Witness - E8

Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio, previously on Murder in Miami. I think I actually found Leslie Bickerton.

She's been hiding for forty years. That's it's no way to live Phil.

She's still afraid for her life.

I've realized this over the years. What happened to me forty one years ago has been with me my entire life. I mean, it stole my life and I stole my voice.

By the time Leslie Bickerton, who also dabbled in modeling while living in Hawaii, crossed paths with Lamar Chester, she was barely thirty years old.

Before I had even heard of Lamar Chester. I was working in the Caymans because I have a CPA background and an international tax background.

In addition to accepting the challenge of living on the island and the job with him, Leslie Bickerton would also become romantically involved with Chester. All three of those things come back to haunt her.

Just boom boom boom. And then about somebody that had been killed off. Yeah, I was going to talk about him, I guess. And there were contracts out on his life and contracts that I was also in danger.

So in the fall of nineteen eighty one, a frantic Leslie Bickerton is trying to figure out how to undo the damage done by crossing paths.

With international drug smuggler Lamar Chester.

Though she only worked with him off and on over the course of seven months, in many ways, she's still trying to figure out the ripple effect of that time period.

Changed the course of my life, and still today it's like it just happened yesterday. In one sense, forty one years. It's not like I was allowed then to go back to a normal life.

Those months forever, I'll your life, oh completely, It's set a course that I didn't even know.

I wasn't setting the course. Somebody else was setting the course and I didn't even know it.

Having been told by Chester that her life was in danger, not knowing who was behind that threat, and isolated on his farm in a time before cell phones or the internet, Bickerton's fears are left to fester.

Just sort of left me there. So emotionally me just a wreck, scared to death. But at the same time, so when my brain works anyway kind of a little bit analytically, it's like, Okay, what do I need to do? Right, okay, one, two, three, four, immediately coming up with the names in my mind that I had to take me into consideration. It wasn't just about me. It was about those that could be at risk and protecting everybody just in case, because I didn't

It must have felt like being unknowingly exposed to a very contagious, very deadly disease.

Beyond that, horrific. That's the impact that it had on me.

And how do you disprove that if someone tells you, well, now you're in a lot of trouble and someone's out to kill you.

Right, and you isolate them? M hmm, right, that's one of the other parts of that. The more you isolate a person, you keep them right separate from everybody, You keep them separate from their families, friends, people who can help them, and you war and more psychologically feel like you're out there on your own.

And that would have broken you down pretty quickly.

Oh very much, so, very much so.

I'm Lauren brad Pacheco, and this is murdered in Miami. Feeling trapped, Bickerton was also terrified of confiding to anyone she knew, bearing it could place them in danger too.

I think sometimes you draw deep withinside yourself, even though you don't have the answers, you'll figure it out, you know, a survival mechanism.

And in that mode, Bickerton remembered a group of Army rangers stationed nearby she'd befriended after coming to Georgia.

I went up to this event in Helen, Georgia, these hot air balloons and it saw place Touristco And that's on the big grounds that they had there for the hot air balloons. That's where I met them. Just stuck up a conversation. I don't drink drink, but had a beer with them and just kind of like clicked. And they were really great. And they were just funny, great sense to humor.

Wholesome and friendly.

Yeah.

Yeah, they were also oddly suited to understand the situation and danger. Bickerton suddenly found herself.

In the Airborne Ranger. Guys that I met were staff sergeant. I mean these were like the top top guys in the training and I know one of them was like one of the top snipers. They were telling me about their adventures overseas, what they were doing, and that's who I immediately thought to reach out to. That's the only people I knew up there were those military guys.

Rangers are the Army's elite and premier infantry force, rigorously trained to carry out intricate operations such as raids and assault missions well within enemy territory. It's a position requiring a daunting degree of mental, physical and moral fortitude.

I have a contract all my life. So I did reach out to the military guys and we kind of figured out a game plan.

A plan that plays like a movie plot.

I would marry one because that would then they could legitimately bring me over to the camp so that Lamar couldn't get near me and nobody could get near me, that I would be physically protected. They were concerned about me, like being at war. You know, all right, strategy immediately thinking outside the box. You got to think on your feet what can be done right now? What can be done next? What can be done next? And by marrying in name only as that allowed.

So you thought the plan that you hashed out with these guys. Was that you would make a public show of marrying one of them, so Lamar would be intimidated to no longer mess with you. Exactly, And apparently that's exactly what did immediately planning a wedding, which seemed a sensical option given her surreal situation.

