50 And Barry was such a nice person,

00:57:51 such a really nice gentleman person.

00:57:54 They talked to you or no?

00:57:55 No.

00:57:56 The people that made the movie.

00:57:57 And I see all these people telling Barry never met him.

00:58:01 They telling all about him.

00:58:02 I think that’s just ridiculous.

00:58:05 And for one thing, for his character coming out

00:58:08 of warehouses and all that, that was just like ugly.

00:58:10 And then down in Columbia, putting a gun to his head,

00:58:14 going to take his sunglasses and then he put $25,000

00:58:17 million worth of cocaine on his plane.

00:58:19 And then they’re going to bet $100

00:58:21 he don’t have enough room to take off.

00:58:24 That’s just insane.

00:58:26 I mean, just the whole thing.

00:58:28 And then he’s talking to the DEA agents when he’s coming up.

00:58:31 You don’t know what frequency they own,

00:58:34 how he’s got five planes and they all split

00:58:36 when the DEA comes out.

00:58:37 These are just somebody just fantasy.

00:58:41 But those are like, those are details of the man,

00:58:43 details of the story.

00:58:44 Is there some big profound things they missed

00:58:47 about just this whole period?

00:58:50 But that’s something that’s really important to you

00:58:53 that was missed.

00:58:55 Yes, they just tried to sensationalize

00:58:59 on little things that people remember.

00:59:00 And it’s just not true.

00:59:01 It was just like a business deal and good people

00:59:06 and good airplanes and good flying.

00:59:08 And it was like a good watch that was made.

00:59:14 It just clicked and it just went on.

00:59:16 And they missed all of that.

00:59:17 They tried to make it sound like it’s something very ugly.

00:59:20 Do you think it was a story

00:59:21 that could have been told way better

00:59:23 and still be a hell of a good story?

00:59:24 Oh my goodness, yes.

00:59:26 Well, there’s a series called Chernobyl done by HBO.

00:59:31 And because I have sort of family connected to that period,

00:59:36 they did an incredible job of being historically accurate

00:59:40 and only not being historically accurate

00:59:42 when it helped the story, only in those rare cases.

00:59:45 When they on purpose left the story

00:59:47 to make it easier for people to understand.

00:59:51 But it was still somehow accurate.

00:59:54 And even though all the actors were British actors

00:59:57 speaking English with a British accent,

01:00:00 it was still somehow accurate.

01:00:02 Like they captured the spirit.

01:00:05 So it was historically accurate

01:00:06 and the spirit was captured.

01:00:08 That was one of the most incredible like series

01:00:10 I’ve ever seen.

01:00:11 It convinced me that the movie was made by non Russians.

01:00:17 It convinced me that if you really care about a story,

01:00:21 you don’t have to have been brought up in it.

01:00:23 You don’t even need to speak the language.

01:00:25 If you’re truly a scholar of it,

01:00:27 if you talk to a lot of people, if you learn,

01:00:29 if you just pour your heart and soul into it,

01:00:32 you can create something really special.

01:00:34 And so your son says you could do that with the story

01:00:37 with this period of time.

01:00:39 Oh yes, it was a story that needs to be told.

01:00:43 It need to be told in the correct way.

01:00:45 Not like we’re trying to bash a certain angle.

01:00:49 Yeah.

01:00:50 Well, if Netflix or HBO are watching this,

01:00:52 you need to tell the story of Roger Rees, in my opinion.

01:00:56 There you go.

01:00:57 This is a young picture of you.

01:00:59 Yeah. There you go.

01:00:59 That’s from National Geographic.

01:01:01 Jorge Archoa, Pablo Escobar, it’s you, Roger and Barry.

01:01:05 Yeah.

01:01:06 And the Muggler, a memoir.

01:01:09 Yeah, I really do hope that they make a movie of this one.

01:01:15 There’s a movie called Blow that tells the story

01:01:17 of George Young, Boston George.

01:01:19 Did you know George Young?

01:01:22 That’s one way to ask it.

01:01:23 The other is what do you think of the movie Blow?

01:01:25 I didn’t know George Young, but it was a wonderful movie.

01:01:29 Absolutely.

01:01:30 It captured it.

01:01:31 It did.

01:01:32 Yes, it did.

01:01:33 That’s the way it should be.

01:01:34 So he was a little bit before your time?

01:01:36 Exactly the same time.

01:01:37 Exactly the same time.

01:01:38 He was using stewardesses to fly the marijuana

01:01:41 out of Manhattan Beach,

01:01:43 and I was on the fire department in Redondo Beach,

01:01:46 10 miles away, flying it up, sending it back.

01:01:49 Somebody was sending it back.

01:01:50 He might’ve been sending it back,

01:01:52 but he didn’t have near the excitement that I did.

01:01:55 I was shot down twice.

01:01:57 I escaped from five different prisons.

01:02:00 I was tortured almost to death in a Mexican prison.

01:02:02 So he didn’t have all that fun that I had.

01:02:04 Fun in quotes.

01:02:05 Yeah, so yours is a heck of a fun adventure.

01:02:09 Just to linger on a little bit.

01:02:10 So Johnny Depp plays George,

01:02:14 and Ray Liotta plays his father,

01:02:16 and there’s this son father kind of scene at the end.

01:02:22 I don’t know.

01:02:24 It’s heartbreaking.

01:02:26 Like that scene paints a picture of a life

01:02:29 that could have been had if none of this wild drug

01:02:36 smuggling happened.

01:02:38 I don’t usually, I mean, I don’t, I’m almost,

01:02:42 I really never get like teary eyed in a movie,

01:02:46 but that got me.

01:02:49 It’s almost like confronting at the end of your life

01:02:53 what your life could have been with your father,

01:02:56 the way he calls him Georgie.

01:02:57 It, like you fucked up, Georgie.

01:03:03 Yes, I did too.

01:03:05 I really, really did.

01:03:07 Mario waited for me all those years

01:03:08 and the children raised them without me,

01:03:11 visiting me in prisons all over the world.

01:03:13 It’s unbelievable.

01:03:14 It’s just, nothing’s worth that kind of money.

01:03:17 Yeah.

01:03:21 Can you tell the story of when you were tortured

01:03:24 nearly to death in a Mexican prison?

01:03:27 I sure can and I’m smiling,

01:03:28 but it was nothing to smile about, I can tell you.

01:03:32 I was in a pool and a gentleman came over

01:03:35 and shook hands with me and put handcuffs on me.

01:03:37 And I thought, what in the world?

01:03:39 That was at one of the nice hotels.

01:03:41 They put me in a jail cell and I sat there

01:03:45 and all the drunks and thieves and stuff kept coming in

01:03:48 and they had a bucket and it overrun.

01:03:50 And I said, I remember like 18 people in a room

01:03:53 about 12 foot square.

01:03:55 Oh, it was hot and I thought,

01:03:56 somebody’s gotta come get me, this ain’t real.

01:04:00 I hadn’t done anything.

01:04:01 It’s like, it was a pilot come to see me up in Hermosillo

01:04:05 and he stopped and he made a mistake

01:04:06 and went to the International Runway

01:04:08 instead of where he was supposed to go.

01:04:09 And he had my phony name in his pocket, so they got me.

01:04:15 So they said I was a drug smuggler.

01:04:17 So after about three days, they put me back into the back

01:04:21 and it was a torture place.

01:04:23 And they put me in a little cell like,

01:04:25 I guess it wasn’t hard even, it wasn’t six feet,

01:04:27 must’ve been about five feet square and about 12 feet high.

01:04:30 And it was June, the end of June, and it was hot.

01:04:34 I mean hot.

01:04:36 And they left me in there for, I guess a few days.

01:04:40 You didn’t know, so every once in a while

01:04:43 they’d come drag me out and first off,

01:04:45 they put my head under water

01:04:47 and it had seltzer in it or some kind.

01:04:49 And I took one whiff of that and three or four of them

01:04:52 couldn’t hold me down.

01:04:53 So then I learned that just before you have to breathe,

01:04:56 tear loose like that and they’ll let you up.

01:05:00 And that was the first treatment.

01:05:02 And then they started beating me.

01:05:03 And they beat me with a blackjack and rubber hose

01:05:06 until I was black and blue and yellow

01:05:08 from the bottom of my feet to my head.

01:05:10 What did they want from you?

01:05:11 They wanted me to sign a confession

01:05:12 that I was a drug smuggler.

01:05:14 And they put the papers under your nose.

01:05:17 This is all over if you’ll sign.

01:05:19 Well, I knew if you signed, you got six years.

01:05:21 I wasn’t gonna sign, I wasn’t gonna sign.

01:05:25 But they didn’t want you to snitch on anybody.

01:05:27 They just wanted you to say.

01:05:28 No, they just wanted me to sign that paper.

01:05:29 And you still didn’t.

01:05:30 I didn’t even bow to it.

01:05:32 I ain’t a beat and ate that bad.

01:05:34 So.

01:05:35 So anyhow, it just got them into the good part.

01:05:40 So then they come and they take me out,

01:05:42 I’m bug naked and they bend me over

01:05:44 and they have things to pull you,

01:05:45 like chains click, click, click, click, click.

01:05:47 And they bent me over and they put butter

01:05:50 on my bum and they commenced to put hot chili pepper

01:05:55 up there and that stuff was bad.

01:05:57 I mean, it was red hot and that was, that was awful.

01:06:05 And still.

01:06:06 That was just awful.

01:06:07 Yeah, but still you didn’t.

01:06:09 I didn’t think about it.

01:06:10 I ain’t going to, I guess if I’d have known

01:06:12 he was gonna kill me, I wouldn’t have done it.

01:06:14 But I wasn’t about, you get hurt bad enough

01:06:18 you’ll pass out, so I didn’t pass out.

01:06:20 So I was all right.

01:06:22 So then the last thing they did was

01:06:25 they brought a dead man in there and he was wrapped.

01:06:27 He was frozen.

01:06:28 He was wrapped in newspaper, little strips

01:06:30 about a half inch wide, just like a mummy.

01:06:33 And he was frozen and they hung him on the wall

01:06:35 with a meat hook and you next son of a bitch, you next.

01:06:41 And so he’s sitting there like this

01:06:43 and as he starts to throw out, which is pretty quick,

01:06:46 it looks like he’s crying and it looks like he’s peeing

01:06:50 and the paper starts unraveling on him

01:06:52 and the formaldehyde puddles on the floor.

