Induction - E3

Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. Previously on Murder in Miami. Stanford was all too willing to dive into the new role of private investigator.

I was an utter failure at it. I said, Bob, I'm sorry. I said, oh, don't worry about it. And he pulled out a roll of bills, peeled off five hundreds, and he said, good work.

Why didn't the police or Intercept ever get to the bottom of who killed Clay Williams.

It was a strange funeral anyway. Standing in the back end of the trailer were about four or five very big guys, obviously detectives. They were there to send a message.

As far as the family's concerned. They never had any true answers as to who murdered Clay or why.

I had understood from Clay that these were former intelligence people from the federal government, whether it's CIA, Army intelligence, they were all associated.

I think maybe Intercept had something to do with this death.

I certainly didn't think so at the time, but the more we look into it, the more possible it seems.

So what was the tie between the Central Intelligence Agency and Miami.

It's still an open murder case in Miami Dade and they can't find the papers. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.

Following up nineteen eighty's record of five hundred and seventy three murders, nineteen eighty one would become Miami's deadliest year to date. Just seven months into nineteen eighty one, Miami's homicide count was already at two hundred and ninety six. By the end of the year, the number would reach six hundred and twenty one. Clay Williams was just one of those murders. Perhaps that violence played into this strange and surreal time. Bill Stamford soon found himself navigating before

So it's nineteen eighty two and basically I'm hanging out of the car Doza doing odd jobs for Intercept now and then. But after a while the jobs head Interceptor are drying up. Bob tells me that he can't hire me full time unless I have a private investigator's license. So I put in for the license, but they tell

How did you connect with him?

That was another Ruth connection from Alabama. I'm sure she'd met him back there.

Was it enough to pay the rent?

Yeah? I wasn't making that much money, but it was enough to get by on. I was really kind of drifting at that point, So that's why I decided how to go back to Washington, D C. And see what was cooking back there?

Were you second guessing your decision to walk away from your career.

It's always sort of in the back of my mind.

I suppose Phil, you downplay it, but you had some serious bylines before you moved to Miami. I mean, major articles in the New York Times, the Columbia Journalism Review on defense and intelligence matters. That's an extreme impressive level of success as a journalist.

Uh, yeah, I suppose. So what you've got to understand I guess I've been trying to figure this out myself as we've gotten along with the podcast, is what effect that had on me? And head on all this? Yeah, I wrote several pieces for the New York Times magazine. One piece I did for them to cover story about nuclear missile submarines. It was a big success by journalistic standards. All the major magazines in Europe reprinted it. Readers, Digest, the New Yorker wrote a Talk of the Town article

Is it safe to say that you were disillusioned?

Yeah, except that I'd never really had that many illusions, So I guess it cou'd be more accurate to say I was printed out.

Maybe sitting around and hearing the former CIA and intelligence guys it Intercept somewhat reignited Stanford's inner investigative urges, or maybe it just made a missus former beat a bit. But Bill decided to make a trip back to Washington to reconnect with some former contacts, only to find some doors had closed during his time away.

I'd only been away for a little over a year, I guess, but going it seemed like a very strange place, especially after the intensity of what I had felt in Miami. And one thing was apparent right away. Everyone knew I'd gotten off the ladder to success. And I think whether they thought of that consciously or not entered into all their considerations, or maybe they just sensed as I did, that Miami had changed me somewhat in what way I'd really gotten to see a glimpse into the way things

Like that, a realization that led Stamford to reach out to a like minded connection.

So I got in touch with an old friend, Sheen, who had but I suppose most people would call a radical peace and justice organization called the Christic Institute in Washington. He was a Harvard trained lawyer. They were associated with the Jesuits, and they used the legal system to achieve their ends.

