Placing the Pieces - E10 - podcast episode cover

Placing the Pieces - E10

Mar 23, 202348 minSeason 3Ep. 10
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Episode description

Detective Denmark deep dives into Clay Williams' medical case file and the main players of Murder in Miami contemplate their current thoughts in light of past perceptions and recent revelations about Lamar, Lonestar and loyalty.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio previously on Murder in Miami. On June twentieth of nineteen eighty five, drug smuggler Lamar Chester was killed in a plane crash on his property in rural northern Georgia.

Speaker 2

Lamar Chester died in a very strange plane crash.

Speaker 3

And when you look back at a nonsensical really that they could have come to any sort of conclusions about the cause of the crash in less than twenty four hours.

Speaker 1

At the time, the initial explanation for the crash was that the plane had run out of fuel.

Speaker 3

One of their agents, Frank Baker Junior, was on the scene almost immediately. He had to be there when the plane went down. Among those who considered it more than just suspicious was Lamar's best friend, Ron Elliott, who was at the ranch at the Chicken Farm in North Georgia the night before the crash.

Speaker 1

Why wouldn't you have a coroner's a quest, particularly given the circumstances.

Speaker 4

They wanted to see the body, and when they opened the casket, the body had already been crea made.

Speaker 1

So what happened to the plane? The wreckage?

Speaker 3

The plane was gone and all that was left was an oil spot on the floor.

Speaker 1

Hello, Lauren, So I have an update. Okay, Detective Denmark was able to track down Clay Williams medical records and he actually has the file.

Speaker 5

No kidding. What'd you find out?

Speaker 1

Well? A lot more than expected. Turns out that we're not the only ones who were interested in tracking down that file.

Speaker 5

Now that is interesting. Who I was cared about it?

Speaker 1

Multiple government agencies, fill multiple ones. I'm Lauren brat Pacheco and this is the final episode of Murder in Miami. Six months after I'd submitted a formal request for information regarding the murder of Clay Williams, Miami Dade cold case, Detective David Denmark reached out with news he'd located the medical report.

Speaker 6

We always hope that we're going to find something in it to be complete, but we understand when it's not because of the workload that's put on each case. We want to find everything, but if we can't, we'll take any little piece of that case because then we can explore a different avenue of that information we have, and the medical examiner is one of those sources. But we always hope to find the entire five and everything that was put in there.

Speaker 1

In this case, apparently we got lucky. Okay, Now, once you got your hands on Clay Williams medical records, what immediately popped out as useful for you pictures.

Speaker 6

Pictures is huge. I would tell you it's in my opinion, but I think a lot of other investigators want to see what's going on. And you could study a picture of pictures one hundred times, and every time you receive information outside of those pictures, either from a file, a piece of paper, a witness, anything that regards that case,

that picture changes for you. Where you were not looking for something in the background, information by reviewing the file may point your eyes in that direction, and now you have a picture that contains a very important piece of evidence.

Speaker 1

And so what kind of pictures were included in Clay's file?

Speaker 6

Those were that of the landscape, which was a flooded area beyond southwest two hundred and seventeenth Avenue, which is way out west Everglades. Basically, it gives the waterways and then it gives the horrifying look of a torsto that has been mutilated by alligators and affected by the sun and being decomposed. So those pictures bring all that to light, pictures.

Speaker 1

That were likely the same one shown to Phil Stamford in nineteen eighty one.

Speaker 6

And again when you read it into someone's investigative rite up, it's different when you're reading it and looking at the picture that they're describing, because words can't describe what we

see and how bodies are mutilated and decomposed. The detective does their best to point out injuries and possible injuries, and in this case, the key thing is which brings the medical examiner on board is that the detective will point to puncture wounds in the sk of this person, and we think, as investigators, gets a gunshot wounds, so maybe this person was shot in the head, But the medical examiner, being the people they are, say no, this

was actually puncture wounds from an alligator. Through that helps out a lot, because now we know he wasn't shot in the head. Those were alligator markings of the alligator biting his head.