01:06:55 Ooh, what a smell that rotten insides

01:06:58 and the formaldehyde and there was a little space.

01:07:02 It wasn’t even a half inch high under the door.

01:07:04 And I lay on that filthy floor with my cheek

01:07:06 and put my lips right up under that door

01:07:08 and we’re sucking that fresh air.

01:07:09 And I went to sleep after some time.

01:07:11 And I know where Walt Disney gets his ideas.

01:07:14 I saw white pink pigs with wings on them,

01:07:18 all kinds of stuff flying around.

01:07:20 So when I woke up, I didn’t know which was real

01:07:22 and which was the nightmare.

01:07:24 It took me a minute to figure out where I was

01:07:27 and what was going on.

01:07:29 How did you stay mentally strong through that time?

01:07:33 Like what?

01:07:34 I don’t know that I did.

01:07:35 I was, yeah, I was mentally strong.

01:07:37 So I was just like I am now.

01:07:39 Stubborn.

01:07:40 I mean, you could be that man that could have killed you.

01:07:43 Yes, I could have.

01:07:44 So what gave you hope?

01:07:46 Did you have hope?

01:07:47 Yeah.

01:07:48 Or you were just a stubborn son of a bitch?

01:07:49 I think some of both of it.

01:07:50 And I think they aren’t going to keep you here forever.

01:07:53 You know, you’re going to get out into the prison

01:07:54 or they’re going to let you go or something.

01:07:56 If you sign that paper, you ain’t going nowhere.

01:07:58 And I want to go home.

01:08:01 I got shot down a few weeks before that.

01:08:05 I got shot from out of the sky.

01:08:07 80 bullet holes through the plane,

01:08:08 killed a fellow on the ground,

01:08:09 shot the leg nearly off the man in the plane.

01:08:12 Where was this?

01:08:13 In that little place of Peachy Lingy.

01:08:15 You want to tell you that story?

01:08:16 And they were shooting you from the ground.

01:08:16 Yeah, yeah.

01:08:17 All right.

01:08:18 A little 900 foot strip there at Peachy Lingy,

01:08:20 a poor, poor village with starving donkeys.

01:08:23 And that’s where they’d,

01:08:24 I’d give them $17,000 for the load.

01:08:26 And I’d go over on the highway and load.

01:08:27 Well, on day 13, I did a load every day for 13 days.

01:08:31 They had a bunch of marijuana, pretty good piled up.

01:08:33 And I was going low today.

01:08:35 And on day 13, I had that little warning sign

01:08:39 going off in my stomach.

01:08:40 Uh oh, uh oh, don’t do it.

01:08:42 But I asked this Joaquin,

01:08:45 oh, we had the federal, all this paid off,

01:08:47 nowhere we were.

01:08:47 So I spent the night in a hammock

01:08:49 and walked down to the airplane,

01:08:52 just as it get in daylight.

01:08:54 And 10 or 12 men walked with me and Pedro got in.

01:08:57 I brushed my teeth in the little stream.

01:08:58 It was about foot deep,

01:09:00 a little river coming through there.

01:09:02 And got in the airplane and I fired her up.

01:09:05 Bam, blah, blah.

01:09:06 And bam, I thought a tire blew out.

01:09:09 I looked over and it still ain’t dawned on me.

01:09:14 And Pedro was yelling, police here, police here Roger,

01:09:16 police here.

01:09:17 Well, it dawned on me.

01:09:19 And I shoved it, the throttle to the firewall.

01:09:23 And I only had about.

01:09:24 So that was a bullet.

01:09:25 Yeah, somebody, there’s officer sides, they’d shot.

01:09:28 They’d shot just a warning, like get out, stop.

01:09:31 We’re gonna rob you, whatever it is.

01:09:33 That’s what they do.

01:09:34 They just taking the plane and me

01:09:35 and put me in prison, old thing.

01:09:37 So, but I, even though I had papers.

01:09:39 So I just shoved it to the firewall

01:09:41 and there wasn’t enough room to take off on that strip.

01:09:43 And there’s half of it was behind me

01:09:46 or some of it was behind me.

01:09:47 And so just at the end, I’m just like,

01:09:49 I think that thing stalls at about 50 miles an hour.

01:09:51 Just turning 50 and I just pulled it right up

01:09:55 and put the flaps on.

01:09:57 And as I pulled off the ground,

01:09:59 they opened up on both sides of me with machine guns

01:10:02 and they riddled that airplane.

01:10:03 I mean, the windshield came out.

01:10:06 I got hit three times.

01:10:09 You, like your body?

01:10:10 Yeah.

01:10:11 And I didn’t know I was hit.

01:10:14 I mean, it was just the gasoline just pouring in.

01:10:17 The world turned yellow.

01:10:18 I must’ve went into shock.

01:10:20 So it just stopped in slow motion.

01:10:23 And one bullet hit the strut right by my head.

01:10:26 And it just, parts of that bullet just went all over me.

01:10:30 I just looked like I’d been peppered with lead.

01:10:35 And the gasoline was just pouring in.

01:10:37 I mean, just pouring in where they’d shot the wing up above

01:10:40 and the windshield’s gone.

01:10:41 I mean, it was just like a hail storm.

01:10:47 So I was…

01:10:48 Airplanes did stall or no?

01:10:50 I was in a stall anyway, and I didn’t realize it.

01:10:53 And I guess you wouldn’t unless you trained for it.

01:10:55 But when you’re in a stall,

01:10:56 the elevator is kind of flappy.

01:10:59 And I didn’t realize it at the time.

01:11:01 I thought they had shot the elevator cable in too.

01:11:04 So I thought, oh God.

01:11:05 So I just reached over and switched it off,

01:11:07 switched the mixture, pulled everything.

01:11:09 And in the river, there was rocks

01:11:12 about as big as this table.

01:11:14 And they were like the turtle back

01:11:16 all the way up until there was a waterfall.

01:11:17 There’s quite a pretty place.

01:11:19 And I crashed straight onto it.

01:11:21 I thought if I get those rocks.

01:11:22 And when I did the first time I hit, the wings came off

01:11:25 and then it bounced.

01:11:26 And the next time the nose came up

01:11:28 and came under the plane and I’m sitting there,

01:11:30 I must’ve been knocked unconscious

01:11:31 called Pedro shaking me.

01:11:32 Come on, Roger, come on, Roger.

01:11:34 So I stepped out into the water

01:11:37 and here comes these four Federalists

01:11:38 still shooting at us.

01:11:40 And I’m bulleted to hit the airplane.

01:11:42 And I kept a nine millimeter Browning high power

01:11:45 taped to the top of the radio in case I ever needed it.

01:11:51 So, cause you didn’t want it in the airplane.

01:11:53 So I just, it was just handy just laying there.

01:11:55 So I took and popped a few caps out of them

01:11:57 and they ran into the rocks.

01:11:59 So we took off running.

01:12:03 And then I looked and Pedro’s foot nearly shot off.

01:12:05 They’d shot him on one side of the ankle

01:12:07 and it just blown out the other side.

01:12:08 And it wasn’t even hardly bleeding, the shock of it.

01:12:11 So I took my T shirt off and gripped it

01:12:13 and tied it best I could.

01:12:15 But you had still bullets in you.

01:12:16 So like you could still run.

01:12:17 I shot the top of my toenail off.

01:12:20 I shot it across my head and my kneecap.

01:12:22 So I was just nicked.

01:12:23 Okay, got it.

01:12:24 It was very painful later on,

01:12:26 but right that time I didn’t, it was just hot.

01:12:29 And there’s a bullet still in my foot from it,

01:12:31 a piece of a bullet.

01:12:32 Good size slug.

01:12:34 So we went on up the mountain through the cactus

01:12:37 and just running.

01:12:38 Just going, I want to go down.

01:12:39 No, no, the federal is going the easy way.

01:12:42 Let’s go, this young fella.

01:12:44 And we came to an old donkey.

01:12:45 She must’ve been 30 years old, long and way back,

01:12:48 long hair on her, Charlotte, Charlotte.

01:12:51 And he petted the donkey and we jumped on.

01:12:54 And we rode for seven.

01:12:54 Like an actual donkey?

01:12:55 A donkey.

01:12:56 There were donkeys all over the place.

01:12:57 Anyhow, he knew that one from the village.

01:12:59 And so we rode seven miles, two of us,

01:13:01 on a donkey with no bridle, no saddle, nothing.

01:13:04 And we came to a little man plowing a little horse

01:13:08 and a little ox.

01:13:09 Both of them were spotted and the ox was,

01:13:11 the yoke was across their back this way.

01:13:13 And he was plowing with a little plow among stumps.

01:13:15 It was like one of these people clearing

01:13:17 a little piece of land.

01:13:18 And he had a little house there.

01:13:20 And so we went into his house

01:13:21 and his wife and his daughter,

01:13:22 they put like a cloth over my wounds and on Pedro’s.

01:13:26 It was terrible.

01:13:28 And they poured diesel oil on it to keep the flies off.

01:13:32 So I’m covered in diesel.

01:13:34 So the man left and he was gone all day.

01:13:38 And then about dark, he showed up,

01:13:39 maybe about 15 or 20 horses and mules showed up

01:13:42 in the yard, walking fast.

01:13:44 And a doctor got out, he said,

01:13:45 I’m Dr. Benjamin Soso with Red Cross.

01:13:48 And he worked on my foot and he worked on Pedro.

01:13:50 He gave us a shot of morphine and tetanus shots.

01:13:53 And he said, you got to get to hospital.

01:13:55 He said, Pedro will die if he don’t get to hospital.

01:13:57 He said, they are looking for American pilots

01:14:00 been shot down and they think he’s dead.

01:14:02 There was a lot of blood in that airplane.

01:14:04 And so they rode, I don’t know how far we rode,

01:14:07 but we rode miles and we’d come to a road

01:14:09 and there was a big truck

01:14:10 and it was loaded with corn in the ear.

01:14:12 And they dug holes in that corn, put us in it

01:14:16 and covered us up.

01:14:17 And the road was rough.

01:14:18 And every time we’d hit a dirt road,

01:14:20 that corn would cover me up.

01:14:21 They’d scratch my face out again.

01:14:24 And when they came to the highway,

01:14:26 we went into a house and they got me some clothes

01:14:28 and mine was messed up and a white basin.

