All right, welcome to episode eighty thanks to Express Pros and Blue Apron our sponsors our guests. It's kind of weird because I watched Narcos like most of America, and you're like the real versions of the people, So that's kind of weird. So Steve Murphy and how your pain. You're here now, but you're the real ones, which is crazy because that's that's the guys on TV. And you kind of both look like the people too, which is weird. So have so many questions. By the way, gentlemen, thank
you for being here. Well in the heck, we're here with the real Bobby Bones for us about So let's just start from the beginning, because I would assume that at some point people had to come to an offer you deals for your story earlier than this Netflix show, right they did. Um and and just to be real truthful about this whole thing, we didn't think anybody ever
want to hear the story. So through the years, you know, when you're when you're working for the government, you can't make money on the side, so you have to wait. You retire. People kept saying, you guys may make a movie, you need to write a book and we thought nobody wants to hear this story. So you're both retired now and that's why the story it can be out now
from you guys. Yeah, basically, yes, after we retired, we uh work, they came to us, you know, uh Netflix, and uh basically they hired us as consultants, and we told them the real true story. And uh, of course there's artistic licenses that happened, but we we we told him from the from the beginning to the end, how we all work the basically the right should follow up Pablo Escobar and everything in in between. When you talk about artistic differences, Steve like, what are we looking at?
Hear percentage watching list, Like, how much of this show that I'm watching is real? Well, if you come and see our show, we'll tell you exactly. And by the way you're doing it, you're doing a show. It's so the show is chasing Pablo the world tour and it's all over. You can get a d a Narcos dot com to actually watch the show and and and meet you guys and see you guys. And so we were like in a half of its real cause, but we
have no idea what those conversations in the back room. Right, there's a lot of there's a lot of things that actually happened, and they're depicted correctly. There's a lot of things that happened, but they're not depicted quite correctly. And then there's a lot of Hollywood built into it. But you know what, it made a great exciting action series.
In our opinion, we're real happy with the show. And the chronology is you know, the the events, the timeline, so that that's pretty accurate, uh of what happened, what actually happened. So Netflix, someone comes to you and to have this idea for a show, and like where does it start? Like what how did that start? We had I've got a friend in Washington, d c. That has his own production company, small company, and he introduced us to a couple of Hollywood producers. But they had personal
agendas and that's not what we're about. You know, they wanted one guy really wanted to go right wing political with it, and we're not about that. So we just gave up on the idea. We just figured, you know, nobody really wants to hear the story. It's all a myth, you know, it's just you know, dream in the back of your mind. And we got a call one day from a retired U. S Marine that we'd worked with in Colombia and had talked to him and over in twenty years, and he said, Hey, there's a producer in
Hollywood wants to talk to you. And so I tried to blow off the marine. Well, if if you know any retire marines, they can be very colorful and forceful in their language. So after I got my butt cheered, I told him, Okay, okay, I'll call the guy. And the guy's name was Eric Newman. He's the creator and there the original executive producer of Narco is. He's still in charge of everything. Um talk to him. He flew to Washington. I had dinner with him, and a couple
of the writers or personalities clicked. Very well educated, very successful in the in the industry. Called however and I said, man, I think we might have something. And this was at that time we signed contracts with Gaumant International Television. We didn't know Netflix was involved. After we were on board, that's when they revealed that Okay, Netflix is funding this and they're they're running the show and they've been great
to us. We're howvire did you actually watch any of the filming, like did you go and see this happening or did you kind of see it after it was done? We Uh, actually I went to Columbia for about a week and saw a little bit of the filming. But our our main job was to tell them the story, the history, the events that took play. So we were just living and we would get the scripts, uh, and we reviewed them and uh, you know, if something was really really wrong, we would let them know. But uh,
but it was basically we told him the stories. That's what they You know, how did you feel when they cast of the people to look like you? But when you saw the actors for the first like a great question. I get the call, let's say have here. It's the guy the name of Pedro Pascal that's gonna be playing you. And uh I had seen him on Game of Thrones. I said, what you know, I said, Pedro Pascal. So I looked them up, you know Game of Thrones, and I'm like, wow, great looking guys, So of course I'll
signed off on. But uh, they chose him, and you know what when we when I actually met him, super nice guy, just uh, just a real great guy. He you know, we talked and uh, we spent some time together and but just it was amazing, you know. So I was very happy that they cast him. It was wild because at the end of like season one or two and Steve, when they show the picture of you know, the actor that plays you and I mean that one is, do you feel like it's a dead ringer for you?