Speaker 1

The file also contained a small clipping from the Sunday, October fourth edition of the Miami Herald, under the headline body found in flooded glades may be missing. Private detective quote a mutilated, decomposed body discovered by Florida National Guardsmen in a flooded East Everglades area maybe the remains of a missing private detective, police said Saturday. There's no way

to recognize him, said Metro homicide detective John Parmenter. The body was mutilated by alligators and probably run over by trucks unquote. Article goes on to mention that the nude body was found floating in two to three feet of water by guardsmen while providing flood relief aid to residence. Initially, they believed the body to be an animal carcass, but

upon closer inspection realized it was human. Quote. I think he was killed and dumped, said Parmenter, though we may never, because of the body's condition, be able to prove how he was killed unquote. The article also mentions the remains were believed to be those of a white man six foot or taller, but that dental records would be utilized to identify the victim and the possibility that it could

be a missing private detective. It concludes with the sentence that quote police would not release the name of the private detective unquote, but it would seem that by nineteen eighty three, many others were aware of Clay William's name.

Speaker 6

By reviewing the medical examined report, we found out that there's at least four or five different agencies that were involved, to include fd LEE, US customs Irs, Marshalls, and of course Miami Dad or Metro daid back then, which will always raise an eyebrow on the detective's part, actually everybody's part, because they start understanding the amount of people and different

agencies that are involved. The medical exambler or someone that was in control of that file would document as notes came in and agencies were calling in and saying, hey, you know what happened? Who is it? Is it probably identified? This is something that definitely again raised another eyebrow that who's inquiring, why are they inquiring and what kind of information do they want? Something was special about this case.

You know, someone gets killed on the side of the road, You're not going to have so many agencies looking into it unless they were involved in something deeper that we don't know about.

Speaker 1

Here's Phil Stanford.

Speaker 3

I think that it's because Leslie was talking to the grand jury about and it looked like Clay's death might be connected to Lamar and these agencies I had no idea. There were so many of them wanted to get in on it, see what was there.

Speaker 1

Yeah, David Denmark said that as a detective, that raises a lot of eyebrows, and suddenly this is much more valuable and interesting than anybody thought. I'm going to turn over everything that I've accumulated during the research of all of this to the Miami Dade Cold Case Division. I

think that they will utilize it. They might be able to close out the Clay Williams case based on what we've uncovered, which would be closure to his family because even if Chester wasn't personally responsible for the murder, he was aware that it had happened, and looks like he was aware that had happened before the body was even found.

Speaker 5

Yeah, that's certainly a possibility.

Speaker 3

A lot of that depends on Leslie's recollection of the dates, and that's going to be hard for them to pin down. But I know the family would like to know what happened to Clay.

Speaker 1

But if Leslie's recollection is accurate, it would support the likelihood Chester and Bob Adams were aware of the murder of Clay Williams before his body was even found. Which adds additional weight to Phil's initial interactions with Bob at intercept.

Having an investigative reporter call and then show up in person asking for a man they might have just gotten rid of days after his murder would likely have been rather unnerving, and given Phil's Washington slash political resume, possibly played into their mistaken belief Phil was actually with the CIA, speaking of which the number of agencies interested in the autopsy of Clay Williams the number of agencies lamar Chester claimed in the press to have worked with, including the CIA,

the DEA, US Air Force Intelligence, US Naval Intelligence, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I did make a request through the Freedom of Information Act slash Privacy Act inquiring as to any files involving lamar Chester or Clay Williams. The DEA determination letter I received back States regarding your request for records on Baines, Clayton Williams, and Tilton lamar

Chester Junior. Please be advised that we have decided to neither confirm nor deny the existence of such records, pursuant to various exemptions that they go on to list and stating that quote this is our standard response to such requests and should not be taken to mean the records

do or do not exist. Unquote, in light of the number of agencies interested in the autopsy of Clay Williams, and agencies Chester had spoken on record about being involved with, it's interesting to revisit the observation made by Clay's friend Ted about the computers at Intercept.

Speaker 7

He introduced me to Bob Adams and another fellow there, and I had understood from Clay that these were former intelligence people from the federal government, whether it's CIA, army intelligence, and they had what I thought was an awfully large computer setup. I just was impressed that such a small office would have such a an enormous setup for computers. I don't know what these guys accessed.