I knew Lamark was not going to mess with these guys period. Instinctively, people liked Lamar. They just know who not to mess with. We actually had a ceremony as well.

A ceremony Bickerton's family attended, fully believing to be real.

From the outside, it all looked real or unreal, but legitimate.

Almost like for the same reasons people fake their own death. You wanted your own family to believe it. You wanted to really sell it so that you could then disappear. Yes, was it a marriage and name only?

Yeah? And it was a note within two months or something like that.

While it may sound like a far fetched plan, Bickerton sent me photos of the small outdoor wedding. In them, Leslie's wear ring a somber expression and a simple white sleeveless gown while clutching a simple bouquet of wild flowers. She's standing next to her groom, whose name she doesn't want revealed, but is formally decked out in full Rangers dress uniform. The couple is surrounded by other fully outfitted Airborne Rangers, and the small group of gathered well wishers

My father loved photography. He took the photos, and my father labels everything. It's meticulous. So that's how I could get the date. It said September nineteen eighty one, because I couldn't remember the month when I was married to this military person.

I want to quickly point out. Leslie says she hastily arranged the wedding immediately after Chester told her about a Clayton being murdered and fed to the alligators. Williams went missing mid September, but his body wasn't found until October tewod, which gives weight to the theory Chester knew of the murder before the body was found, and to Bickerton's concern for her safety at the time.

I mean, I'm just grateful for the military guys in Georgia, that group of guys, because I don't know if I would have ever been able to even get out of Georgia, but it bought me enough time. Without them, i'd be I'd probably did. I'm almost sure of it. I owe my life to them.

After the nuptials, Bickerton says she hit out with the rangers until she could put together a plan to flee to another location. Interestingly, Dan Davis, the reporter slash River Hills publicist who was on Chester's payroll, would later be interviewed by CEB Hackworth in nineteen eighty three for an

This whole article basically was a smear campaign against me. If it was nowadays and this was happen, I take them to court like it's nobody's business and I would win. And again, nobody has ever bothered to approach me back then or any time to get my side of the story or exactly what was happening during that time period.

And you had never seen this article until I sent it to you. Correct.

Correct, So it's interesting looking at it now and going through all of this several comments. I'm going to make this emphasis on age and this was somebody that I had married that was young and naive, and that's not true at all. None of it that they wrote down is true.

They somehow tried to discredit you by claiming there was an age difference between you and your groom, when Chester's the one who's twenty years older. Right, he had children your.

Age, Oh right, and I knew his children. Looking back at it now, in the pattern that Lamar Chester presents himself to the media, presenting themselves in such a way that they can't be touched. And so how do you present you discredit the other person, right, You create your own storyline to raise your own image as a so called family man, which he wasn't. I mean, Lamar had relationships with other women. I know that for a fact.

So interesting that he quote bulks at the description of you as his quote mistress and public record, it almost sounds like it's Chester's way of appeasing his bruised male ego.

A lot of it is ego. And by dismissing who I am, then it takes the judgment off of him, right, which is sort of a classic and by ment. And I thought about this. I wasn't as mistress, I mean, now you know, I look at it, give the definition of a mistress. I wasn't. I wasn't being kept right as a kept woman. Kept have sort of here's my dark humor coming again, right, you know, Yes, I was kept as a hostage. In one sense, I would never have gone to Georgia had not been for my dog.

After the rushed and staged wedding, Bickerton would land in Houston, which was also the location of the Lone Star investigation, something of which Bickerton a test. She was unaware.

It was inferred that I went to Houston and that I just showed up at the Federal Building, turned myself in to the Feds of the Federal Building and gave them all this information. And that is not true. So you're moving really fast, and it's like, where can I go next? Try to figure what would be my next step, and didn't want I jeopardized my own family, so I

The only reason you went to Houston was because you had a friend there who could get you employment and you could live under the radar there.

Yeah, temporary, it was where can I go immediately? I mean, I'm just thinking on my feet, knowing that my life was probably in jeopardy and knowing what Lamar was now more involved with.

You left Georgia and then the FED show up at the military base looking for you. Yes, yes, and you get the heads up that they're looking for you while you're in Houston.

So that then would have been getting a phone call that Houston people were going to come looking for me. That also meant the CIA, because don't forget, Lamar told me about that he was involved with the CIA. So I didn't know what was Houston. All I knew was the FEDS, which could have been anybody, were looking for me, and that would have been October is when they tried to find me on the military base and the guys were protecting me.