I do. It's Uh, it's amazing, and Boyd Holbrook is um just a super guy. It's it's kind of funny and just a very quick story my family. If you read on the media shows that I came from West Virginia. I grew up in Murphy's Burg, Tennessee, and then when I went into high school, we moved to West Virginia. So I'm I'm kind of like a crossover between the redneck and a hillbilly. But if on my father's side, we're related to the Hatfield and McCoy's from the famous feud.
So my great grandfather is John Cy Hatfield, my great grandmother Sarah McCoy weight. If you go back and watch the trilogy with Kevin Costner about the Hatfield and McCoy's, Boyd plays my great uncle Cap Hatfield and then a Narcos he plays me, So it's like this incestuous relationship. Did you talk like that? You know, you know, because he has this whole, he has this whole. His speech is like I'll tell you, I mean, that's just their own creative liberty. There, it is. It is. But you know,
I'm not disappointed at all. And if if you look at the girl that plays my wife on there, and you know, they picked my wife in the show, Connie Joanna Christie cute as a button, but she's British and she was able to hide her British accent the whole show and come out like a country girl. Whenever you guys think back about Pablo at this at this point,
I mean, it's been so long. Like I saw that I was talking on the other this morning, I saw someone painting a picture of him, you know, up and it was just a picture and I was like, man, what a bad Like I felt like, what a bad dude? You is that? How did you guys feel torn at all? Do you feel like he was a bad because he's also giving it this like what was your feeling then about it? And let me also mentioned when we signed off with the Netflix on this, we had a caveat.
The caveat was that we will do it, but do not glamorize publisk Bar because that Publisic Bars should not be glamorized. And they agreed, and I think they did a great job not glamorizing him. Uh. The actor that placed Publish, war Wagner Mora, did an incredible job depicting publisk bars moves, the way he talked, the way he thinks. I mean, the actor brought him to life in the Whack Mora and that's where we think, I mean, you would you did see some sympathy towards on the second season.
Towards Publish. I felt like they made him a little more human than I was comfortable then because I just felt like what I had read it was such a bad dude. But did you dealing with him personally feel like that his bad dudeness like came from a place of set like it just I felt like he was multi For me, it felt a little more multidimensional than I wanted him to be. I just wanted to root against him and him to be so evil. And is that how you felt when you were chasing like this
is the evil guy? Oh, he absolutely. He's one of the most evil people that ever walked the face of the earth. You know, we credit him with between ten and fifteen thousand murders, and this is a little bit dark. One of his Cicario is one of his assassins is still alive in Columbia. Just got out of prison a couple of years ago. He's come out and done a movie, a book, social media, everything, and he's saying the number is over fifty thousand, over fifty thousand innocent people murdered
by this organization led by Pablo Escobar. So this guy is nothing more than a mass murder. He's the world's first narco terrorist. He's he was the world's most wanted criminal. Do you guys feel like that he was like genius level with his what he was able to do corrupt wise, because no one was was it, No one else was able to do it at the level. It's no, not at all. I don't want to give this guy credit
for anything. Um. He did have somewhat of a charismatic personality. Um, he was viewed as a Robin Hood, which is opposite of the truth, hundred degrees opposite of what's really true. He manipulated those poor people what he did though he had no conscience, he had no remorse, he had no problem that, Hey, I need you to go do this, and if you said no, kill you right there and then we'll go order lunch. That's a socio and psychopath,
absolutely at the same time. Absolutely multiple personalities, just like you said, a psycho. But one thing we always and we really want to get this across. We don't want this to permeate out to the entire Columbian population. Columbia. Columbians are some of the nicest people in the world. The country is beautiful. Uh, it should be a leading world power. They've just got that civil war thing going. That's that's holding them back. But we don't want everybody
to think that Columbians are bad people. They're not. In fact, my two daughters of Columbias, we adopted them down there and beautiful young ladies. Now tell me about this prison because I see it on the show like time about the prison he built. You know, I get to build his own prison. It's it's well, one thing that Narco's got wrong in the show. It's much nicer than what they show. Wait, so you're telling me that the nice prison on the show was not as nice as the