01:14:32 And they must’ve brought 20 jugs of water different times.

01:14:35 I kept washing and washing my foot

01:14:36 till all the blood and the crud got off of me

01:14:39 and put on those clothes.

01:14:40 And somebody went to, they said,

01:14:42 you can’t go North, the road’s blocked.

01:14:44 They’re looking for the pilot.

01:14:45 So you got to go South.

01:14:47 So they found a taxi in Mazatlan.

01:14:51 And it was a rather new taxi.

01:14:52 And the fellow would take me to Guadalajara,

01:14:54 which was, I don’t know, seven, eight hours South.

01:14:58 So we got in that taxi and they propped me up

01:15:00 with sheets and blankets and pillows in the back seat

01:15:03 and gave me these great big white pain pills.

01:15:06 And I was quite content.

01:15:08 Then I was shot down in Columbia also.

01:15:13 What, can you tell that story?

01:15:14 I sure can.

01:15:17 All right, I went down for a load of marijuana

01:15:20 and we got to the place and we got there too early.

01:15:23 And the guerrillas screamed,

01:15:26 you got to get out of here, you got to get out of here.

01:15:28 And so we went back to the place where we stayed from

01:15:31 and refueled.

01:15:32 I had a beautiful DC3, carried three tons.

01:15:36 And so while I was waiting,

01:15:39 I ate something for lunch and I went around behind the house.

01:15:45 We refueled a plane up and I had to wait till late afternoon.

01:15:47 They wanted me to come just at dark

01:15:49 so the military planes couldn’t see me on their strip.

01:15:54 So I’m leaning in the hammock asleep

01:15:57 and I hear this terrible roar.

01:16:00 And I looked right up through the trees

01:16:02 and at the end of two military jets going straight up.

01:16:07 They do a dive over and they came back down the strip

01:16:09 in front of that airplane and they just tear it up

01:16:11 with 50 caliber machine guns.

01:16:12 They just showing out.

01:16:14 So I run for the airplane, I just give that guy $80,000

01:16:18 and he ran for the truck

01:16:19 and all the rest of them ran for the truck.

01:16:21 I should have ran with my money,

01:16:23 but I didn’t, I ran for the airplane.

01:16:25 And the copilot got in and his name was Al.

01:16:28 He got in with me and two fellows got in the back.

01:16:30 We had drums of fuel in there to refuel

01:16:32 when we got down to the guerrillas.

01:16:35 So we took off and I couldn’t get the gear up

01:16:39 because I’d taken off in such a hurry.

01:16:41 These pins in the struts of a DC3 and with big flags on them

01:16:45 and you have to take them up

01:16:46 so that the plane won’t come up.

01:16:49 So these jets swarmed on me and they tried to get me to go.

01:16:51 They kept telling me which way to go

01:16:53 and the pilot would be just as close

01:16:54 as just right over there.

01:16:55 I could see him.

01:16:56 I just held up the old iffy piece.

01:16:58 I didn’t think they would shoot.

01:17:00 I really didn’t.

01:17:02 Nobody had shot before.

01:17:04 So I kept flying out and I kept getting slower and slower

01:17:07 and they kept slowing down, down, down

01:17:09 and the black smoke rolling.

01:17:11 And then they started shooting up under me.

01:17:13 Boom, boom, boom, boom with them 20 millimeter cannons.

01:17:16 And then the tracers just going up.

01:17:18 They looked like they’re curving up from me.

01:17:20 I woo and I pushed the nose over

01:17:22 so they couldn’t get under me.

01:17:23 And later on I heard they thought I tried to ram them.

01:17:27 So one of them went for fuel and I kept on going

01:17:30 and the one just tore the left wing tip up

01:17:34 with the 50 caliber.

01:17:35 And then he come back again and shot the tail up.

01:17:38 He’s warning me.

01:17:39 And I tell the feller in there, I says,

01:17:41 you know, if you bring me enough water,

01:17:42 I believe I can fly this thing.

01:17:44 My mouth got quite dry.

01:17:47 So I went on and I landed on a big pasture.

01:17:54 And it was huge pasture and it was rougher than it looked.

01:17:57 And the wings just flapped and I come to a stop

01:17:59 and jumped out and pull those tabs out,

01:18:01 threw them on the ground so I could get my gear up.

01:18:04 And I understand that during the 1980 World Series

01:18:07 baseball game that it says American DC three

01:18:10 has just been shot down by American jets,

01:18:12 by Colombian jets.

01:18:14 You know, it’s the first plane shot down

01:18:15 on Reagan’s new war on drugs.

01:18:17 But he’s up, he’s up and away, ladies and gentlemen.

01:18:19 We keep you posted.

01:18:20 So I took off again and I went into a thunderstorm

01:18:24 and they came close to the mountains.

01:18:26 So I spiraled up and every time I’d come out,

01:18:28 that jet was there, boom, boom, boom.

01:18:30 And I’d go back into that storm and boom, boom, boom

01:18:35 in there and at 20,000 feet, I started icing up.

01:18:37 So I went out one last time and he was right there waiting.

01:18:40 He had me on radar.

01:18:41 So I went back in and I kicked it over

01:18:43 and put it into a spin and went straight down to 2000 feet

01:18:46 and come out under it.

01:18:48 And I was flying along the Guaviera River

01:18:52 and it was 20 feet above the water.

01:18:54 It looked like a pasture, it was just grass.

01:18:57 And I made several runs to tear the grass down

01:19:00 and it looked like, and it felt hard.

01:19:02 That old DC three weighs 30,000 pounds

01:19:04 and I put it down on the fifth run.

01:19:06 I said, all right, now we’re gonna land now.

01:19:08 And as I was.

01:19:09 Did you do like close several times?

01:19:11 I put the wheels down.

01:19:12 Oh, you put the wheels down without landing.

01:19:15 And just, so I’m making a run for it, you know.

01:19:18 So you, okay.

01:19:19 So you’re being tracked by a jet.

01:19:23 He’s going.

01:19:23 He’s trying to, well, before that,

01:19:25 I’m just like retelling this story, how insane it is.

01:19:29 So he’s trying to shoot you down

01:19:32 and there’s a thunderstorm that you’re escaping into.

01:19:36 And then you do a spin down to what, 2000 feet?

01:19:39 Whatever you said, like somehow escaping all of this.

01:19:43 And then you try to land on a pasture

01:19:46 on a giant heavy plane that carries three tons

01:19:51 by touching down five or six times

01:19:55 to make a landing strip for yourself.

01:19:58 Yeah, the grass is three or four feet high.

01:20:01 So it looked really good after about, after a few times.

01:20:04 So then just before it stopped,

01:20:05 I said, Al, take your feet off the brakes.

01:20:07 He said, I don’t have my feet on the brakes.

01:20:09 Well, I knew I had broken through the crust

01:20:11 and I put full power on, but it didn’t.

01:20:13 That old big plane just come on down

01:20:15 and it just did a head, as it came to a stop,

01:20:18 it did a headstand, 90 degrees to the ground.

01:20:21 Oh, wow.

01:20:22 And the engines held it up

01:20:24 and the nose and all just crushed in right on it.

01:20:27 We fell between the two seats to keep from getting killed.

01:20:29 Wow.

01:20:30 And when it come to a stop,

01:20:31 all that fuel was pouring out on those hot engines

01:20:34 and there was an escape hatch at the top.

01:20:35 I just stepped out, took my suitcase with me.

01:20:40 Was there fire?

01:20:41 No fire, left the plane there

01:20:43 and the two guys that was in the back,

01:20:44 one of them broke his thumb and it was with the barrels

01:20:46 and they had to put a hose,

01:20:49 tie gas hose together to shimmy down to get out.

01:20:51 Yeah.

01:20:53 So.

01:20:54 That’s an incredible story.

01:20:55 Well, let me just tell you,

01:20:56 they had a little bit more to it.

01:20:58 I learned to fly with the idea

01:20:59 of being a missionary aviation fellowship pilot,

01:21:02 fly the missionaries in and out of the jungle.

01:21:04 Well, I went 11 days through that jungle.

01:21:06 The rest of them went on down the road and went to prison.

01:21:09 I said, I’ll crawl on my belly six months in here a year,

01:21:12 eating snakes before I’m going down the road.

01:21:14 So I went in there and I was 11 days in the jungle

01:21:18 and I finally came to this place and it had airplanes.

01:21:21 I kept asking the Indian, dandistai avions.

01:21:24 I want to steal an airplane and get out of there.

01:21:26 And when I came to the place,

01:21:28 I asked, what is this place?

01:21:29 Lovely place.

01:21:30 It looked like Honolulu in World War II.

01:21:34 There was a runway there.

01:21:35 Said, you don’t know.

01:21:36 This is Loma Linda headquarters

01:21:38 for Missionary Aviation Fellowship for the Amazon.

01:21:41 And they flew me out.

01:21:43 Wow.

01:21:44 You escaped from prison five times?

01:21:48 So what stands out to you as the most difficult

01:21:52 or miraculous escape in the bunch?

01:21:58 The most black miraculous was

01:22:00 when I was in the courtroom in Spain.

01:22:01 I think I was on the third floor of Real High

01:22:04 and I ran across the courtroom, handcuffed,

01:22:06 kicked the window out.

01:22:08 And I looked down and it was above the palm trees.

01:22:10 I thought there might be a power line

01:22:11 or something I could grab on as I went down.

01:22:13 There was nothing.

01:22:14 And there was a car parked, a station wagon on the side.

01:22:18 You just jumped out?

01:22:19 I jumped out from 31 feet and on top of that car.

01:22:22 And it exploded in the street.

01:22:24 The windshield went over three or four cars.

01:22:26 It looked like snow going up.

01:22:27 And I looked like Donald Duck with the thing coming off

01:22:30 and handcuffs and I got out.

01:22:32 And you just kept running?

01:22:33 Yeah, I kept running.

01:22:34 They ran me down and hit me in the back.

01:22:35 I still got a dead spot in my back

01:22:37 where the policeman hit me with a shotgun.

01:22:39 And they brought me back.

01:22:41 Murray was there and they were saying,

01:22:43 your husband is crazy.

01:22:44 That was spectacular.

01:22:45 But I escaped from Lubeck, maximum security prison.

01:22:48 And I cut out of there and got out.