The Christic Institute was a non profit public interest law firm founded in nineteen eighty by Danny Shean, his wife Sarah Nelson, and a Jesuit priest named William Davis. The firm was a unique and revolutionary model for social reform, combining investigation, litigation, and education while mobilizing public support for

Bob Adams, the guys head of the Detective Agency, had been part of a military intelligence unity in Europe that provided logistical support for assassinations conducted by the United States, and I thought it offered a way to prove that power did. Indeed, this is Mao's dictum. I believe that power came from the barrel of a gun. I mean, it probably sounded as stupid then as naive as it

So now you're basically working as a private investigator, investigative journalist investigating Intercept, a private investigation from.

Yeah, I guess.

So you're lucky you didn't get yourself killed.

Yeah, I suppose so, although I don't know, maybe Bob would have sort of enjoyed the deviousness of it.

That investigating Intercept would prove a bit inconvenient.

The funny part is that when I got back, I went out to the office in Parne and it was closed. It was shut down. There wasn't even a sign on the door. Anymore that said Intercept. I should have known something was up. When I was in DC. I'd gotten a call from Ruth saying that a couple of federal agents had knocked on her door one evening and asked to talk to me. She said I'd moved out and gone to Miami Beach some time ago, and she didn't

Did you wonder what they wanted?

Well, I knew it had something to do with Intercept, but no, as far as I could see, I hadn't done anything illegal. So I just sort of pushed it out of my mind and forgot about it.

And at this point you also had a new girlfriend who was probably a wonderful distraction.

Probably more than a distraction. Actually, yeah, I met Nicky one night. There's a party on the roof of the Cardozo and she was there with a girlfriend and struck me as a slightly shorter version of Melanie Griffith, which I liked very much.

Depending upon your age, you'd likely know actress Melanie Griffith from films like Working Girl or Bonfire of the Vanities, or as the daughter of Tipp Hendron, or the mother of Dakota Johnson, who Griffith had with her then husband Don Johnson, the star of Miami weis. For those unfamiliar with any of the aforementioned, let's just say Phil found Mickey very attractive.

So there I was, after a hiatus in Washington, d C. Back in Miami or Miami Beach to be precise, or even more precise, hanging out at the good old Cardozo looking out at the ocean, getting twenty five hundred dollars a month from the Christic Institute, doing virtually nothing.

That doesn't sound like such a bad life, no kidding. And it was also an oddly unstructured, somewhat surreal period in Stanford's life.

It was a great time. It was a strange time. There was this jazz combo that played at the Cardoza several nights a week, and I got to be friends with a saxophone player whose name I can't remember now, but I know he came from New Jersey and he was down in Miami Beach hanging out with the rest of us ne'er do wells. And he'd kid me seeing me spending all the time on the porch at the car Dozo, without any apparent source of income, and he says, Stanford,

So he just knew you were going to drive up. That sounds like something out of a David Lynch movie. What do you How do you explain that? Like mental telepathy, whatever you.

Call it, You know, I've seen it so many times. There are ways of communicating that we don't normally recognize. Or synchronicity or meaningful coincidence is another way into that particular world. And I think everyone is probably capable of that sort of thing. Some are more susceptible than others, and people are more susceptible at different times of their lives. I think it has a lot to do with being in a position where you're not necessarily governed by the

So, I mean, I know you were dealing with the divorce and the change of profession and a new place to live. But do you think on some level you were in some sort of altered reality.

No, I think it's perhaps a more real reality. I think usually we allow ourselves to live in a more limited reality. That's probably a discussion for another time.

Okay, back to Miami Beach. In nineteen eighty three, Bill would eventually move into Mickey's hipster apartment building, which would later be converted into a private mansion for designer Gianni Versace, the same location where Versace was murdered in nineteen ninety seven by spree killer Andrew Cananen. But in the early nineteen eighties it was far from glamorous, even though it was called the Amsterdam Palace.

Here's Mickey Relliot. It wasn't a palace, but you know what I mean, Well.

Describe the building at that time and the neighborhood that it sat in.

Okay, so it's a building that was a replicant of Christopher Columbus's House in Dominican Republic, something like that. It was built in nineteen twenty two, so it was not included in the Art Deco movement or buildings that were being showcased for Our Deco. In fact, people in our building were always insulted. We were never part of the Our Deco movement.