real life prison he was, really exactly. And that's one of the things we do in our show. We we take you inside of Pablo's sweet, not a prison cell, his sweet. But what makes you guys want to go down? Like for me, I'm such a little like just a baby. I would never have the guts to to even do it in America, much less go down to South America where that's that's not even your terrain. Like what would howe, what would make you want to go down? Because you
went down first? Right? Yeah, I went down first. I get there in and basically, you know what I put in for Mexico to go to Mexico by boss, have your you got to look at for Colombia, said bost But I didn't put in for Columbia. They're they're voluntary assignments. So uh, I ended up in Colombia and they, you know, my boss at the time says you're gonna work the Escobar investigation. So uh, everything on my part was pretty
much you know, a mistake. But once I get to Colombia, you know, we we had an informal task force that was going to have to publicistic. And that's when we're realized that this guy was just a major, major player, was pretty much in control of Columbia. And you know what, we and we dispelled that myth because you're gonna hear about it. I think you were alluding to right now
that that Robin Hood, uh persona that Escobar had. You know what, he gave a lot of money to the poor, to the church, but he always expected something in return. This was Publiscoba was no Robin Hood. You know, Publisico put a bomb on an airline. You have young airline that killed a hundred people. Uh uh, you know, put a bomb in front of a building. I mean, so we we dispelled that myth. So I'm talking about express pros.
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Publistic bar Remember was his fight was on extradition. You know this guys did not want to come to the United States. Also, we're you know, in Mexico, we're seeing Choppel who's now incarcerated in the United States. Chapel's war has been more based on intimidation. You know, they'll put the bodies they want to show the public if you mess with us, this's gonna happen. You know, they'll put they'll roll the heads on dance floors, they'll hang bodies
on the bridges. So his war is intimidation and corruption. You know, they'll try to buy as many politicians as ak in Mexico so that they can let their you know, their dope coming to the United States. So Pablo Escobar's fight was against the governor Columbia because of the extradition, whereas Chapel is more of that corruption and intimidation factor so that they can, uh, so that they will not
mess with him. You guys. You know, even in the show, it talks about the amount of money that he had and that the rats would eat a bunch of it. That he spent three grand a month on rubber bands for the Well did you ever walk in and just see just so much money that you were just like, WHOA, I can't believe this is what I'm witnessing. Yeah, I saw thirty million dollars in the house and they had hit it in the in the walls of a house.
Uh So the money. And remember bout back then. If we're looking at the mid eighties, you know that kilo of cocaine in Miami in the mid eighties was going for about eighty thousand dollars. That's how publish who was so rich? Eighty thousand dollars and this guys were doing about twenty kilos on a daily basis. And if you were selling in Europe, you're gonna be getting over a hundred thousand. So the the profit margin, the cash was just incredible. His son says, Pablo sign says he hates
the show. Did you know, how do you feel about his son? And you know the things that he's done in the public. You know, I've I've actually read the son's book and I've seen his video. Um, I don't believe what he says. I think he's trying to create a different legacy of his father. Um. I was there. I was not there as as it's depicted a Narco's I was not on the roof when Pablo was killed. That's hollywood. But I did ride out to the scene with Colonel Martinez and he's the head of the entire
search block. He was our Boston medine and I'm the one that took all his photographs. I was a local police officer before I became a federal agent. I've been trained in murders and suicide investigations. I've worked both, and there are telltale signs associated with the SUICI. So he's trying to say that his dad wasn't killed by the Columbian National Police, that he was, that he committed suicide rather than being taken alive. First of all, there was
no intention to take him alive. That it was never word take him alive. It was the cops were They were fed up because he killed so many of their brothers. And just in that eighteen month period from when he escaped from his prison until the day he was killed, a hundred and forty three Columbian National Police officers were killed as a result of just that one case. I mean, the guy put a bounty on a Columbian Police officer of a hundred bucks. Police officer's life was worth one
hundred dollars. That's pathetic. So, you know, and I don't mean to get on my soapbox here, but it's a little bit of a hot topic with me because we know what happened, we know the truth the son knows what happened. He's just choosing to try and to change the legacy of his dad. And you know what, it's turned into a cash industry for him. That's what he's doing now. So you know my book, he's a liar.