01:22:50 That was a miraculous escape.

01:22:51 And that was where?

01:22:52 In Lubeck, Germany.

01:22:54 What was that escape like?

01:22:56 I was there and they was going to extradite me

01:22:59 back to the United States

01:23:00 where I still had all these charges

01:23:01 and 25 years special parole.

01:23:04 And I was cleaning the lawyer’s visiting room

01:23:10 and on it was bars that looked like piano notes

01:23:14 or this way to make it pretty.

01:23:17 But they was a little bit,

01:23:18 so I got a rope from a guy where they made boats in there.

01:23:22 And I had 20 minutes.

01:23:25 So I went in there and I wrapped it around

01:23:27 and I put a broom handle in it

01:23:28 that was cut off and wrapped it around

01:23:30 until they pull the bars together on that side.

01:23:33 And then I pulled them together on the other side.

01:23:34 But that only put me in inside the prison yard

01:23:37 where the soccer equipment was kept.

01:23:40 But they were putting new windows on one side of the prison

01:23:44 and they had it scaffolded up to the fourth floor.

01:23:47 So there was a little recess there

01:23:48 and there was guard towers every 100 feet or so.

01:23:52 I mean, they would shoot and kill you.

01:23:53 So I got behind that and climbed up holding to the bricks

01:23:57 on one hand and the scaffolding on the other

01:23:59 and went to the roof.

01:24:00 I lost my shirt and most of my clothes

01:24:02 going through the window.

01:24:03 I got all the skin off of me.

01:24:04 I thought I was gonna die.

01:24:05 And I was trying to go sideways like this.

01:24:07 And finally I got a grip and the bars let me through

01:24:10 and took all the skin off of me.

01:24:12 So I got up on that roof and I have asthma

01:24:14 and I just lay there trying to catch my breath.

01:24:16 Didn’t bring my inhaler.

01:24:19 With blood everywhere.

01:24:21 Oh, I was bloody, yes.

01:24:22 And so I got down to the end

01:24:24 and on the end, the reason I did it,

01:24:26 they would put it, they was putting a new wall again

01:24:29 around the prison to make it larger.

01:24:32 And they had taken all the wire off above the Sally port

01:24:36 where they could join the two walls together.

01:24:38 And I saw that when I came up and there was a guard,

01:24:42 a half of like a dome sticking out of that brick building

01:24:46 where there’s a guard there with a gun and he’d kill you.

01:24:48 And I mean, he was made,

01:24:49 he was surely trained to kill you.

01:24:51 And we had some bad people in that place.

01:24:53 So I lay up one floor above it

01:24:56 and I saw a guard and his wife come with a double umbrella.

01:24:59 It was just pouring down the rain.

01:25:00 Here I am without a shirt on, bloody.

01:25:03 And she had a little boy with him under that double umbrella

01:25:07 and I knew him and when he come

01:25:08 and she started back from the Sally port,

01:25:10 I hit the top of that guard tower, bam, with both feet.

01:25:15 And I jumped, I guess it’s three more floors.

01:25:17 I jumped, there was a pile of sand,

01:25:19 like a cone where they were digging it there.

01:25:21 And I hit that and my feet buried up to the knees,

01:25:24 but I didn’t fall.

01:25:26 And I ran straight towards her so he couldn’t shoot me.

01:25:28 And then I went around some bushes and went downhill.

01:25:33 And then I heard bam, bam, bam, bam, bam behind me.

01:25:35 And I looked and that fool woman was in a big old car

01:25:38 and she was knocking down the parking meters behind me.

01:25:41 She was trying to run over me.

01:25:42 And I ran behind the car

01:25:44 and she tore the fender off of her car,

01:25:47 trying to yell and yow, yow, yow,

01:25:49 and a terrible evil looking face at me, screaming at me.

01:25:51 And the sirens going off in the prison.

01:25:54 And there was a fence there, a wall.

01:25:57 And I jumped up on it to jump over

01:25:58 and it had glass embedded.

01:26:00 And I cut my hands and my arms all up getting over that.

01:26:03 And I hit the ground on the other side

01:26:04 and it was like, it was that mucked muck

01:26:07 where some farmer had dug it.

01:26:09 I dug in there and Maury had slipped me $200 into prison.

01:26:12 And I had that in my shoe and I lost my shoes in that muck.

01:26:15 But anyway, I got out of there and got to Holland.

01:26:17 Really a heck of a story how I did that.

01:26:20 What was prison like, whether it’s Germany

01:26:23 or whether it’s Australia?

01:26:24 What were some of the darker moments in prison?

01:26:28 The United States prisons are awful,

01:26:30 awful evil places now.

01:26:32 And just really, there’s nothing nice about them.

01:26:34 There’s the guards.

01:26:37 In LA?

01:26:38 And everyone I went to.

01:26:40 It seemed like the further east I went to Oklahoma

01:26:42 and it was nicer, but all of them on the West Coast,

01:26:45 they was hatred there.

01:26:47 And they got really stupid people hired, just incredibly.

01:26:50 Oh, hatred by the guards.

01:26:52 And the inmates, like I speak Spanish

01:26:55 and I walked in to the Spanish TV room

01:26:58 and it was saying, you know, no, you can’t come in here.

01:27:01 And I walked across to the black,

01:27:03 hey, get out of here, white boy.

01:27:06 It was just like, what?

01:27:07 Man, I like all you people, you know?

01:27:10 And so I walked down to the white people and said,

01:27:12 show us your paperwork.

01:27:13 You can’t come in here until you show your paperwork.

01:27:16 We don’t let snitches and homosexuals

01:27:19 and all this sort of stuff in here.

01:27:21 So they have, so it’s just like,

01:27:23 man, I don’t wanna be in here.

01:27:25 I mean, it sounds absurd,

01:27:26 but you’re saying like the basic humanity is gone.

01:27:29 Completely, completely in the guards.

01:27:32 It was just like, come here, Reeves.

01:27:35 And I woke up to him, get the fuck out of my face.

01:27:37 Sticks his chin out, like for me to break his jaw.

01:27:40 Like, what in the world, man?

01:27:44 I love people and it’s just.

01:27:45 Yeah, you got this joy to you.

01:27:48 You have a joyful nature.

01:27:51 And it didn’t seem like that broke you.

01:27:53 Not a bit.

01:27:54 How did you persevere?

01:27:56 Did you know, I didn’t even think I persevered,

01:27:58 but I try to enjoy my life wherever I am every day.

01:28:01 I do.

01:28:02 I ran every day.

01:28:03 And like I told you, why do you run so, Roger?

01:28:06 I said, to help me suffer these fools.

01:28:08 And I played a game of chess every day,

01:28:10 almost of my life in there.

01:28:12 And I read two books a week.

01:28:14 And I talked with people, storytellers,

01:28:16 guys would come in and, tell us another story, Roger.

01:28:18 Give us a poem.

01:28:19 Tell us one you never told us before.

01:28:21 And so it was just nice.

01:28:22 A lot of them have original boys.

01:28:23 They picked their country music and it was all right.

01:28:28 Red, Morgan Freeman’s character

01:28:31 in The Shawshank Redemption says the following.

01:28:35 These walls are funny.

01:28:36 First you hate them, then you get used to them.

01:28:39 Enough time passes you get, so you depend on them.

01:28:42 That’s institutionalized.

01:28:45 Is there truth to that?

01:28:47 100%, I didn’t even see the walls,

01:28:49 except whenever I was planning on escaping.

01:28:51 In Shawshank Redemption, he spent so many years in prison

01:28:56 that he almost didn’t know what to do with himself

01:29:00 once he left, once he was a free man.

01:29:03 That’s the, you get so used to the system,

01:29:08 the rituals, having to follow orders,

01:29:15 even being treated poorly,

01:29:16 all those kinds of things that you become dependent on.

01:29:20 Well, down in Australia, I spent the first,

01:29:23 a little over a year in the shoe.

01:29:26 It was like, did you see the movie,

01:29:28 The Silence of the Lambs, thank you, Marty.

01:29:32 And he said, I had five or six guards

01:29:34 looking at me with a one way mirror.

01:29:36 And that’s whenever I thought I might never get out,

01:29:38 I got a life sentence.

01:29:40 I had all this time waiting here in Germany.

01:29:43 And so that’s, they had a computer in there,

01:29:48 but it didn’t have a program on it.

01:29:50 And I wrote, so I just started writing

01:29:51 these little stories of stuff I did in my life.

01:29:53 And I wrote one line and I wrote over a million words

01:29:57 with them looking at me.

01:29:58 So it was after a year, they let me out.

01:29:59 It wasn’t long before they put me

01:30:01 in a place called Self Care.

01:30:02 And particularly, I was in what they call the lifers pod.

01:30:07 There was 268 men in Self Care there.

01:30:10 And it was unbelievably good that we were left alone.

01:30:17 Basically, they was there or the guards

01:30:19 were certainly there, but they had their shack

01:30:22 and we had apartments, four apartments to the building.

01:30:26 And six men to the unit with your own door

01:30:29 and a key to it and a kitchen, dining room,

01:30:32 freezer, refrigerator.

01:30:34 And they gave you, allowed you $360 a week to buy groceries.

01:30:38 And I cooked for about 16 years and learned to cook good.

01:30:43 And the people and other people have their specialties.

01:30:46 And so that was quite, it wasn’t so like being in prison.

01:30:53 It was somewhat living with me and it was difficult, man.

01:30:55 I had some good fights and carry on.

01:30:58 You don’t get along with everybody.

01:31:00 But then whenever I came back to the United States,

01:31:03 I was laughing and talking.

01:31:05 And when I got off the plane in LA,

01:31:07 I had three marshals with me from Australia.

01:31:11 I was slammed upside the wall.

01:31:13 I mean, hard, put ankle mics on and handcuffed so tight

01:31:19 till they cut my lane off.

01:31:20 Face forward, face forward, lands apart.

01:31:23 Good gracious.

01:31:25 And walked me 50 steps and turned me over to the marshals

01:31:28 and they took part of that off.

01:31:29 That was a border patrol that was there

01:31:31 over my marijuana charge from 1977.

01:31:36 I did 11 years for parole violation.

01:31:38 Now they want me for more violation.

01:31:40 And they put me in, down in Los Angeles,

01:31:42 they put me in, the marshals put me in there

01:31:45 and they put me in isolation.