Speaker 1

But the prosecutors in Operation Lone Star had a definite theory Intercepts computers would pop up in the transcripts and connection with the allegation that Chester might attempt to obstruct their investigation, stating that quote, mister Chester and mister Adams had discussed the purchase of a computer that would be used to tap into their various federal law enforcement agencies, and that such an advanced computer was apparently purchased for

fifty thousand dollars. Does the name Intercept strike you, particularly since they all had such a sardonic sense of humor. Do you think that that was just a random name that they chose, or do you think there may have been more behind the name Intercept Now looking back.

Speaker 3

Oh, I think that they tried to pick a name that made them sound competent and somewhat mys serious. I don't see too much behind it. There may be, but I don't know if there is.

Speaker 1

I did think it was interesting, though, that the prosecution at one point claimed that Chester and Adams were trying to break into other agencies computers to interfere with the investigation.

Speaker 5

Oh, I'm sure they were.

Speaker 3

I don't doubt that Bob was up trying to do everything like he could find out about the investigation.

Speaker 5

That's that's Bob.

Speaker 1

Technology under understanding of its capabilities has obviously evolved, and Happy Miles says, so has our views on drugs, especially cocaine, which is why he've used his coconut grove smuggling days as a bit more innocent than they may seem today.

Speaker 4

Back in the seventies and mid seventies, cocaine was seen in a different light. Cocaine wasn't the addictive drug that we found it out to be. It was a high end drug for high end earners. The people that were using it were doctors, lawyers, businessmen, Wall street people. It wasn't looked like it is now. The laws were different too back then as far as punishment went. In the beginning, it was a different deal. And it was fifty thousand dollars a key then now it's fourteen thousand dollars a key.

So you know, supply and the man, the supply is so great thanks to the government and their effort on drugs. And all you have to do is look how cricket our government's gotten from where it was then it was small agents and dea and everything that we're maybe trying to make an extra buck. And what have you allowed to go on which it has been corruption, corrupts, It goes to unbelievable levels until it corrupts obsolute. We're almost at a point of no return, we really are.

Speaker 1

You thought at one point there was a way to shut it down. Do you think there's any way to shut it down anymore?

Speaker 5

Oh?

Speaker 4

Then let her hercu leam cash it would be.

Speaker 1

During the production of this podcast, I was able to reconnect Happy with C. B. Hackworth, whose paths had not crossed since their initial meeting at the Ritz Carlton, and I'm happy to report that the two may collaborate on assembling a collection of Happy's adventures during his Adventurers Club and cartel days.

Speaker 5

You're a good writer.

Speaker 4

I love what I read all the articles in your wrote back when, and.

Speaker 8

I was impressed with them.

Speaker 2

So yeah, I'm impressed by what I know of your adventures and I'm looking forward to hearing more. I'm actually ready to come out there.

Speaker 4

So I've got to fence that'll write the forward to this thing too.

Speaker 1

Some of those stories will undoubtedly involve Happy's young protege of sorts, Jack Devo. If you'll remember, Deveau is now in witness protection but ended up testifying against Noriega.

Speaker 4

Yep testsiflied before Congress with a hood in his face, Wow, with the black hoodover's head.

Speaker 1

In addition to Clay's murder and Chester's questionable crash, one of the enduring mysteries in this Twisting Tail is the identity of the informant who turned on Jack Devo.

Speaker 6

Our greatest sale ever Newmark and Lewis's presidential recon.

Speaker 9

We believe this ring is the largest cocaine trafficking ring ever organized, said Robert Dempsey, Commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The ring was responsible for flying fifteen eight hundred and thirty seven pounds of high grade cocaine with a street value of two point two billion dollars into the United States between June nineteen eighty two and November nineteen eighty three.

Speaker 1

Happy Miles has long taken great offense at any innu that he rolled on devot.

Speaker 4

You gotta remember Jack and I were really good friends.

Speaker 1

Jack didn't know who flipped on him and even asked if you'd done it.

Speaker 4

Oh yeah, Well, of course everybody thinks because of the deal I ended up with, and I'm the guy that rolled on everybody, which is in true.