I'll tell him that to his face. There are still stories about about Paulo's money and people are still finding it. Do you believe those stories? And that's really his money? That is very true. There's still a lot of money buried in Columbia right now, if they're in Colletas, either buried stats somewhere, because remember everybody's dead now. In Pablo would kill a lot of the people that knew where they hid the money. That way they could not get
to this. So there is still a lot of money buried. Uh. So you know, we we encourage people take a trip to Columbia. Not not really, but there is money buried because the Calleta guys who used to bury it, you know, they're all dead. I never thought about that, that they would hide it and only they would know it. Then he would kill them. So he was the only one that knew. Right, So these fancy houses he built in Columbia, the architects. Uh, people who used to hide it, they're
all they're all dead and you go down first. And I guess did you every day did you feel uncomfortable for your life or did it just become part of it? You know what? And if I could just say, the part with me was the car bombs. That's what killed a lot of innocent people being at the wrong place at the wrong time, because he was placing them in Bolt, he was placing them in Medain. He would place him when we would go outside our base and convoyed. A
lot of police officers got killed. And it to me, it was just you know, you never knew when where he was going to put those car bombs. And again, I just you never knew were you when you'd walk outside and people know you're not from there? Were you the enemy down there all the time? No? Not really. The Columbian police, you know, we're um and so we always make a point that we were there at the invitation of the Columbian government. You know, we're a couple
of American law enforcing officers. We have zero jurisdiction in a foreign country, so you have to be there under their invitation. How the thing that was nice about me. How had been there three years before I ever got there, so he had already earned their respect. So when I came in because he vouched for me, I was accepted. Now I still had to earn their respect, but that immediate, you know that, It wasn't that immediate stand offishness where people are like, hey, who are you? You know you?
And you got to get to know him. That that helping open a lot of doors for me. But you know, I like to joke around that. People say, why did you do it? Well? I didn't. They didn't hire me because I was smart, you know. I did it for the excitement. I've been in Miami for four years. I'd had a partner was shot Kevin Stevens and Miami during the deal that went by, we had a informant killed. And honestly it was this sounds kind of strange to most people, but it was exciting. It was in a
drilling rush. My wife is into excitement, you know. I mean when I met her, she owned her own motorcycle. How can you not love a woman that owns her own motorcycle? Right? So she came to me one day, she said, Okay, what's our next exciting adventure in life, and let's go to Colombia. And we did. And I was in U and I was in Austin, Texas. I
started my D eight career in Austin ninet four. So I was doing the street stuff, you know, the surveillances, you undercover, and Austin beck then had a lot of heroine. I was buying a lot of heroin on the streets, uh believe it or not LLSD, So it was, you know, a lot of a big yells d market. So I and then so you know, I saw the streets side of the drug world, and then I wanted to go see how the real traffickers, the big guys work. So that was my my intention of trying to go to
fore and just to go see the major organizations. And then you know, you know, you would see how the major organizations work and how he gets back to the streets. So I wouldn't to learn the business. But what he's not telling you he was almost killed while he was in Austin and an undercover deal. It's very very dangerous. I would have seen you guys are almost killed a lot, like we're just one wrong move right. Ever, thank god,
we're here. You talk about bounties earlier and how there was a one bounty on a police officer and that's all I took. But you guys had much more expensive bounties like thirty thou of dollars. Wow, there were three hundred thou dollar bounties on your heads. I mean, Dad has got to make you feel again, I'll talk about scared, like just scared to death or no, that's just part of being down there. That's just part of it. Yeah, but part of I mean. And obviously we were protected.