01:31:47 I thought, what in the world they got me for isolation for?

01:31:50 I’m doing anything.

01:31:53 How long did you spend in isolation?

01:31:55 More than six months.

01:31:57 So I, after three or four days

01:32:00 as the little Judas window slide open

01:32:02 and a man, a nice looking man in a suit come there,

01:32:04 hello Reeves, I wanna, just wanna see what you look like.

01:32:07 I saw your National Geographic documentary

01:32:10 and it does me pleasure to keep you in isolation.

01:32:12 And he slammed the thing and I couldn’t get out of there.

01:32:15 And by law, the US Parole Commission

01:32:17 is supposed to give you a hearing within 90 days.

01:32:20 So Murray paid a lawyer $7,500

01:32:22 and he never picked up the phone.

01:32:25 Somebody got to him.

01:32:28 Who’s that somebody you think?

01:32:29 Christopher Cannon was his name

01:32:31 and I don’t know who got to him,

01:32:32 but he didn’t do anything to get me out of there.

01:32:35 I got one 15 minute phone call a month

01:32:38 and I couldn’t get out.

01:32:40 So then after six months, they put me on Conair,

01:32:47 double shackled and black box on my hands.

01:32:51 And I went to Oklahoma

01:32:53 and they let me out on the floor.

01:32:58 I couldn’t imagine.

01:32:59 Then I could call after a couple of days

01:33:01 and they said, there was a man here from Washington

01:33:03 give you a parole hearing and you only got here at 3.30.

01:33:07 So he left, he said he’d be back next year.

01:33:10 What?

01:33:11 I’ve been in now over six months.

01:33:13 So then there was a lovely little lady,

01:33:14 she was a case manager or something.

01:33:16 She said, you can ask for parole on the record.

01:33:19 And I said, please do.

01:33:21 So I sent them an email

01:33:22 and the next day I got my parole.

01:33:25 90 days later, they sent me to Terminal Island

01:33:27 and put me in the place there with the invalid,

01:33:29 I guess since I’m as old as I am, 78 years old.

01:33:32 So they put me in the people in there dying

01:33:34 and wheelchairs and legs off and arms off and cancer.

01:33:38 So I was in there and I pushed the fellows around

01:33:40 and I went, come out of the chow hall there

01:33:44 and I went to go to the right to get me a haircut

01:33:46 and the two Mexican guys there, Lieutenant and another one,

01:33:49 walked between us and he went like the boop, boop, boop.

01:33:52 I could outrun you.

01:33:53 And they slammed me, put me on the ground,

01:33:55 handcuffed me and put me in the shoe for a week.

01:33:59 I got out and man, they put me back in the place.

01:34:02 They treated me rough.

01:34:04 So I got in a little more trouble

01:34:06 and they put me back in the shoe and I wouldn’t come out.

01:34:10 They had that, the virus was out killing people.

01:34:14 So they killed eight people in that unit I was in.

01:34:16 So I mean, I wouldn’t even come out to take a shower.

01:34:19 I had a little straw that I put in the sink

01:34:22 and I’d take a sock that I had and scrub myself with it

01:34:26 with some slope and a glass of water over my head

01:34:28 and then clean the floor up and put it in the toilet.

01:34:31 So that was your time during the coronavirus pandemic.

01:34:34 I got out last April, right in the middle of it

01:34:36 and they were dying bad in there.

01:34:40 So I was treated worse for that last year in America

01:34:42 than I was for the whole 20 years in Australia,

01:34:44 the 18 years in Australia.

01:34:46 And then you were a free man at the end of that year.

01:34:50 They put me out and sent me home

01:34:52 and the parole officers couldn’t even come.

01:34:54 They weren’t working.

01:34:55 They were just doing everything by video.

01:34:57 They said, better not have a drink.

01:35:00 The only constituent thing was

01:35:01 I couldn’t even have a drink of wine.

01:35:03 So after a year, I had to take psychiatric treatment.

01:35:08 Every week I had to go talk to the psychiatrist,

01:35:11 psychologist and me and her got along great.

01:35:14 She was a good Christian woman.

01:35:15 We just chatted and talked.

01:35:16 And I think they said,

01:35:17 so I had to pee in the bottle every week.

01:35:19 I said, I’ve been in 33 years.

01:35:21 How many piss deaths do you think I’ve had?

01:35:23 Never been dirty.

01:35:24 Only thing if you all wanna clean when you come get me.

01:35:26 Before I talk to you about love,

01:35:29 let me ask you a difficult question.

01:35:33 You write in your book,

01:35:34 ‘‘I don’t consider myself much of a criminal.

01:35:37 I don’t lie, cheat or steal.

01:35:39 And I always take up for the underdog.

01:35:43 Violence makes me sick.

01:35:45 Yet I know I’m an outlaw

01:35:47 and those that break the law must be punished.

01:35:51 I think many people listening to this

01:35:53 or some people listening to this

01:35:55 will see you as a criminal, as a bad man

01:35:58 who increased the amount of suffering in this world.

01:36:02 What do you have to say to them?

01:36:06 I would like to tell them

01:36:06 that they have been indoctrinated by the spin

01:36:10 of news and politicians

01:36:12 and they don’t know the truth of the situation.

01:36:15 You lay the truth out there in an envelope,

01:36:17 let me open it besides something else that is false

01:36:20 and it’s staggering.

01:36:22 The truth is that I was a tobacco farmer

01:36:26 and tobacco kills 500,000 people a year in America

01:36:31 and 6 million have debilitating diseases because of it.

01:36:36 Drugs, all drugs combined kill

01:36:39 between 10 and 15,000 people a year by overdose

01:36:43 and 60% of those are pharmaceutical.

01:36:46 Now, then when I was a tobacco farmer,

01:36:48 come sit on the front pew, Mr. Reeves,

01:36:50 come on up here, you’re a gentleman.

01:36:52 You just joined the Masonic Lodge and you joined our church

01:36:55 and you just come on and sit down with the good people.

01:36:58 You grow two marijuana plants,

01:36:59 get out of here you scumbag

01:37:02 and the marijuana doesn’t hurt anybody.

01:37:04 It’s just, that’s the truth of it.

01:37:06 And so in your career,

01:37:11 you walked amidst violence

01:37:16 but you never participated in the violence.

01:37:18 I didn’t even see it.

01:37:21 Just didn’t happen around me, in prison it did.

01:37:23 I sewed people up, they called me doc.

01:37:25 I had dental floss and one time I had to get a blade

01:37:31 and try to help keep from my patient from getting again.

01:37:35 But I was just like, if I shot at those people,

01:37:40 I shot at them to keep them from killing me.

01:37:42 I certainly didn’t mean to kill them.

01:37:45 So that’s just, some people are evil

01:37:47 and they will kill you and hurt you and lie to you.

01:37:49 I just don’t do any of that.

01:37:51 It just makes you sick.

01:37:52 I’ve seen it.

01:37:54 When I was in the shoe, three guys tried to kill a guy

01:37:56 and they stabbed him so many times,

01:37:57 but they stabbed Blake and the blood getting out of the room.

01:38:01 I said, you’re gonna kill him.

01:38:02 You’re gonna kill him and save his life.

01:38:04 Drug him up there where the guards could see him.

01:38:06 There’s stuff like that.

01:38:07 I’m just not of that nature of those people.

01:38:09 They’re just evil.

01:38:10 They’re people born evil, I believe.

01:38:15 It is heartbreaking to hear that the basic humanity

01:38:18 is gone in prison in the United States.

01:38:21 That’s heartbreaking because that basic humanity

01:38:23 is actually the light at the end of the tunnel.

01:38:25 It’s the thing that saves us as opposed to,

01:38:28 when it’s absent, it’s the thing that destroys us.

01:38:30 The prisons are filled, absolutely filled with people

01:38:34 that have some mental problems.

01:38:37 Now, you see Tent City all the way up and down here.

01:38:40 I guarantee you, every one of those people

01:38:42 have mental problems, some degree.

01:38:45 However little it is, but they are a little bit off.

01:38:48 Now, then you get a DEA agent

01:38:50 that wants to make a name for himself.

01:38:52 He goes down there and gets two of them,

01:38:54 one of them to sell a little two grams of methamphetamine

01:38:56 to the other one, and he gets a conviction.

01:38:58 And a young prosecutor, he gets a conviction.

01:39:00 He wants to make a judge.

01:39:02 And we got the judge in, where was it?

01:39:04 I’m gonna give a million, what was his name?

01:39:06 Gilbert.

01:39:07 I’m gonna give him in a million years

01:39:09 before I get off the judge.

01:39:10 You get fools like that in charge.

01:39:14 You’re gonna fill prisons up with pitiful humanity.

01:39:20 And those are the ones.

01:39:21 And then the other is people over drugs.

01:39:25 And drugs should be a health issue.

01:39:31 You cannot police it enough.

01:39:36 It’s just, they know the only thing

01:39:38 that overdoses is opioids, the heroin.

01:39:41 And if they can give it to him,

01:39:42 it costs about a dollar a day

01:39:43 to give the worst addict his fix.

01:39:46 But they’ll give it methadone,

01:39:47 which is from a pharmaceutical company,

01:39:49 which is just as bad.

01:39:51 Why in the world, we tried it all over the world

01:39:54 in Portugal and England.

01:39:57 And when they give the girls cleanup,

01:40:00 no more stolen cars, why?

01:40:03 Who wants to keep this farce going?

01:40:07 They just perpetuating it.

01:40:08 Like, oh, every little police place

01:40:11 is getting all these suits and armor and machine guns.

01:40:15 It’s just like, oh, it’s such a spin, it’s sad.

01:40:19 Do you think all drugs should be legalized?

01:40:22 I don’t know about that,

01:40:24 but they certainly should be controlled.

01:40:26 If a person is an addict,

01:40:29 he should be able to go down and get his fix

01:40:32 with somebody there to help him

01:40:33 with a clean needle and a glass of orange juice.

01:40:36 It’s so much cheaper than prison.

01:40:38 It’s so much cheaper than him stealing cars

01:40:40 or a prostitute having to go to work.

01:40:42 That’s sad.

01:40:44 You’ve lived one heck of a life.

01:40:47 Looking back, there’s a lot of young people

01:40:51 that listen to this, high school, college students.

01:40:55 What advice would you give them?