Speaker 1

During my research for this podcast, another former smuggler linked to the Coconut Grove guys who wishes to remain unnamed, sent me two extremely detailed Florida Department of Law Enforcement logs from nineteen eighty three, detailing twelve cocaine trips from departure the cocaine's origin, Columbia, sight of the offload, and

point of entry into the US. The level of detail was so specific that when I ran them past Happy, he assumed they must have come from Devout himself because they contained information only someone with access to Ocean Reef, the US point of entry for half of the trips would have. You were also saying when we spoke about the spreadsheet I sent you about the charges of the different runs.

Speaker 4

That had to be from a debrief of Jack Devo. I'm sure because nobody would have had all that information. It was just too detailed.

Speaker 1

Ah, So you attribute all the information on that to.

Speaker 4

Jack, I would say, so, yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah, because they certainly had everybody's names and all the details.

Speaker 4

And they have the amount of the load where.

Speaker 1

And so it could be because Chester shows up on that list, but that's from nineteen eighty three, so he was already being investigated before that.

Speaker 8

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Chester's name only appears once linked with Little Darby. But my anonymous source added that quote all of the ones stating Rudder cut Key were transported to the US via Darby Island, unquote, accounting for another five trips six in total, half of the twelve My source also mentioned Jack DeVoe was trying to purchase the larger Darby Island from Chester.

That would resonate more deeply a bit later, when I read DeVoe's mention of it in his testimony before the inquiry in the Bahamas on June twenty third of nineteen eighty.

Speaker 9

Four, Lamar asked me he seemed to know about the trips. Would I like to buy big Darby Island.

Speaker 1

DeVoe goes on to state that they settled on a purchase price of two million dollars and his down payment made to Chester.

Speaker 9

I bought the island. I gave him a half a million dollars. I gave him several planes after that, and more money and a couple of keys of coke, almost a million dollars over a period of time. It was not all done in a day. It started off with a half a million. Devout adds there was no paperwork.

Speaker 1

It was a handshake, something he was comfortable with because.

Speaker 9

We had known each other a long time and that we trusted each other.

Speaker 1

Apparently, de Vaux was busted after that payment, but before the sale occurred, and the logs were actually used as evidence to indict Devout. All of which makes the tape you're about to hear even more telling. Here's Lamar Chester proving his participation with the FEDS to C. B.

Speaker 9

Hackworth April.

Speaker 8

In particular, starting in December, who were working in the Dragon podcast on Dark.

Speaker 10

These same agents were living on that I mean physically living there total every day for.

Speaker 7

Three weeks now.

Speaker 8

It's flat him back and forth to Miami.

Speaker 10

I think the first who of him, NASA wrote him down, got him set up. There was a lot of things that preceded that. We're not guns where they produced gruns, alphabolos or any other guns on many half done there for their own protection, and then brought on some guns from Massaw that had to come from the embassy because it couldn't come through the custom.

Speaker 1

That Chester mentions he was working on the Jack Devau case.

Speaker 8

Who're working Jack Purcas.

Speaker 1

Makes Chester's acceptance of that million dollar down payment from Devout seem calculated, especially since the man he took it from ended up incarcerated before testifying against people like Noriega and apparently is now in the witness Protection plan. It also lends more weight to the comment on the Georgia Bureau of Investigations crash report that mentions Chester was quote

rumored to be cooperating with authorities unquote. Here's Chester in his own words, speaking to C. B. Hackworth about assisting a task Force.

Speaker 8

Passport pace.

Speaker 10

Yeah, a drug enforcement for they assigned the pastor was hollow where signed passwork, and that's where I had been meeting them, meeting with them at task force headquarters and walking across the.

Speaker 8

Street to drug enforcement headquarters. Passports got out in commercial office.

Speaker 10

Building out in dot of Miami International Airport and right next to it is a new drug enforcement building and passports head like a huge ready room math you know, the.

Speaker 8

Huge ball chark radios.

Speaker 10

You know, all set up and rosters, games of desk in the main room, and then private offices for these guys.

Speaker 8

Each had a private office each other. That's the caliber. Good guys.

Speaker 1

Here's the response of mister Happy Miles to that audio.