We had a specialized group of police officers that we worked with that were handpicked. We knew them, they were friends of ours. Uh, they protected us and uh, you know, and in the second search, we were with them, we lived with our you know, with the police in Medine going after a publish bar. So and again my biggest fear was was those car bombs just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And uh, you know, talking a little bit ago reminded me, you know, of
all the atrocities that Escobar committed. I mean, we have met people that were related directly. For example, you know, public bark has killed Ay and we'll talk about it to ah a justice minister. I don't want to mention his name, but we've met their family because their family had to leave Columbia because that's why I was going to kill I think it was like twenty family members. We've met people who are who had relatives on the
Avanca Airline that we've talked to. There's always a human side to all of this killings, you know, and so it's something that kept us going when you would see your friends get killed, when you would see in some people get killed, and this that's why we we kept we kept going. That was basically you cannot give up because believe me, there was many times that we wanted to leave, that we wanted to give up. We wanted to just go home. So, uh, there's there's a personal
side to all of this. This technology that we see in the show, which you know, flying over listening down, I mean that seems like the birth of what is happening now. But was this really new to you guys just listening how to use that? In the States? Well, the that program and this is all de classified now so we can talk about it. Back then, even the
name of the program was classified. That was a technology that is controlled by the intelligence community of the United States, and so they are not allowed to use utilize that against Americans. So in the United States, we were doing wire taps on phones, but not the aerial intercepts like they were doing. But in Columbia, you know, the telephone technology was basically radio frequency, and so they were intercepting
the radio frequencies. But here's the challenge. If you if you search the radio frequency spectrum, there are thousands of frequencies, and so these guys are having to search all of these different frequencies in the hopes of capturing the person that you're looking for talking at the exact moment he's talking. It's the proverbial needle in a haystack, right, But um, they aren't the ones that found the frequency. This man right here, Javiera through an informat as the one that
came up with the frequency. How do you try us people, because you know, you talk about you knew the cops wanted you down there, the police wanted you down here. But how do you trust anybody whenever anybody could be bought, Like I just feel like I want to trust anybody. That's a very true. There's a lot of times at the beginning, there was a lot of corruption. We had to weed it out because the money and Pablo was good and knowing who to corrupt, who do uh bribe?
Who do you offer money? His famous terminology is you want Plato or plumbo, you want a bullet, or you want some money. Uh. He created that so and there was a lot of corrups and later on we weeded it out, so we knew who to trust. But that was very difficult, and uh Escobar had all the money in the world he could offer, you know, politicians whoever could help him out. Did you ever see people that you were like, for sure there part of their quote
unquot good guys get flipped. Bad guys like you knew they were part of the team, and then something got to them, either someone got a the family or someone's money. Yeah, and yes, yeah we did, we did, and uh uh some of them were caught, some of them were not. But you always knew, especially in the political arena, who
later on, you know, got money from Escobar. I always remember there was some constitutional you know, uh Columbian congressman and uh public bar was bribing them so they would vote against extradition because the extradition was on constitutional So there were several of them who you know, public bars. Uh, attorney was bribing them so they could vote against the extradition. You knew who his attorney was, but you still there was you still couldn't track the attorney back to Pablo
for the longest time. Right. We tried, we tried, and uh, but you know, he had several attorneys, you know he had he had, he had numerous attorneys. Said, Uh, all this were you know, high powered attorneys. But and that was kind of difficult also. And you gotta remember he had his sicarios, his assassin's out there keeping an eye on everything. So you know, I'm I'm English Irish by ancestry. I stick out like a sowre throum in a Hispanic country. You don't blend in, you know. So it wasn't a
simple matter. Where in the United States you can you can use disguises and different techniques to do surveillance. We just couldn't do that down there. Howvio, were you like the ladies man down there? That's the one part of the show that's true. I'm watching this and it's like probably that is the number one question people ask me. Did I have all those affairs, and I will discuss that at the show. That sounds like yeah, it sounds like a yeah to me. It sounds like a yeah
to me. If you need an introduction call have you do? You guys feel like because it's weird because you're famous now, but it's well, listen your famed. Everybody in here was like, wow, look, you know, look who's coming in because we see that the TV show. You know, everybody watching Narcos and we think it's a great show. So people know who you are now, but they know who you are from like the eighties, So it's a weird thing to not be recognized.