01:40:57 How to live, how to have a successful career,

01:41:02 how to have a good life, how to be a good man or woman?

01:41:07 To be a good man or woman,

01:41:11 if I had it to do over with,

01:41:12 I’ll just tell you what I’d have done.

01:41:14 I would have paid attention and studied my lesson

01:41:16 and did the best I could.

01:41:19 In school. In school, yes.

01:41:21 And went as far as I could have.

01:41:23 I would have liked to been a doctor.

01:41:24 I just didn’t have the stickability

01:41:25 or anybody to tell me, hey, go over there and do that.

01:41:29 And if you can do that at a very young age,

01:41:32 start in a trade, learn to do something.

01:41:36 It doesn’t matter what it is.

01:41:38 If you learn to do something good,

01:41:40 there is a great demand for you.

01:41:43 And I would say that in prison,

01:41:46 that the prison system should come in

01:41:47 and you get a thief, young fans of thief,

01:41:51 robber, and you say, all right, we need carpenters.

01:41:56 We need plumbers.

01:41:57 We need electricians.

01:41:58 We need sheep.

01:41:59 Sentence them to that trade.

01:42:02 And when you get an A plus in that,

01:42:03 where you can go out and make you $30 or $50 an hour,

01:42:06 you go home.

01:42:07 Now you can mess around 10 years if you want to,

01:42:10 or you can do this in two.

01:42:11 I think that’s just for the prison.

01:42:14 But anyway, I would say that they find somebody

01:42:17 and be true to them.

01:42:19 That we have, just be honest and true in your life.

01:42:25 You mean like relationships, friendships?

01:42:27 Relationships, yes.

01:42:28 I mean, so many, so many people,

01:42:31 particularly our children, are from relationships

01:42:34 where they not wanted their divorce.

01:42:37 Their father’s left.

01:42:38 They don’t know who their daddy is.

01:42:40 They’re just in foster homes.

01:42:42 500,000 children are in foster homes in America today.

01:42:45 And we have, and our government inadvertently

01:42:49 isn’t encouraging those people.

01:42:51 My daughter is a doctor and she delivered a couple

01:42:54 of years ago a baby from a 10 year old child.

01:42:58 That child, and she said in the visiting room

01:43:00 is four generations, all of them on welfare.

01:43:03 Now we got one more.

01:43:04 And it reminds me of Elvis Presley’s song, In the Ghetto.

01:43:08 So for an individual, learn a trade, become a craftsman,

01:43:13 learn a trade, become a craftsman of sorts,

01:43:16 and find somebody to love and who loves you.

01:43:19 That’s right, have a family and stick with it.

01:43:25 Surely you’re gonna get angry.

01:43:27 You’re gonna get disappointed.

01:43:28 You’re gonna get all kinds of stuff,

01:43:29 but come back and make up before you go to sleep.

01:43:33 Well, I did half of those things.

01:43:37 I got the first one and working on the second one.

01:43:38 So I appreciate the advice.

01:43:40 Well, Mari, thank you so much for joining us.

01:43:45 Can you tell me the story of how you two met?

01:43:47 Well, my parents every summer would go to the lake

01:43:52 in Canada and the place was called Turkey Point,

01:43:56 which is on Lake Erie, and just have a nice summer holiday

01:44:00 there, water skiing, swimming, sunbathing.

01:44:03 This was back in the 60s and I was sitting on the pier

01:44:06 with a few girlfriends and telling them my story.

01:44:10 And then all of a sudden I looked up

01:44:12 and I saw this figure in the distance coming onto the pier.

01:44:18 Now we’re all dressed in bathing suits and swimwear.

01:44:21 We’re swimming and this, that, and the other.

01:44:22 And here he comes, dark trousers.

01:44:25 In fact, they were black, white shirt and a tie

01:44:30 and a straw kind of a Panama hat.

01:44:34 And so he stood out.

01:44:38 And so I invited him to come and sit down.

01:44:41 And so he continued to talk and we just talked

01:44:43 and talked and talked and then later moved to the beach.

01:44:47 And I think the next time I saw him,

01:44:50 he was talking to another girl and I thought, yeah,

01:44:53 you know, I know, I was okay, okay, next.

01:44:58 Well, but six months later I receive a letter

01:45:02 and it’s a letter from Roger.

01:45:05 And then we start this lovely correspondence

01:45:07 and we just start writing, you know, in those days,

01:45:10 you just wrote everything.

01:45:11 And then the next summer he was coming up again.

01:45:16 He was on his way to Alaska and he says,

01:45:20 I would like to come by and see you.

01:45:22 And I said, well, I’ll be in the same place

01:45:24 that I met you last year.

01:45:26 And so when he came up this time,

01:45:29 for some reason Roger reached for my hand

01:45:32 and I reached for his and man, that was it.

01:45:36 It was like love at first touch.

01:45:39 That was love.

01:45:40 It was just like a silence, you know, and oh my gosh.

01:45:44 And we didn’t even look at each other.

01:45:47 It was just, oh my goodness, what happened here?

01:45:50 And I was the type of person, I never wanted to get married,

01:45:52 not way, way, way down the road, never have any children.

01:45:56 And I wanted to see the world first and then do all that,

01:45:59 you know, and.

01:46:02 But that was it, that was love

01:46:03 and you’ve been together ever since.

01:46:05 Yeah.

01:46:06 Well, the thing is about the love

01:46:11 that the two of you have for each other

01:46:13 is it had to persevere through quite a heck of a journey.

01:46:17 So how did Roger’s drug smuggling

01:46:23 change the nature of your love and your relationship?

01:46:27 Well, Lex, that remained steadfast.

01:46:31 It endured and since Roger’s been home,

01:46:36 I think we’ve rekindled the love that we had

01:46:39 when we first met.

01:46:40 Yeah, what?

01:46:42 But I think my faith, you know, my faith,

01:46:46 my steadfast faith and also the fact

01:46:50 that Roger and I communicated.

01:46:51 We wrote letters, you know, he never complained.

01:46:55 I know there were the children there.

01:46:57 He never had mistreated me.

01:46:58 I love this guy and we had a lot of experiences.

01:47:02 It was just, even though I.

01:47:03 He’s good looking, charismatic, he’s pretty, you know.

01:47:06 Yeah, and he was adventurous, you know,

01:47:09 and I, would you say that again?

01:47:14 But yes, it was just, I know, you know,

01:47:18 I missed him physically, but he was just,

01:47:20 we were just so strong in spirit, you know,

01:47:24 and we could talk to one another.

01:47:28 Yep.

01:47:29 Well, what was it like, Roger, when you’re a free man

01:47:35 seeing Mari for the first time in person again?

01:47:40 I cried for three days.

01:47:42 Everything, I had to look at a picture of her.

01:47:44 I came home and there she prepared a meal for me

01:47:49 and it was the old oak table that I’d redone

01:47:53 and the chairs, the same one, and the green placemats

01:47:57 and the same china that we had and the same silverware.

01:48:01 And it just, just all of it just brought back

01:48:03 the same paintings on the wall.

01:48:04 It was just like unbelievable.

01:48:06 After 35 years, she had all my clothes cleaned

01:48:09 and my shoes shining and I put the shoes on

01:48:12 and I walked out on the strings on this

01:48:14 and the soles came off, but the shirts

01:48:16 and all fit perfect and everything.

01:48:18 So it was just wonderful.

01:48:19 And just to see her and then just to think about,

01:48:22 see her picture of her 50th birthday

01:48:24 or her 60th birthday or her 70th birthday.

01:48:28 I wasn’t there.

01:48:30 And the picture of her and with the children,

01:48:31 it just, it was heartbreaking.

01:48:33 And about the third day, I thought,

01:48:34 man up, fella, I mean, you’ve got to.

01:48:37 So I got over it and quit the tears.

01:48:42 It was, everything was just pulsating with life.

01:48:45 It was just unbelievable to get out of that place.

01:48:48 It really was.

01:48:49 Is there, do you regret the drug smuggling

01:48:57 that took you away from the woman you love?

01:49:00 Oh yes, 100%.

01:49:03 Just, you know, I wouldn’t have done it again

01:49:08 if you don’t think you’re going to get caught.

01:49:11 And it’s just, no, it’s just, I did it for money

01:49:14 and I had everything in the world I wanted

01:49:16 before I did that.

01:49:18 So the adventure, I mean, it was one heck of an adventure

01:49:22 for the two of you, for the both of you.

01:49:25 Were you able to enjoy it or was it always danger?

01:49:29 Was it always something that threatened your relationship,

01:49:33 your love, your family?

01:49:35 Or were you able to enjoy the adventure of it?

01:49:37 You know, we’ll all die.

01:49:39 Life is short.

01:49:40 And to live that kind of adventure.

01:49:42 Well, whenever I did the first loot, I got $10,000.

01:49:46 And that was just about, that was just about two years

01:49:48 pay on the fire department take home.

01:49:50 And I brought that home and.

01:49:52 I put my hand over my mouth.

01:49:54 I said, Roger, I can’t believe this.

01:49:57 All the money and money like, oh my, what in the world?

01:50:00 Roger said, let’s go have dinner.

01:50:03 And so we went to the little restaurant

01:50:04 that we would normally, we would go to, you know,

01:50:07 and he said, and don’t you dare look

01:50:09 on the right hand side of the menu.

01:50:11 He said, just order anything you want.

01:50:13 And it was just, as we were in the restaurant, you know,

01:50:17 it was just, we were giddy about it.

01:50:20 Yeah, I was giddy about it.

01:50:22 And.

01:50:24 Were you afraid that, I mean, did you think about the fact

01:50:27 that it’s illegal and Roger can end up in prison?

01:50:32 Oh, yes.

01:50:34 Did you guys talk about it?

01:50:36 Well, I just, I kind of thought I was bulletproof.

01:50:38 I mean, they didn’t catch you.

01:50:39 I thought if they didn’t catch you, you was all right.

01:50:41 And it was hard to get you.

01:50:42 It was hard to catch you in the air.

01:50:45 So you never thought, hard to catch you in the air.

01:50:48 I like it.

01:50:48 I didn’t know that if your friend told on you

01:50:52 five years later, you’d still go to prison.

01:50:54 That was a problem.

01:50:55 I didn’t know that.

01:50:56 Did you guys ever talk about walking away?

01:51:00 I asked Roger to walk away.