And when they found her, the prosecution already seemed to have honed in on Bickerton's fears in terms of safety and her other vulnerabilities too.

Houston had promised me that they were going to get my dog.

And so they promised you that they would go to the Derby Islands and get your dobermen.

Yep, no problem.

And did they no? Oh no, But you had no idea that there was an investigation into Lamar in Houston.

No, no, And didn't know about Lance Eisenberg either, investigation with Smythe.

Smythe was the name of the Cayman's account.

I mean, that's what Euston was after, was Smythe with Lance Eisenberg and his clients.

It sounds like a line out of Casablanca. But of all the the states in the country, you end up in the one state, in the one city.

Yeah, you know, you're right, He knew right. So here's my dark New England humor. You know the old cartoons Bullwinkle, my God, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat and the lion comes out roaring and blow Winkle goes wrong, hat wrong hat.

No.

I had no idea. I didn't know anything about Houston and their investigation. I didn't know that Houston was looking for me.

Phil Stanford finds Leslie's explanation of her move to Houston in keeping with many surreal aspects we've covered.

Coincidences have happened all through this story, my meeting Playway in the bar, Happy, flying over the ocean, and meeting Lamire at several thousand feet, So I don't have any problem with it being a coincidence she ended up in Houston, as she says that the FEDS went to her soldier friends in Georgia said where is she? And they said she's in Houston, and then they tracked her down. In any case, they would have found her anyway.

She's adamant that it was a coincidence, and either which way it certainly wasn't beneficial for her.

She does say that they got involved. She does say that she took a job knowing that he was looking for an accountant and a mistress. It's easy enough to falter her judgment on that all sorts of people have made mistakes along the way in this story and just about any other story.

I suppose what I think is interesting, though you have this young woman. He's her employer. Then at that point then I felt that she was pretty maligned in the press as being of less moral character because she was as mistress. When he's the one who's married, he's the one with the wife and kid. He's the one who's twenty years older. And I thought it interesting that not a single reporter, not one, ever reached out to her.

Real corruption was in the US Attorney's office in Houston. The investigators had been touring the Caribbean for some time on the government tab. A new junior US attorney had come in and tried to report them and gotten crosswise.

That chaos spilled into the tone and content of Atlanta's proceedings.

It was a mess, a hot mess. It sounds like some hotshot crosscutors were trying to bring in some big money or hundred indictments and fell down at rabbit hole and found up an alice in wonder owner.

That's reporter Tracy Thompson's take. She's now a prolific author and journalist, but was then reporting for the Atlanta Constitution. In addition to covering the Atlanta Grand Jury, she had also extensively covered the charismatic council representing Lamar Chester in the case. Bobby Lee Cook a man known for his flamboyant personal style and equally fetching eloquence.

He had a type of charisma that very few people have. It was an interesting thing when he walked into the room. Everybody who bodyly Cooked was there. He could easily have walked out of the nineteenth century. He parted his hair in the middle. He had gold spectacles that he bore on the tip of his nose so he could look at you over them. He had a gold pocket watch and this very large chain that he kept on He very easily could have walked out of eighteen seventy. He

Of that, and they could trust he would ruthlessly defend his clients.

People were scared of him, and I needed to be scared of him because he was. He was vicious and cross examinations. You didn't want to tell bobbyly Cook a story with any holes in it, because he would find it and ruth was late with them.

Here's Phil Stamford's take.

Yeah, Bobby Lee Cook is certainly one of the more formidable people I've ever run across. Extremely smart lawyer. Never seen anyone who could talk on his feet like that. He lived in this tiny town in North Georgia that was half boarded up. When I finally went down there and talked to him. He had a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce, and he looked so homespun that was part of his act. He wore hush puppies, suspenders, had a beard, and he could adapt to just about anything. I mean. He represented

Tracy Thompson has agreed to read excerpts from one of her pieces at the time, which really paints a picture of the courtroom dynamic. As one of the former prosecutors from Lone Star's Houston leg John Johnson, was questioned by Bobby Lee Cook.

John Johnson, a baby former federal prosecutor from Houston that gripping the size of the witness box like a man driving a tractor. Before him stood Somerville's defense attorney Bobby Lee Cook, who surveyed Johnson over the rims of his

In a phone conversation we had C. B. Hackworth recalls bumping into Cook that day, right before he headed into the courtroom to question Johnson.