But then when you tell people who you are, they're like, wow, that's crazy, right, Like isn't that kind of a weird fame of When you tell them then people freak out. But until then probably people don't even know. They don't And you know what. The show runner for season one is a guy named Chris Brancotto out in Hollywood. Super Guy just has ended up being one of our best friends and we're staying in fact, he he emailed us this morning for some of the stuff that has been
on Facebook. Um, but he told us he said in the very beginning. He said, you guys are gonna be famous, and and we're not about being famous. You know, I was telling Shawn's with us today, helping us get around and and not tell him. This morning, before Narcos came out, there was only one thing on social media that you can find with my name in it, and that was that was it. I did a really good job. Now
it's it's not so much like that. But he said, you guys are gonna be named famous, You're not gonna be face famous. And it's so we walked through the airports. Nobody knows who we are. But it's like you say. Vias was on a plane one time and the guy next to him is watching an episode of Narcos and he reached over and no and he said, hey, see that guy, that's me. And because I've had it done twice now where I'll be next door need I'm looking
at what they're looking on. I guess I'm you know, snooping. You can see what they're watching. And the first guy was like, oh wow, what did it shook my hand water my autograph And I've had another guy on the play next to be watching it, So it is they don't believe it because you don't obviously I'm I'm a little older now, don't look like the actor. So after Escobar died, there was around any percent dropping crime like murder right right then an eighty percent dropping order on
his death. So his his death is a direct correlation of making that place better in your mind, absolutely that the one human What's interesting to me is when you guys walked in the room. So my head of security is the retired d A agent. Yeah, that's cool. And it was like you all three of you guys are sitting there talk and I don't think you I don't think you knew him before you walked in, But it was like this instant like you all had this in
common thing and it's a brotherhood. It's a it's a brotherhood, and you know, he knows all the people we know. It's like you said, he was probably the more dangerous area, you know, working in the Florida area during during the eighties, so he knows all the people we know. It was just it likes you said, it's it's a brotherhood. We you know, instantly connected. We talked about Hey, this guy, that guy. We we get caught up and It was
a great scene. It's a family. I hope people go out and all over the because this is gonna be heard all over the country. Uh, this this conversation here and they go check out the tour. Let me talk about Blue Apron for one second. I do love some Blue Apron. It's sent to the house. It's things I
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what was your goal? Like what you just wanted to be a like a cop, like enforcing justice in your town? You know, And I know this sounds corny and and you know cliche, but I never wanted to do anything other than be a cop ever since I was a little kid. And my dad was a Southern Baptist minister. So I grew up in a prestrict household and and Donna Murphy's burn And then we moved to West Virginia and he had his own business there and I was
the only son. He and my uncle were the owners, and I was the only son of both families, and it was always expected to take over the business. It was a flooring business with carpet. I hate carpet. So I actually tried it and started in college on a business degree, and this it just wasn't me. And I came back and and um, you know, got my degree in criminal justice at a local college and and started at the Bluefield, West Virginia Police Department, the thirty five
man department back in nineteen seventy five. The funny thing is when you got hired, you they provided you uniforms and things like that, but you had to provide your own weapon. And ammo, wow, I believe it or not, I don't know. It sounds strange. I was nineteen years old. I couldn't buy a gun, I couldn't buy bullets. Yet I could carry it and I could put you jail and then if I needed to, I could shoot you. So how do you move up? And so you become you're a police officer, So what do you do to
move to the next step? And like how what what is your your climb up to actually ending up in Columbia. Well, I was a local officer there in Bluefield, West Virginia for six years, and then um, I went to work for the Norfolk and back then the Norfolk and Western Railway Company as a special agent. With them became the Norfolk Southern Corporation, which is today. I did that for five and a half years. But I was always interested
in arconics investigations, you know. I just I don't know if it was the movie Cercico or you know, all the things you used to read about Joseph Wamba, the famous writer out in Los Angele former police officer. So, uh, I did a couple of very small drug cases as uniform officer, and I just I really loved that undercover work,
so as a real replacement. One of the one of my fellow agents was a former Virginia State trooper that had worked for a da task force in in Virginia, and he used to tell me stories and I just really got excited about it, and I applied and it took me two years, but I finally got hired. Have your same question, where did you start over the plan? Yeah, I'm from a small town Hibbronville, Texas, which is about
fifty miles out of Laredo. And when I started, uh, I was going to college and Uh, they offered me a job at the Sheriff's office nineteen seventy seven, and it was a great opportunity. I lived with my grandmother, my you know, grandparents are always the best, you know, had home cooked meals. So I worked at night at the night shift with the sheriff's officers, went to school during the day, and uh, finally, you know, it paid off,
got my degree in my interest. Really, when I was working there, towards the end, I saw on the bolton board they used to post the job announcements and I saw D E. A was hiring, you know, not did not know what DA was. I had to ask a friend who it was, so they said he they're the federal marks. But anyway, we cut. My attention was at the d A was paying. I think it was like seventeen thousand a year. I was making like ten thousand
with the search office in Arraido. So I applied and a year later, you know, I got hired on and uh, you know, my first assignment, as I mentioned, was Austin, Texas, which was a great assignment. You know. Austin was was you know coming up in the uh music industry, was beautiful, great people, so basically mine was just was was an opportunity when you get sent down because you're not three years before he was down, So what did you go
down for? Initially the same thing, but it just it was Yes, I wanted to, like I said, from the you know, wanted to learn the dope world from the higher ups, from the main player. So we'd all put together and I was like, I said, uh, you know, and it was it was gonna be good for my career. And I just wanted to have both sides of the coin, you know, the street distribution and then how the big guys work. So I just want to see that overall picture of the way the dope world, you know works.