01:51:03 And he says, I can’t, Mario, just now, you know.

01:51:06 And then of course, the amount of people

01:51:09 that he began to support, the family and the gifts and the.

01:51:14 The deals.

01:51:15 The deals, yes, the deals.

01:51:17 Big ones.

01:51:18 Yes, and then you always want to do,

01:51:20 what do you do with the money?

01:51:22 So you want to, I guess you clean it up

01:51:26 or you want to invest in an enterprise or in a business.

01:51:31 Well, it just doesn’t work.

01:51:33 They know the source of it and they take it and run.

01:51:37 Every one of them.

01:51:38 Yeah.

01:51:39 Yeah.

01:51:40 But he was very generous, extremely generous

01:51:42 and benevolent and.

01:51:45 And when I started, I would ask about,

01:51:48 I went to a lawyer and a good number of people

01:51:52 in California at that time wanted to legalize marijuana

01:51:55 back in 1973.

01:51:57 And I went to a lawyer and I says,

01:51:58 Mr. Lawyer, I put $100 on to say,

01:52:00 what would they do if I caught me

01:52:03 bringing marijuana across the border?

01:52:04 He said, if you have a criminal record, I said, no,

01:52:07 I’ve never had a speeding ticket, nothing,

01:52:10 not even a traffic ticket.

01:52:12 I said, he said, you work for the fire department?

01:52:15 I said, no sir.

01:52:15 I said, yes, sir.

01:52:16 He said, you’ll get probation.

01:52:18 The worst you’ll do is you’ll get one year

01:52:22 and you’ll spend four months raking leaves

01:52:24 on a military base.

01:52:25 So my mother and my father died some years before

01:52:28 and I brought mother and baby sister came out

01:52:30 and I took them down to Disneyland

01:52:31 and she said, what you doing, boy?

01:52:33 I said, I’m hauling pot, mom.

01:52:35 She said, how much you making?

01:52:36 I said, I’m making $40,000 any day I want to go.

01:52:40 And she said, what do they do if they catch you?

01:52:41 And I told her, what the lawyer said.

01:52:43 Four months at the most raking leaves,

01:52:45 that’s what do you think?

01:52:46 She said, do you need a copilot, son?

01:52:48 Yeah, money is money, yeah.

01:52:54 So your relationship persevered through some big challenges.

01:53:00 Is there advice you can give about what makes

01:53:04 for a successful relationship?

01:53:07 Oh, well, you know, I think the initial igniting,

01:53:13 meeting someone, you know, that’s the love.

01:53:17 That’s it.

01:53:17 And that little fire, that fire just keeps burning

01:53:22 and burning and burning.

01:53:23 You can’t put it out no matter what.

01:53:26 It’s the love fire.

01:53:29 But it gets difficult.

01:53:31 It’s funny, the love fire.

01:53:33 So you’re saying the love fire is all it takes

01:53:35 to persevere through the difficulty.

01:53:37 Well, no, well, that’s a huge part of it.

01:53:40 And also I contribute my individual situation

01:53:44 to in order to endure the prison years is my faith.

01:53:52 Faith in God?

01:53:53 Yes.

01:53:54 And friends who were unconditionally still loved me

01:53:58 no matter what, yes.

01:54:02 So you had love around you in general.

01:54:05 I did, and my children.

01:54:07 They, you know, and that was a real purpose

01:54:11 to guide them and to love them

01:54:13 and to help them become citizens.

01:54:19 What about you, Roger?

01:54:20 What advice would you give?

01:54:22 I just don’t know how to do it,

01:54:23 but I do know that you have to work on a relationship.

01:54:26 Mara and I’s had problems.

01:54:27 I mean, we get really.

01:54:28 You guys get in fights?

01:54:29 Oh, yeah.

01:54:30 That’s pretty regular, but not,

01:54:34 they don’t let them last long, you know,

01:54:36 but certainly we are so different.

01:54:38 We’re the same, and yet we’re so different, yeah.

01:54:42 Like little stuff?

01:54:43 Little stuff, yes.

01:54:45 And it might be big, but I usually win her over, you know?

01:54:49 But anyhow, I just feel like Mara was always there.

01:54:53 It was like she was my anchor.

01:54:55 I was coming home.

01:54:57 I was always coming home to her and the children.

01:54:59 And you can see throughout my life,

01:55:01 I’m working on getting there.

01:55:03 Are you afraid for his life, by the way?

01:55:05 Oh, yes.

01:55:06 Oh, yeah, there are times, yeah.

01:55:08 But you know, I had faith in him.

01:55:11 He was an excellent pilot.

01:55:13 For example, I always said,

01:55:14 Roger, if the ship’s going down,

01:55:16 I’m jumping in the lifeboat with you

01:55:18 because I know we’re going to get to shore.

01:55:20 You will save us.

01:55:21 And so I had that faith in him, you know?

01:55:25 I mean, he’s a man, but yet he’s the one

01:55:27 you want to get into the lifeboat with.

01:55:29 Definitely.

01:55:30 But then there is, you know, Pablo Escobar,

01:55:34 one of the most dangerous humans in history,

01:55:37 plus the U.S. government.

01:55:39 Yep.

01:55:40 Worst by far.

01:55:43 Very difficult, very difficult to get away.

01:55:48 In terms of your faith, how has your faith helped you

01:55:52 to be the woman you are in this relationship

01:55:55 and seeing love the way you see it?

01:55:59 Well, I think my faith gives me hope.

01:56:02 I have lots of hope.

01:56:04 It helps me to dwell on the good side.

01:56:09 You know, when I ever meet someone

01:56:12 and there’s some negative,

01:56:14 I try to see why they are like that

01:56:17 or what’s the source of all that.

01:56:19 And I try to pull out the good.

01:56:22 I really do.

01:56:23 Not that I’m a goody goody,

01:56:24 but that’s what your faith does.

01:56:26 You know, you see them as God sees us.

01:56:29 You know?

01:56:31 How has he changed over the years?

01:56:33 Roger?

01:56:34 Yeah.

01:56:35 He’s still the same.

01:56:36 Actually, I like him better now.

01:56:39 He’s a little calmer.

01:56:40 Yeah, that’s crazy.

01:56:41 Oh, yes.

01:56:42 And happy to be, you know, at home,

01:56:45 or he’ll say, Mari, I am just so happy

01:56:48 to be with you here in this condominium.

01:56:51 I’m content.

01:56:51 Because I used to call him my homing pigeon.

01:56:55 I just have to let him fly.

01:56:56 I couldn’t, you know, he has to fly,

01:56:58 but he always came home.

01:57:02 Do you think about the end of this ride, our mortality?

01:57:06 Do you think about your death?

01:57:08 I do.

01:57:09 Particularly, I’m going to have a heart valve replacement

01:57:13 in about seven days where I could not make it.

01:57:18 You know, it’s a very serious operation.

01:57:20 And I think about that very much.

01:57:22 And I ask for peace.

01:57:26 I just lost my brother about 10 days ago, so unexpectedly.

01:57:31 And that really put, you know,

01:57:33 makes you think of your mortality.

01:57:35 Are you afraid?

01:57:38 Somewhat, and yet not.

01:57:42 Yeah.

01:57:43 I want to live, Lex.

01:57:45 I want to live, you know?

01:57:48 This life is fun.

01:57:49 Yes.

01:57:50 Do you think about your death, Roger?

01:57:52 I have visions.

01:57:54 Visions, and they often happen very, very clear,

01:57:57 like what I have seen in the future.

01:58:00 Scientists might call it wormholes,

01:58:02 or in the Old Testament they called it prophets,

01:58:05 but I see sometimes into the future around the corner.

01:58:08 It’s clear as we’re sitting right here.

01:58:10 What’s that look like?

01:58:11 I was on a porch,

01:58:12 and I believe I was in like Central America place.

01:58:14 I was an old man with khaki pants and a white shirt.

01:58:18 And it was a chair with a wide arms, and it was straight,

01:58:22 and there was like the beams coming out above my head,

01:58:25 and I’m on a porch.

01:58:26 Bokunbi, yeah.

01:58:27 And I come, I have out of the body experiences also.

01:58:33 And I came out of my body,

01:58:35 just, I just floated out of my body,

01:58:37 and went into a veil, and like into a mist.

01:58:41 And I believe that’s probably why it happened.

01:58:43 You talk about like it’s in your past.

01:58:47 This is your future.

01:58:48 This is in my future.

01:58:50 But this is something he has seen,

01:58:52 you know, in the past. I’ve seen it in a vision.

01:58:53 Yeah, in a vision. No, I know, but it’s funny,

01:58:55 just the tense you use, it happened,

01:58:58 and yet it’s something that will happen.

01:59:00 Yes. Two.

01:59:01 Both are true.

01:59:03 It’s just unbelievable that,

01:59:04 and I don’t know how many people have it, but I have it.

01:59:07 I walked out of my body just like,

01:59:09 just where I could come up to you and look,

01:59:11 and set up on the radio.

01:59:12 I used to be at work on the railroad,

01:59:13 and I had them there.

01:59:15 How do you explain that?

01:59:16 What do you think, what the heck is going on

01:59:18 in this universe that’s possible?

01:59:20 Oh, I don’t know, but certainly,

01:59:23 certainly a phenomenon which has happened.

01:59:25 And there’s a guy, Bill Monroe,

01:59:28 that wrote the book on it, Out of the Body.

01:59:30 He tells about it.

01:59:31 And who was the guy that writes The Alchemist?

01:59:35 Pablo Coelho.

01:59:37 He has them also, just like that.

01:59:39 And he tells about how it happens on him.

01:59:41 Mine happened differently.

01:59:43 But you certainly can come out of your body.

01:59:48 What do you think the meaning of this life is,

01:59:51 maybe from your faith,

01:59:55 but also from just the amazing adventure

01:59:59 that you lived through?

02:00:00 How do you make sense of why the heck we’re here?

02:00:05 I don’t know.

02:00:06 It’s just kind of like who you are.

02:00:08 Even when I was a child, I was like,

02:00:11 I’m different from other people.

02:00:12 You know?

02:00:15 And just as a boy, I was, like I had a…

02:00:19 Could you put into words how you were different

02:00:22 or it was just the feeling?

02:00:22 Yeah, like my brother, I mean,

02:00:24 he kept his hands clean and his shoes shining.