But Goes.

Really the building wasn't our Deco, and it was gorgeous, and all along the building, Lauren, there were all these plaques of socialists like Emma Goldman, and all the apartments were inside, you know, looked inside into the main courtyard with SLLT toraszo.

Oh, that's so cool it was.

And I had only found it because my friend wanted to go and buy beads on Lincoln Road, and then we drove up Ocean Drive and I had her stop the car because I just couldn't believe how beautiful this building was. And it had this beautiful bronze statue outside of a crouching woman, and I thought, oh my god, there's a rent sign, and I just went in met the woman who was like eighty something was managing it, and I rented the room.

Would you say that the building was, as the neighborhood a bit in decline at the time.

Oh?

Absolutely?

How did I get to live there? I mean when I would invite people that I met in Miami to come over to the Amsterdam Palace, they were like, ugh, who could live there? Not the Amsterdam Palace necessarily, but who would live on South Beach.

Wow? Things have changed.

Yeah, At the time, Amsterdam Palace and Miami Beach weren't exactly prime real estate or a prized destination location.

And when I moved there, they had the whole beach filled with the mary Alitos. You could smell the chicken barbecuing for.

Miles because they had the whole beach, like from fifteenth to fifth. Wow, that area was really rife with a lot of things happening, like not great things.

I think my car was broken into a bunch of times. You had to be really careful where you were walking. And I worked a couple of jobs, so when I came home at night, it was really kind of scary to go into the building because now it's all protected, but then it was completely open. Anybody could come up to my louver door apartment.

Miami at that time was known for drug related crimes, especially homicides. How prevalent and present was that on a daily basis? Was that always simmering under the surface.

Yeah, I would say that there was always something going on. Like before I moved into the Amsdam Palace, I'd lived with my sister in this other house.

Mickey and her sister rented rooms in a house from a family who had teenage kids. One day, their father basically disappeared.

They were at the end of high school and their father flew drugs to Columbia and they never heard from the father again. Somebody knew somebody that was drug related.

It's so interesting because there's this quote I read on Miami that you could choose not to do drugs, you could choose not to associate with people who did drugs or soul drugs, But at the end of the day, living in Miami at that time, you could not escape the reality.

Of drugs, right.

I would agree with that one hundred percent.

At the time Mickey was dating Phil, she was busy going to school and working two jobs, one as a waitress, but the drug culture still seeped in.

I remember I was working at Tony Roma's and I had a table that was like three couples, and they ordered the most expensive double Johnny Walker blacks and then they wouldn't drink it. And then they ordered all the food, like all the things that you could order. They ordered everything, and they didn't eat it.

And then they threw all these hundred dollars bills on the table, and I'm thinking, oh, that's a first for me, you know, like a fifteen hundred dollars tip after they paid for the drinks and food that they didn't eat.

They were too coked up.

Yeah, that wasn't the set or scene you'd associate with the Amsterdam Palace, though.

Here's phil Miami Beach was still in its tumble downstage, and so the owner's Amsterdam Palace had divided the entire place into studios and apartments.

Fortuitously, or maybe just in keeping with his experiences at the time, Bill had secured the studio next to Mickey's. As the relationship progressed, so did their living spaces.

After a few weeks, we took down the door between our studios and had one big apartment.

We had a pretty fabulous place.

It was on the water, and I remember being transfixed from time to time by the beauty of the place, looking out of the apartment through the curved window of the masonry wall, so everything's framed in white, looking out at the bright blue sky, the blue green sea lit with sun, the heavy green of a palm frond against them, and thinking the world is such a beautiful place and we have done nothing to deserve.

It, And that picturesque location would soon attract the attention of a then unknown television show about to begin filming in Miami.

I think they started scouting, probably eighty three four, because I wanted to see my place and the guy in the front place and I said, Oh, what are you scouting for?

And he goes, oh, Miami Vice. And I go, what's it going to be about? He said, Cocaine? I said, do we really need that glorizing cocaine?