We were outside the program after a lunch break. Bobby Lee Cook was pacing back and forth in the hallway. He was obviously getting his thoughts together to go in and begin his cross examination of John Johnson, who had said some potentially damaging things. And just as the bailiff came out and said that the magistrate, Allan Chancey was coming back in, I got a Bobby Lee turned to me,

In the courtorate.

Bobby Lee Cook would also question Leslie Bickerton in court, and perhaps his skill as an attorney is most apparent in that Bickerton herself had a very different personal experience than those observing the interaction.

I had no idea what I was walking into that courtroom. I didn't even know who Bobby the Cook was. Nobody had ever mentioned his name to me. Leafeds never told me about who this attorney was and what to expect that day, and so again I'm just set out there.

It's interesting that he was able to really ingratiate himself to you because he completely understood your plight.

The way that he started off the conversation, and I distinctly remember, was about dogs and about his bloodhounds and about my dog Covina that was stuck down on the Darby Islands.

Stolen from you.

Really, yeah, I'm never given back. And that's what Bobby Lee Cook started right off my dog Covino and put me at ease. I don't remember even how long I was on that witness stand. I just I don't, but I do remember at some point whatever the questions were that mister Cook was directing at me, I just I flose. It was like being in a road in the semi's coming straight at you. You know you have to move, but you can't move. C. B.

Hackworth wrote about the exchange.

A key prosecution witness wept yesterday as she admitted to defense attorneys having lied at the behest of government agents in an attempt to ensnare accused White County drugs muggler Lamar Chester, saying that, quote, it wasn't right. From the beginning, it wasn't right. None of it was right, said Leslie Bickerton thirty three. She said she was physically afraid of

It also became apparent that Bickerton felt she was being played and manipulated by both sides.

I remember Bogarth and others in that courtroom laughing at me while mister Cook was asking questionsself for me, and that was a joke. I'll never forget that. And I remembered, I don't know what answers I was giving at that point. I just froze. That stuck with me.

Back to Cebe's reading of his article.

She said her knowledge of what the government agents and prosecutors were willing to do made her fear them. Miss Bickerton said she also came to the conclusion she was being used by the government and decided to stop cooperating immediately after her appearance before a federal grand jury in Atlanta.

Phil Stanford recalls Cook's questioning also exposed something else Bickerton's feelings for Chester.

Bobby Lee Cook was questioning Leslie about this and it was remarkable. I mean, he's a remarkable talker. He was creating this novel on his feet and drawing her into it. And he says, and this is I think when she had left Houston and go back to Atlanta to tell Lamar and his lawyers about the changes she'd made to the records, and he's sort of drawing her into this story, into her story as he would see it, of how

But how and why Bickerton got tied up in that emotional relationship and the crosshairs of a federal investigation is something she continues to grapple with, particularly since some of it seemed orchestrated by Chester. You mentioned that he was controlling and calculating for lack of a better word. Looking back, now, do you see his advances on you as part of that calculation?

Mm hmm, yep, mixed feelings because I liked Lamar. But then you also know that you've just been betrayed and that you've been set up that this is a person who is a threat that can hurt me, really hurt me.

And at the same time somebody who who is presenting themselves as your protector and your predator at the same time. Right after telling her her life was in jeopardy, Chester offered to sneak Bickerton out of the country, which she immediately took as another potential threat, further indicative of their

Looking back at it, I'd say it makes you feel comfortable. And I'm not just saying this for myself, because I know a lot of other people that have been connected with him, and I've asked, is it just me a predator? Time is on their side in most cases, and they're

It was part of the manipulation, part of getting you to trust him and then also being beholden to him, right and then it's like you see the opposite side of the coin.

It's evil. It's pure evil, a darkness that is emotionally, mentally, physically beyond human comprehension. It changes you forever. There's just something that you're always always on your guard. So nineteen eighty one what to nineteen eighty five. So four intense years of hiding because I never knew who was going to come at me and everything that was going on at that time. So you have that period of time. But then the ripple effects was ongoing.

As for Chester, his growing desperation and belief that Phil Stanford would somehow facilitate CIA efforts to sweep in and make his legal issues disappear continued.