Speaker 4

Let her up, Let her at Jack. If you're listening to this, number one, get a hold of them. And number two, if you want to know who the hell we're outed you out, it was Lamar. That's unreal. That's just totally unreal. How he's bragging them out, flying them back and forth and bringing them guns, and you know they needed guns on Darby like I need a hole

in my head going after Jack. And then then to take a million dollars from the guy to sell them Darby when he knew he wasn't gonna sell it to him anyway, that he'd be going away for a long time, or let me cut a deal after doing eight and a half years and every rattle hell hole around the country testifying against two hundred and forty guys to get his freedom. Unbelievable, just unbelievable.

Speaker 1

The revelation also contradicted a sort of smuggler's code that Happy maintains. Set the Coconut Grove guys apart.

Speaker 4

We were in a different league.

Speaker 1

And maybe that fed into the icarous complex of flying too close to the sun. What was the mistake that Chester made.

Speaker 4

Well, not having any moral compass, not having any loyalty to everybody he was working with. It just shows who he was and you can't live that way. Everybody should have morals and integrity.

Speaker 1

Here's Phil Stanford's reaction. Now that it appears that Chester actually flipped on Jack Devo, Does that open up more questions than answers in terms of who possibly could have wanted him dead.

Speaker 3

The list keeps expending, doesn't it. I don't think that devote should be added to the list. But you you know, you've got, of course the obvious, the CIA. But then, as Trento writes in his book, there was a CIA outside the CIA, and I think that's actually where Lamar and Elliott came in. The same guys who were running the drugs and guns trade in Southeast Asia were transferred to Central America. In fact, Ron Elliott had contact with them in the Mid East, so they're part of the list.

Then you have the mob. Chester had borrowed lots of money from the Mob to buy his airplanes. And if he was going on trial for basically his life, had like three hundred years worth of prison time he could be sentenced to no telling what he might talk about.

Speaker 5

If he got there. So you have that.

Speaker 3

You have the law enforcement officials in White County who didn't get along with him. One was in fact on the scene of the crash as the plane was going down. It might have done on their own. They might have done it at the behest of one or another agency. And the cartels and the cartels of course, yeah, who would have had the wherewithal to buy whatever help they needed. So far from answering questions, I think the list keeps expanding.

Speaker 4

Well.

Speaker 1

It's also true though, knowing that he set up Devot and tried to sell him an island and took a down payment for it before Devout went away for the rest of his life, that would have made a lot of people nervous because he was capable of flipping on anybody, and the domino effect of that, because de Vaux had links to the cartel, so there were a lot of people who would have been pretty nervous as to who he was willing to turn on.

Speaker 5

Oh I agree, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1

For Leslie Beckerton, her sense of betrayal and loss of faith on multiple levels was a direct result of her experience with Lone Star and Chester, and it set her on a very specific path.

Speaker 11

What happened forty two years ago, that loss of security of who I am as a human being. I remember I was telling you about just being humiliated in that Atlanta court. It's amazing how just something like that can just trip you down where you become like a ghost. And that had such a profound impact on me, and you lose a complete sense of yourself. You're worthless, collateral damage. You know you're worthless. It's a wound and it's traumatic

and it's a scar. And so what inspired out of that an education wanting to understand how other people think, other cultures. Right, The first graduate degree is in international education and my second degree, which was at Brown in Latin American and Caribbean history. I love teaching and I love working with people, so I was able to combine both of those and as a result, I actually started with educational school gardens in Cambodia up in rural areas.

The work that I do and have been doing for such a long time as my humanitarian work in war torn countries and teaching train small rural farmers and widows overseas, and I install nutritional kitchen gardens and orphanages and schools, and I established demonstration sites, farming sites and all low tech and the beauty of it is right, This goes back to loss of one's sense of self that you count and these people have never counted, you know, They're

just brushed to the side. There's like an anguish in their faces, and it's something I'm really sensitive to. Well, the irony is that because I am a woman, I can go into places that a man can't, and specifically say Afghanistan, care in Jordan, so I can live and work with families. And also I'm not a threat. I'm a woman.

Speaker 5

Right.

Speaker 11

That allows me to understand, say another culture and other people their history, and to also establish trust.

Speaker 1

It seems like your path has almost been to move into these places where you know the drug trade has wreaked havoc. You're almost on the cleanup crew.

Speaker 11

Yes, right, more ways than one.

Speaker 1

This past summer I traveled to meet Bickerton in person. It's like little islands nestled. Oh my gosh, there's a house nestled on that island, like a cabin. See it.