I remember one morning waking up looking out the door that opened onto the courtyard, and there were these two guys coming out of two different doors. Or is one wearing a lavender sport coat another wearing a salmon colored sport coat, dropping down into the classic two hands on a pistol pose that TV detectives anyway always do it.

But Bill's own private investigator slash detective adventures were proving a lot less glam or busy now that Intercept had shuttered its doors.

So finally I tracked down Bob and we get together. I don't think it was at the Cardozo Parane Pub, probably was, and Bob tells me, turns out that Lamar has been under federal investigation for some time now, something called Operation Loan Star, and it's a very big deal. Grand jury's in Houston, Atlanta, and Miami.

Which is likely why the Feds were looking for you in the first place.

Yeah, so the smart thing Bob figures is to adopt a low profile. He's doing business from home now, he's working as a bodyguard, guardian, money shipments, that sort of thing.

So where does that leave you in terms of your fledgling private investigator career?

So there really isn't much for me to do, not an intercept anyway, And it turns out not in my new career as a spy for the Christic Institute either, because it turns out Bob doesn't really know much more about the assassination business than he's already told me. He was in an Army security agency unit in Frankfurt, Germany, sort of enlisted man level jobs providing logistical support. But

And he found that amusing.

Bob was always amused by how foolish or corrupt the world always proved itself to be. And as far as the case against Lamar, he says, that's really nothing to worry about either. Oh, sure, there's an indictment coming down, but Lamar's got everything under control. He's got the best

Well, he's certainly right about the fact that there were significant indictments involved.

Tilton Lamar, Chester forty five, a former Eastern Airlines pilot, is one of twelve people charged in a major federal investigation dubbed Operation Loan.

Star, thirty six count indictment accuses Tilton Lamar Chester Junior.

A Chester led a large smuggling organization.

In the fall of nineteen eighty three. Those indictments were National News.

A Georgia drug runner who federal authorities say engineered a drug smuggling and money launderings.

SKI government agents received information that international drug smuggler Lamar Chester.

Charging that Chester led a large smuggling organization.

From the island he controlled in the Bahamas to his native Georgia and perhaps to a dozen other states.

For some background, the Bahamas are comprised of an extensive chain of seven hundred islands and twenty four hundred low banks or reefs of coral, rock or sand called keys, spanning an area roughly the size of California, extending from Florida's coast on the northwest almost to Haiti on the southeast. The area has a long and notorious history of illicit activity. Pirates use the Bahamas as their preferred port because of its plentiful small islands, shallow waters, and coves, which served

The indictment said Chester had houses and aircraft hangar and an airstrip built on the islands for use in the drug operation, and.

Lamar is actually interviewed on an Atlanta television station saying, this is a paraphrase, Yes, I did it. I flew two hundred loads into the country. But I did it with the ok of the CIA and the DEA. And if the federal government is foolish enough to put me on trial for this, I'm going to tell everything I know about what the government's been up to. And I have enough evidence to shake the US government to its core.

And so what did Bob think of all this?

Bob couldn't be enjoined anymore. Lamar is so sure he's going to win, which means they'll drop the case before it even goes to trial. That he's got his lawyers spending half their time just trying to get his pilot's license back. When they indicted him, they took away his

Well, what did you make about this? What did you think of Chester's gray mail defense? For anyone not familiar with the term, gray mail, like blackmail, implies the threat of revealing, compromising, or damaging information in exchange for benefit, except gray mail specifically threatens the revelation of state secrets in order to manipulate legal proceedings.

Well, to tell the truth, I really didn't know I was were, of course that in the fifties and sixties and into the seventies, the United States, the CIA had been involved in using drugs to finance off the books wars in Asia. And I knew, of course that the guys in Intercept had intelligence connections. One had even been overt station chief of the Miami station during the Bay of Pig's time. But that didn't prove anything. Maybe it

And at this point, you hadn't yet men Lamar in person, right.