I have some friends at a police officers on a local level, and you know, for them to be able to use whatever they're you thinking, if it's pepper sprayer, f it's but they have to have it done to them. Did you guys being when you're working in arcotics, do you guys have to use the drug? So you know, like is that a thing but you have to like touch it like it's not. No, you do not use it, absolutely not. It's you know, we make a big joke
about it. Because it's a myth out there. But you absolutely do not, right, that's all TV stuff and uh, you don't, you don't do that. And like you said, not to mention too much on operations. But you know, if I'm doing undercover, uh, there's like, you know, ten people watching me, you know when we're doing it, So we take a lot of precautions. And you know that's that's also a myth because in our job, we're after
the big players. Were not after the local the the guy who's you know, snorting and the guy who's smoking, when that's not our concerns. So usually are undercover negotiate Asians are with the big guys, uh, guys who have the power. And so you like to get to know the smaller guys to lead you to the other guys, to lead you to the big guy. It's kind of a it's a technique trust that has to be gained. Huh. Yeah, it's and it doesn't go very far, I believe me.
You know. It's it's when you're working undercover, it's a face to face thing. You don't turn you back. Do you miss it? Do you miss working? You're both retired now, Like do you look at it go man. You know what, it's a young man's game. Now, you know, miss the job. I missed your the friends, you know, the guys like Tim right now when we just you know we we uh, you know we we talked about the you know, the guys we know, so you missed that camaraderie. But I
do not miss the job. And it's very different. Now. Well, I hope people listen to this go out and and whatever city that and they can see the whole tour of the world tour. Go to d a Narcos dot com because people are gonna hear this where a national show.
People gonna hear this all over and they go out and you watch the show and the people that aren't like I guess I would ask you, like, Beau, guys, you know you're associated now because of this show with Pablo, Like what do you want people to know like lasting about Paublo Escobar, like the lasting notion that they hear. And before we answered that question, let me just say something that we are not the heroes here. The heroes are the Colombia National Police. They took their country back.
We they're the ones who deserve the critic They're the ones who made a difference. And you know, the other message is that you know, this is a listen in history, it's it's really happened, and how one person can get so big that he can rule. So it's it's it's a listen. And the one thing I would say is, you know, we've examined us. We've been retired now for four years and and you know, we feel like we're still helping to get the anti drug message out there.
That's one of the purposes we do what we do um, but we also understand we're ever gonna arrest our way out of this problem. The drug problem is national international drug problem. You know, the heroin and opioid epidemic is out of control in the United States. We cannot arrest enough people to stop this problem. We can't fill our jails. That's not the solution. You still have to have those men and women who are brave enough to step up
and address that to protect you and me. You know, So there are some people that need to go to jail because this problem. But we've got to attack this from a different level. In my humble opinion, you know, we need to be addressing the demand of this of all these onlier in arcotics, because as long as there's a demand anywhere in the world, there are evil people who will provide the supply. You know, So if I if we could figure out how to address that, we'd
all be multimillionaires. We'd be rich as Bobby bones with And also, remember what happened to Escotbar. What was that cartel? In the Escotbar's cartel was truly dismantled. Everybody. What happened Cali cartel took it over. You know, you go after them, we dismantle them. There's always to be people that are going to take a chance in sending dope over as
long as there's some money to be made. I'm watching this show called os Ark now on Netflix, and it's about money laundering, and it's how you know, it's the other side. It's you know, you don't really see a lot of the drug part. You just see what they do and they need the money laundered. Do you feel like you guys learned so much through the process that if you had to do something like that, you probably could. Well. No, I didn't know. I didn't specialize on the financial side.