Speaker 7

Your destination is on the left.

Speaker 1

Now, in her early seventies, she still strikes a commanding presence.

Speaker 11

Hey, there's noble, a good why.

Speaker 1

Tall and athletic and not prone to artifice. As we pulled up, she was sporting jeans and a baseball cap while hard at work watering the botanist level garden that frames one side of the rustic picturesque property she shares with her husband four decades.

Speaker 12

Okay, so there was nothing here. Okay, this was all literally rubble. Okay, there wasn't even grass growing. So this is all perennials okay. And pollinators. Wow, look at the little beat all sleeping.

Speaker 9

They're nesting in the flowers.

Speaker 1

Bickerton radiates a crackling sort of energy. There's a shifting vulnerability to her, at times almost brittle, at other times edgy, sharp, but always with a bit of defensiveness and self deprecating humor.

Speaker 11

And I'm blaming her my mother because I was breech birth. I came out feet kicking. My mom tied me on a rope when I was two.

Speaker 9

Years of age.

Speaker 12

Where you get your wanderlust, Jandra, she says, I could never keep track of you.

Speaker 1

Inside Bickerton's home exudes an eclectic, creative aesthetic, filled with comfortable, dog friendly furnishings. The walls are lined with art, both displayed and propped along the sides awaiting display. During our tour, she unwrapped several of them, a series of enlarged photographs taken Afghanistan during Leslie's humanitarian travels there.

Speaker 11

So they build this the Chinese wall, this huge wall, pomp pom, and then within it was going to be the farm in a couple of buildings and this man single handedly, They would throw the mud up to him in the straw and I've got photos of it, and he would build them in rectangular shapes, and he built the entire wall.

Speaker 1

One photo in particular stands out of Bickerton standing in the center of a small group of young men in a rural setting, holding a small sandy brown puppy in her arms.

Speaker 13

You're wearing this beautiful Fusia traditional garb with a sky blue scarf and a very western looking orange zippo.

Speaker 1

It's noteworthy not just because of the moment it captures and the fact the men were breaking social norms by standing in close proximity with a woman, because of the calm joy Leslie radiates. It's fine.

Speaker 11

I went all over the world and don't want a good because I teach and I trained farmers food and water security, and this place just grabbed my heart and it's it's second home for me. My mom said, she said, you're at peace with himself here I are in a war country time country. She said, You're in your element.

Speaker 4

You've found your way.

Speaker 1

It's been an unlikely and unpredictable path that's led to this point one, intensified by the uneasiness that's lingered in her life since Lone Star, but further compounded and complicated by the fact that Leslie met her husband of four decades, Mike, during the Lone Star grand jury?

Speaker 11

Was it the grand jury in Houston? There was one other person there, nobody else who was just me and somebody else. And that other somebody else is a person that I married, and he was there to testify. I didn't know for what. I didn't bother to ask him about the connection that we had is that we were both hardcore sailors in the waiting room, struck up a conversation.

Speaker 1

Now a doctor, that husband was once very much involved with Chester's smuggling operations, which makes one of her last memories of Lamar Chester after she was married and shortly before Chester's crash that much more revealing.

Speaker 11

It was down in Key Largo that Lamar shows up. Mike seems to think that it was just by sheer luck that Lamar happened to be on the same road that we were on, which is a northern part of Key Largo that connects Homestead to Ocean Reef. So Mike thought, oh, just by chance, an accident that Lamar's following us. I mean, just so the bumped in to him. I'm like, knowing everything we know about Lamar, Lamar doesn't do anything by accident.

We went out to dinner with him. Mike must have invited him to stay over whatever, and so Lamar was in the house with us.

Speaker 1

After Mike turned in for the night. Bickerton says she had what would be one of the final interactions she would ever have with Lamar Chester.

Speaker 11

Lamar then in the house told me that he wanted me to come back to him, and I was like, wow, this is what you do to your friends.

Speaker 1

How disrespectful that was.

Speaker 11

And I told him no, flat out. But there was something about it was just something about Lamar that I almost felt sorry for him. I think he knew something was coming. It's weird. And then he, you know, he got murdered.