02:00:27 Here I was barefooted catching a wild hog

02:00:29 or a rattle on a horse trying to get it down.

02:00:32 I saw pictures of you climbing a tree recently.

02:00:36 When I first got out of prison,

02:00:37 always something like that.

02:00:40 So I don’t know.

02:00:41 It’s just that, and I noticed that something about me

02:00:46 is sometimes in prison, there’d be a knife fight.

02:00:49 And people just, you see them rough guys

02:00:51 that turn white from it.

02:00:55 I just kind of almost like smile.

02:00:56 I mean, if they come at me, I turn white and get away.

02:01:01 But it doesn’t bother, those things,

02:01:02 they still didn’t bother me.

02:01:03 I just, prison didn’t bother me.

02:01:06 So you don’t know what the heck the meaning is.

02:01:08 You just know you’re a bit different than the others.

02:01:10 Yeah, I might be a little bit kooky.

02:01:11 Well, maybe the whole point is you want to realize,

02:01:18 you want to let that madness flourish,

02:01:21 that uniqueness flourish.

02:01:23 That’s the whole point of life.

02:01:24 We’re all different in our,

02:01:25 in very interesting little ways.

02:01:28 And the more different you are, you want to let that,

02:01:30 you want to let that become, you want to let it be its full.

02:01:33 It’s like a garden, all the different flowers.

02:01:37 You did mention you weren’t sure

02:01:39 if there’s a free will or not.

02:01:42 Do you think it’s all predetermined?

02:01:44 Or do you think we make our choices?

02:01:45 No, we definitely make our decisions.

02:01:47 I just said, if it is, I hope that,

02:01:49 but I know that we make our decisions.

02:01:51 Yes, I agree.

02:01:52 And I know that we are spirits

02:01:55 that are living in this flesh.

02:01:57 That’s beyond a shadow of a doubt for me.

02:01:59 If you walk out of your body

02:02:00 and have out of body experience, you will know it.

02:02:03 So the body is just the temporary container

02:02:05 for something much bigger.

02:02:06 The spirit lives on eternally with no beginning and no end.

02:02:09 And that’s hard to fathom.

02:02:11 Yeah, this is just a little,

02:02:12 this is a shell to contain that spirit.

02:02:16 This is the way we work on earth.

02:02:18 But yeah, I know it.

02:02:20 I’m an eternal being.

02:02:21 So are you.

02:02:22 Do you think there’s a why to it?

02:02:26 Do you think there’s a meaning to this life?

02:02:28 Well, I think the why is beyond my capability

02:02:32 of understanding.

02:02:33 It’s someone greater than me.

02:02:36 I don’t understand it,

02:02:38 but it’s awesome.

02:02:40 I just know that it’s awesome.

02:02:42 And one day we will know the answers.

02:02:44 Once we get to that crossover to the other side,

02:02:47 I think we will understand clearly.

02:02:50 It says, you know, now we see through a glass darkly,

02:02:53 but then when we are face to face with God,

02:02:56 we will understand.

02:02:58 And until we know, let’s just enjoy this beautiful life

02:03:03 while we got it.

02:03:04 Absolutely.

02:03:05 And we’re meant.

02:03:06 That was my gift.

02:03:06 I love everybody and everything I do.

02:03:10 And it just, and I’m sorry,

02:03:12 if I put a stumbling block in anybody’s way,

02:03:14 I wouldn’t want to,

02:03:16 but these are these things that when I just think about,

02:03:18 oh, what a hypocritical world we live in though.

02:03:24 Like most anybody, I’d say, listen, okay,

02:03:27 he’s a drug dealer.

02:03:28 And I would say most of them had committed adultery.

02:03:31 That’s a cardinal sin.

02:03:33 And yet they move, throw rocks at me for moving a marijuana,

02:03:38 cocaine across the road.

02:03:40 Yeah.

02:03:40 It’s just, if you saw the two different things,

02:03:42 you’d say, what a terrible difference it is.

02:03:45 But we become conditioned with this mad society

02:03:49 that we have.

02:03:51 You mentioned that your daughter, Miriam, wrote you a poem.

02:03:56 Do you mind reading it?

02:03:57 I’d be glad to.

02:03:58 I was doing 11 years up in Lombok Penitentiary,

02:04:02 maximum security prison for parole violation

02:04:05 for possession of marijuana in 1977.

02:04:08 They should have given me six months,

02:04:10 but they gave me 11 years because they wanted me

02:04:12 for what they call silent beef.

02:04:14 Anyhow, while I was in that dungeon,

02:04:16 I received a letter from my daughter, Miriam.

02:04:21 It’s called Daddy’s Poem.

02:04:23 A year ago, I became a poet when I wrote your birthday prose.

02:04:27 And here I am today, ready to give it another go.

02:04:30 First, I would like to wish you a very happy birthday to be

02:04:35 and to thank you so very much

02:04:37 for without you, I would not be me.

02:04:39 Secondly, I want to say that your support has been immense.

02:04:43 It has been true, honest, loving, and free of all pretense.

02:04:48 Thirdly, it goes without saying,

02:04:50 your love has surpassed all my wrongs

02:04:53 and you always made me smile

02:04:55 with one of your old country songs.

02:04:57 I can remember on Cuervo, Daddy,

02:05:00 with you holding me in your arms,

02:05:02 as you sang Jim Reeves songs and talked about the farm.

02:05:06 I can see you walking through the door

02:05:08 from one of your travels far and wide

02:05:10 and the thought of you coming home, Daddy,

02:05:12 kept a twinkle in our eyes.

02:05:15 I can smell you as I did when I used to climb into your bed

02:05:18 and you would talk to me again

02:05:20 about one of the adventures that you led.

02:05:22 I can see me and Mario asleep

02:05:24 in one of your airplanes extraordinaire

02:05:27 and remembering wondering to myself

02:05:29 why there wasn’t an available chair.

02:05:32 I remember having to meet you

02:05:34 and worrying that you wouldn’t be there,

02:05:36 but you would pop from behind some counter

02:05:38 and give us all a happy scare.

02:05:41 You gave us presents in Key Biscayne

02:05:44 and hotels pleasure galore

02:05:46 and three dozen roses that we came through the airport door.

02:05:50 I can see your face in Amsterdam with the luggage carousel

02:05:53 and you look like a boy with a secret

02:05:55 that you were just dying to tell.

02:05:57 You taught me mathematics in the sands of far away places

02:06:01 and taught me to sail and we left without any traces.

02:06:04 We climbed glaciers in Argentina

02:06:07 and saw the blue of the beautiful caves

02:06:09 and witnessed the majestic beauty of such a juggling maze.

02:06:14 I learned how to change gears on the dirt roads of Brazil.

02:06:17 We ate hot dogs in Paraguay, a memory we smile over still.

02:06:21 We talked about lions, elephants and bears

02:06:24 on a Hacienda in Uruguay,

02:06:26 but decided it was better if the Europe we did fly.

02:06:30 Oh, the old world and all its luxury,

02:06:32 what a good time it was.

02:06:34 From South America to the Krosnopolsky,

02:06:37 I think we fell in love.

02:06:39 The European jaunt, well, it is considered a book in itself

02:06:44 but it’s a story about beauty and knowledge,

02:06:46 suspense and worldly wealth.

02:06:48 We went from Holland to Sweden,

02:06:50 we went from France to Spain

02:06:52 and I promise you I have no regrets.

02:06:54 I would definitely do it all again.

02:06:57 I would see the world with you anytime, sir.

02:06:59 There’s no doubt in my mind

02:07:01 because being by your side, daddy,

02:07:03 always ensures a wild good time.

02:07:06 So our paths took a turn and we’re back in the US of A,

02:07:10 but life here isn’t so bad and I’m plumb content to stay.

02:07:14 I’m happy to be near you,

02:07:16 although I’m not as close as I was before,

02:07:18 but because of your love and encouragement,

02:07:21 I’ve been able to open new doors.

02:07:23 I’m grateful to be in school

02:07:25 and I’m genuinely happy where I am.

02:07:28 And I even like when you call and tell me to study

02:07:30 for the next exam.

02:07:32 What a life you’ve given me, daddy.

02:07:34 It’s a tremendous and a magical gift.

02:07:37 We already have so many stories to tell,

02:07:40 there are far too many to list.

02:07:42 But I want to thank you again this day

02:07:44 with a very big happy birthday to you

02:07:47 and to tell you just a few more things

02:07:49 that I knew in my heart to be true.

02:07:51 That I love you, daddy,

02:07:52 with all of your wrongs and your rights.

02:07:55 That you’re ahead of our family

02:07:56 and you’ve kept us all bound tight.

02:07:59 That you have a honest love in your heart

02:08:01 for God and all mankind.

02:08:03 And you truly do believe in yourself

02:08:05 when you say it will all be fine.

02:08:08 I know you will be there to catch me

02:08:10 if ever I waver a slip

02:08:12 and I know I’d want you as captain on any sinking ship.

02:08:16 I also know a new chapter is written.

02:08:19 It’s almost time to move on.

02:08:21 It’s time to sail another sea

02:08:23 and to witness a brand new dawn.

02:08:25 It’d be good to see you at the helm again

02:08:27 as you point out our destination,

02:08:29 the laugh and dance on the upper deckers

02:08:32 while the boat glides through.

02:08:34 It’d be good to see you on the go

02:08:36 as I know you like to be

02:08:39 and to know you can open any door without any key.

02:08:43 But while we revel in our days together,

02:08:45 we will know better than to hurry

02:08:47 because as you told me many times,

02:08:50 life is an incredible journey.

02:08:54 Wow, that’s beautiful.

02:08:57 Yeah.

02:08:58 Roger, I’m really honored that you would take the time

02:09:02 to visit me in Texas and to sit down and talk with me.

02:09:06 Thank you so much, Roger.

02:09:07 Thanks so much, Mary. Thank you.

02:09:08 Thank you, it was a pleasure.

02:09:10 It’s been a real pleasure.

02:09:11 Yes.

02:09:12 Beautiful.

02:09:13 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Roger Reeves

02:09:16 and thank you to Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN,

02:09:20 Four Sigmatic and 8sleep.

02:09:23 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

02:09:26 And now let me leave you with some words

02:09:29 from Pablo Escobar.

02:09:31 All empires are created of blood and fire.

02:09:36 Thank you for listening.

02:09:37 I hope to see you next time.