I was specialized more on the enforcement, operational tactical side. So there's uh, there's another movie out there that's we think is phenomenal that a friend of ours is is represented. He's played by um, what's the actor from Breaking Bad? Uh? I just forgot his name. I wasn't sitting there on in front of you i'd remember. But he is a
renowned expert's world renowned expert. He's the guy that infiltrated the Median cartel on the financial side, almost to the level of public scarbar, phenomenal Cranston whatever, he was the Okay, there you go, Brian Cranston. Did you watch the movie absolutely like I did? Yeah, you know it's the movie though you really I read the book also. I watched the movie. You have to pay attention because it is so it's so involved and so in depth and technical
a lot of things. I had to go back and call our our agent money and say, okay, explain this to me. How did you do this? So I don't have that expertise. There is sophisticated methods of money laundering, and I mean we see it and all this traffickers will hire the best educated money launders and it's it's it's sophisticated because there's money to be made by everybody.
Back I remember during the Columbia it was called the black market best exchange where they would buy electronic goods you know, from Panama, bring them to Columbia, they pay for him in cash and Panama in Columbia they would sell them for Columbian pistols. So that's that was the
method of you know, laundering their money. And they used to have companies in the US where they would borrow a legitimate business companies accounts, transfer the money from the US to a bank in Colombia and they would charge a percentage to the guy. They would pay a percentage to that company in the in the U S. So there's people that were you know, there was a common method of of money laundry. But now, like Steve said, it's just so sophisticated, and there's people you know, uh
that are doing it. You know we you know, we just found out about the bitcoin. Here do I go now that I'm not even gonna try to explain that with virtual currency. You know, that's a nightmare waiting to happen. Yeah, it's the start. You gotta be a lot smarter. We are to figure that one out. Do you have a free Netflix subscriptions. It's like the one of the biggest shows you guys know, I wish we would we couldn't name get a Narcos that right, Yeah, have you guys?
I assume you watch every episode and just didn't look at it or now, well I do. I haven't seen some. I mean I saw the first series, the second, I haven't seen it. I started with the third. But it's just as it's a little special, uh daunting for me, So I'll watch it when I'm ready. I'm not radio any sort of like PTSD type things where you start
remembering things because you're talking about it. We're like, oh, I don't want to make me feel Yeah, I mean I remember, like said we you know, at some good friends, uh killed by public war, so that always comes and uh back and uh so it's it's a little personal
and yeah, you do relieve some of those moments. It's got to bother you so much to see him kind of gain some fame again, just to see us face places because he was such a terrible person and for some people do not know but just associate that face with like wealth or to associate it with excess, Right, I mean, because you saw him kill you saw this human kill all these other human like, that's gotta be like a really pit type feeling. And that's the That's one of the main reasons we do what we do.
I mean, we did last year, we did seventy five appearances worldwide. This year we're probably gonna hit about ninety. We're not home very often with our families, and we're willing to us that this is important. This is so important that we're willing to give up time with our families to still try to get this message out. And you've seen the young generation, they kind of look up at these people like heroes, like mythical heroes. There's nothing mythical.
This guy is absolutely he was alive. He created all this devastation and destruction and death throughout the world. There are things that we're going to present to Unite at the show that will show you how that legacy of death and destruction continue to this day. I mean, it's just horrible. We I don't have a strong enough vocabulary of adjectives to describe how bad Pablo Escobar really was. Do you still have the picture that you took with
the body? I do, Yeah, when you got the call said hey, we we have them, like we know where we have them. Have you heard that call before a few times where you're like okay, or did you just know that we had many times we came close to getting him, uh, numerous times. Yeah, I mean literally the coffee and steams still coming off the copy coffee. But you know, you come flying in on a bunch of Huey helicopters. They hear you before you get there. You
don't sneak up with a Huey. The people were protecting them all. So yeah, I listen. I'm really grateful you got stop by and talk to me. This is I gotta tell you, this is I'm a country music fan. This is a highlight of of all the interviews we've ever done. Thank you so much for having us. This is great. I think we wouldn't believe we were. We got an invite to come in. You know that was outstanding. Thank you, guys, and I appreciate it and I hope
you continue to preach the word abou high evil. Pablo Escobar wives, thank you very much. Thank you all right, episode Eddie, thank you guys for hanging out