Speaker 1

As for Chester dying in a plane crash, shrouded in mystery, here's c. B. Hackworth.

Speaker 2

That really wasn't the ending that anybody had anybody had expected.

Speaker 1

Except maybe Chester. Here's a snippet from one of his calls to CB.

Speaker 8

Hey, I'm not gonna make me run, give me make me right.

Speaker 1

We've tried to improve the quality of the tape, but it definitely sounds like Chester's saying they're going to kill me or make me run.

Speaker 8

They make me run, give.

Speaker 1

Me Revisiting his extensive recorded interviews with Chester has given C. B. Hackworth new insight into Lone Star, which he will further explore in an upcoming book.

Speaker 2

It worked out well for some of the targets, and then it ultimately, you know, didn't work out well for Lamar, except to the extent that he he did manage to extend this whole proceeding and turn the tables on the government and put the government on trial for so long that he did live out the rest of his life without going to jail, without ever doing what the government instructed him to do or any judge instructed him to do. He did live life on his own terms until he died.

Speaker 1

In an op ed letter Chester wrote published in the Gainesville Times December fourteenth of nineteen eighty four, Chester wrote, quote, the indictment against me was not brought by the DEA, but is an IRS indictment brought by the US Department of Justice based on what the government says is my net worth with the importation of marijuana and cocaine as probable sources of income. Those issues may very well have

to be decided in court before a jury. I am in the fifth month of emotion to dismiss the indictment based on the false ofation of evidence, leaks of grand jury material by federal agents and prosecutors, and gross governmental misconduct. If I am successful with that motion, I will definitely tell my story to the public. If that motion fails, then the story will be told in Gainesville at trial. In any case, the truth will finally out. Six months

after that letter, Chester was dead. Here's Phil Stamford.

Speaker 5

It did continue to trouble me. It haunted me.

Speaker 1

What happened in your world after Chester died?

Speaker 3

Well, you know, I was back in DC when I got the word from Bob that Lamar died in a crash. I did some work, investigative work to make some money, but no luck with congressional offices or with newspapers.

Speaker 5

That what I needed was a.

Speaker 3

Job, and finally, finally I got one in Portland, Oregon, which I guess was the only place my reputation hadn't caught up with me with The Oregonian, initially as a reporter. But after a few months they made me a columnist and I was one of two Metro columnists writing three times a week telling stories, which is really what I wanted to do. It was going pretty well, and then here came the Frankie case, the news that the head of the corrections department had been stabbed to death outside

his office. Eventually got crosswise with the management of the paper because I was raising questions I was doing because I was doing my job, and I got pushed out.

Speaker 1

Phil and I revisit the killing of Michael Frankie in the Murder in Oregon podcast. It's compelling content, as are the book Stanford wrote after leaving The Oregonian.

Speaker 3

I wrote several books about official corruption in Portland and also in Washington, DC. I did a book about the Watergate break in, and after a few years of that, I started getting interested again in Miami.

Speaker 1

As he struggled to make sense of his Miami experience, Stamford decided to start his own investigation Lamar's claims.

Speaker 3

I'd been very skeptical of them in the beginning, maybe because he just hadn't done a good job of explaining to me or to anyone else what it was that he did with the CIA, and it wasn't clear to me that he even knew that he was working for the CIA. I think he was working for Naval intelligence at one time. I think he was working for someone who was connected to the CIA at one time, but

he didn't know. And so to come to some sort of understanding about what I got involved in, I started trying to go back over some of this territory and I went down to Georgia talked to Bobby Lee Cook sitting in his office in this Somerville, Georgia, littletown in Georgia, and he's sitting behind his desk, and I say, did you think the christ was accidentally? Says hell no, he was quite convinced he was murdered. And I said, well, tell me what he did for the CIA, and he begked off.

Speaker 5

He said, I really don't know.

Speaker 3

You know, you'll have to ask ed Marger who was the other lawyer just down the road about sixty miles, and he told me that he didn't think that either Lamar or Ron Elliott had direct contact with the CIA. And there's a guy who had won the green Mail defense before, and he said, you ought to ask Bobby Lee Cook. It was Bobby Lee Cook who came up with the idea of the gray mail defense.