No, I still hadn't met Lamar. But the next thing I know, I get this call from Bob saying that Lamar wants to meet me at the Mutiny, which of course is the hangout for all the premier drug smugglers in Miami.

So why in the world would he want to meet you at that point and at that place, given that he's already been indicted.

That's what I'm wondering too.

Located on the Bay in Coconut Grove and first open in nineteen sixty nine, the Mutiny Hotel was known for its glitzy, debauchery and decadence. At one point in the nineteen seventies, the Mutiny earned the distinction of selling more dom Perigno champagne than any other venue in America. Much of it served in hot tubs. The venue had one hundred and thirty rooms, including lavishly decorated fantasy themed suites with names like the Egyptian Suite, Gypsy Caravan, the Bordello,

In the movie Scarface.

Oliver Stone, al Pacino and the rest of the casting crew even checked into the mutiny during the filming for research purposes.

Back to fill, so I go to the Mutiny with Bob. There must be about two or three on a weekday afternoon, so the place isn't really bustling yet. Lamar isn't there yet either or else he has other business to attend to. So Bob and I start drinking and drinking, and the Mutiny was a new luxury hotel and coconut grove. There were tables in the main barroom with telephones on each one, sort of old style. This is pre cell phone days. And it's where all the drug dealers hung out and

What do you mean by the lounge lizard mustache?

That he had what struck me as sort of a drug store cowboy mustache might expect to see in a show in Las Vegas or something like that.

Do you remember what he was wearing?

Nothing flicy shirt, jeans, loafers. So we start talking nothing special at first, How you doing? What do you think the mutiny? That sort of thing, Nothing about the indictment or his threat to spill the beans on the CIA and shake the government to its core. When out of the blue, Lamar says, with that big old door to door salesman smile of his, I bet you're wondering why

Wait? He thought you were with the CIA. Why?

I had no idea At the time. I didn't even believe it was real. But then nothing I'd been doing was quite real either. The work I did for the intercept wasn't all of it quite real? And so why would this be any less unreal? I suppose? And I say, oh, I'm not with a CIA, at which point he nudges my shoulder with his elbow and in a friendly way. I mean, he's smiling. He says, good boy, that's just what you would say. And it hasn't hit me yet.

So how did that meeting end?

Well, maybe I say a couple more times, I'm not with the CIA. I don't remember that, Or maybe it's since he's as far as he's concerned, my denial has already proved that I am with the CIA. We have just some more small talk, and then Bob and I stumble off, drunkard than skunks, starting to get now and on our way back to Miami Beach, I asked Bob if Lamar is kidding? It still hasn't sunk that any of this is real? Does he really believe I'm with the CIA? And very solemnly Bob says, yes he does.

What about, Bob? Did he think you were with the CIA?

Too? That's what's even more incredible. But it won't dawn on me till some time later. Is that, Bob the guy who hired me in the first place? For goodness sake? I think so too.

So as Stanford staggered home, his head was spinning, and not just because of the alcohol. But his night was far from over, and a hangover wouldn't be the only thing he'd regret the next morning. On the next Murder of Miami, looking into Clay's death, Letes further into the mystery of dashing pilot Lamar Chester and to his inner circle, including a legendary former cocaine smuggler, Heglarder.

Did you quit loving me? Happy? Miles? Here? Give me a call.

Mister Miles was a close business associate and friend of Intercept's biggest client, Lamar Chester.

And he was flying guns then to Nicaragua.

And did he tell you who he was running the guns for?

I would imagine the CIA was running that show.

Like Icarus.

All these guys would eventually fly a bit too close to the sun.

They all got burned except Happy, Except Happy.

Murder of Miami is a production of iHeart Radio. Executive producers are Lauren bred Pacheco, Taylor Chicogne, and Phil Stamford. Written by Phil Stamford and Lauren brad Pacheco, Audio editing and sound designed by Nicholas Harder, Evan Tyer, and Taylor Chackoine, featuring music by Evan Tyre, phill Mayer, John Murchison, and Taylor Chackoine. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio.

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