Speaker 1

So they sent you back and forth between the two of them.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and I said, of course I already talked to him and he sent me to you, So it didn't really answer any questions. And of course nothing I found out reduced in any way my feeling that Lamar had been murdered, that his plane was sabotaged.

Speaker 1

A feeling that would be reinforced by information he'd later learn back in DC.

Speaker 3

Made some phone calls, got in touch with a guy named Ferris Bond, who had been with the US Justice Department at the time and on a team working on Lamar's prosecution. He told me about the time before the trial. Of course they were more than just aware of Lamar's gray Mail defense. They had arranged for someone from the CIA to come speak to them and tell them what was going on. And so he said, some guy came. They said, didn't look at all like what you'd imagine a CIA agent would be.

Speaker 5

I guess he was sort.

Speaker 3

Of shortened, spindling, and put his briefcase on the desk, And before he said anything, he told them that if he talked to them they would not be able to reveal his name, and they said that as lawyers they were bound to tell the other side what they knew. I guess in discovery it was an issue with that. And he put everything back in his briefcase and walked out and.

Speaker 5

That was the end of that.

Speaker 1

So what do you make of all of this now, I mean, that's another interesting layer.

Speaker 3

It had been, of course, a very intense experience for me, and I'd never really figured out was Lamar telling the truth when he said he was working with the CIA or not. You know, even looking back at it now, after we've done all of this, you know, it has been useful to me to revisit it again.

Speaker 1

Well, certainly as the eighties unfolded, his claims became much less far fetched.

Speaker 3

Oh yeah, it allowed me to see it made me see that these things are real, especially with the Kerry Committee and the press. Eventually there really was no doubt that there had been in a drugs for gun trade going on that was somehow connected with the government. Lamar

was anything but silent about it. One of the remarkable things about this to me is that when Lamar's plane went down June of nineteen eighty five, there was a story in the New York Times about how this indicted drug smuggler had died in a plane crash, but no mention at all of the grey maial defense that had been written about in CB Hacker's paper.

Speaker 9

Yeah.

Speaker 1

That's a very strange omission. Yeah, as I was wrapping up the research and interviews for this podcast, I would connect with a most unlikely and surprising target of interest. You will never guess in a million years who I just got off the phone with and who I was able to track down. Who Morgan Cherry.

Speaker 5

You gotta be kidding.

Speaker 7

No.

Speaker 1

And the good news is we had a really interesting chat. The bad news is that he is not surprisingly unwilling to speak with me on the record and declined my request for an interview.

Speaker 3

I bet he did it very elegantly too.

Speaker 5

This is a very smooth guy.

Speaker 1

I can neither confirm nor deny that he was smooth.

Speaker 5

This is the.

Speaker 3

Guy whose name Lamar dropped in the Bahamian tribunal said it was his contact with the CIA. Ron Elliott told me that Morgan Cherry was Lamar's CIA contact. Did you ask him specifically about his involvement with the CIA and Dea.

Speaker 1

Phil, I can neither confirm nor deny that we had any such discussion.

Speaker 5

That's fitting.

Speaker 1

The once conspiracy concept of covert operations and shadow wars has percolated closer to the surface over the years, and continues to do so today. My dad used to quote the opening line from a legendary radio detective show that ran from the nineteen thirties to the nineteen fifties. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The

shadow knows. It's something that kept popping to mind throughout this production, but what happens in the shadows will likely stay there as long as it profits and protects the people in power on both sides. As we wrap up this season, I just want to thank our small but powerful team of Nick and Evan and Taylor who have just brought an incredible expertise and enthusiasm to every single

aspect of this production. And Phil, I just want to thank you so much for being such a wise, witty and wonderful storyteller, and so thank you so much for sharing this one.

Speaker 5

It's been great working with you.

Speaker 1

We're all so appreciative to the incredible array of people we've encountered and interviewed during this process, those named and unnamed. We also want to thank you the listener for your time and support. Murder Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers are Lauren brad Pacheco, Taylor Chaqoine, and Phil Stamford.

Written by Phil Stamford and Lauren brad Pacheco, Audio editing and sound designed by Nicholas Harder, Evan Tyer and Taylor Chaqoine, featuring music by Evan Tyer, Phil Meyer, John Murchison and Taylor Chaqoine. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get the story step move here

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