Lamar sends me to DC to talk to my people. I go and just spend some time. And Lamar asked me over the phone when I found out, and I say nothing. You know, as usual, I'm not very talkative. And at that point, from then on, Lamar really didn't expect anything from me. In Miami, things was really falling apart. I was doing some other investigative work that was leading in sort of dark directions. I had to get out.

That's so interesting, particularly if you go back to Chester's claim that he was running guns into Nicaragua, and then also in court filings and in articles with CB Hackworth, Chester claimed that he was involved with flying Samosa, you know, Nicaragua's then president before he was overthrown and assassinated in nineteen eighty by the Sandinistas. Chester claimed he flew Somosa's son in and out of Florida at the request of

Yeah, and have to remember that this was at least a year and a half, two years before any of this really started surfacing in the press in the United States, So it was still hard even for me. I wasn't convinced that Chester was telling the truth about this. It all seems so crazy and it could have been true, it might have been false.

I think it's also interesting that Bobby Lee Cook has a Nicaragua Somemosa connection because Simosa hired Bobby Lee Cook basically to clean up a report about Nicaragua in terms of its reputation in terms of human rights because he wanted to get more aid from the US State Department.

Yeah. I'm not sure what connection, if any, that has to Lamar's activities, but it's more an indication to me anyway, Bobby Lee Cook's connections to people in high places.

And if Chester started to sound paranoid about perceived threats to his life, it's hard to know where they'd be coming from. As in addition to his claims of CIA connections, multiple reports tied him to mob connections and Colombian cartels, but his legal issues weren't exactly mild or insignificant either. He was openly boasting about being a prolific drug smuggler and having run hundreds of trips into the United States.

Drug smuggling was also the topic at federal court today with the beginning of testimony in the government's Black Tuna case.

As a recap, the Black Tuna Gang ran Miami's drug trade in the nineteen seventies. All in all, the gang was accused of importing around five hundred tons of marijuana and to the United States over the course of sixteen months.

Federal Judge James King listened as one time smuggler turned government informant Luke McLeod told of the eight tons of marijuana which he claims to have delivered to the key defendants, Robert Meinster and Robert Plattshorn in nineteen seventy four.

Nineteen seventy five. They charged Platshorn under a Kingpin statute that was meant for much heavier drug offenses. But I really remembered about that is that he got sixty years for smuggling marijuana in the United States.

Bobby Platshorn was actually sentenced to sixty four years and served thirty until recently earning the dubious distinction of being America's longest imprisoned nonviolent marijuana offender. Now in his mid seventies, Platshorn says the magnitude of his crimes was a fraction of what he was accused.

Prison for importing marijuana, first offense, non violent. I caught the first kingpin charge they ever gave for marijuana, and I was prosecuted for eight forty eight continuing criminal enterprise, also known as the kingpin statue. When I first saw that, I had no idea what it meant, because I don't think I was even a safety pit, let alone a kingpin, but the government hung on me.

Today, plat Storm's a marijuana legalization activist and an entrepreneur putting to use his knowledge of the law that was weaponized against him.

I put it to work when I got out of prison by starting the Silver Tour to change minds about marijuana, to cater to the senior demographic who have the all important vote in just about every state in the Union. And I'm known for thirty eight years in prison and the last ten years, legalizing one state after another.

In addition to now being a pioneering pot advocate for the elderly, which is the fastest growing segment of the medical marijuana market, Platshorn's made his mark in the legalized weed world with his aptly named and super popular Black Tuna marijuana strain. He's also written Black Tuna Diaries, a memoir, and is featured in the documentary Square Grouper. And she remains adamant that his noteworthy and notorious sentence was actually more connected to corruption than cannabis.

Corruption Here funny of corruption. Here an attorney who I knew to be the bagman for federal judge said, the judge wants three million bucks, which would gladly give him If we had three million bucks. We had put the money in our homes, in our businesses. Between Robbie and I we were able to scrape up about a million three a million and a half, and the judge send us a message, you'll be.

Sorry, and we were.

Plat Shorn says he sat through his trial knowing the whole thing was a farce.

It was a show trial beginning to end. Half the things that happened or were set at the trial just were made up out of thin air.

At sentencing, Judge James Lawrence King said, quote, the price for participation in this traffic should be prohibitive. It should be made too dangerous to be attractive. Unquote. Now this is only mister Platshorn's version of the events, but it does show the potential impact that law used to make a statement an example, could have had on someone as public and vocal about their illicit activities as lamar Chester. I did reach out multiple times to the office of

I had first come across the Judge James King when I was covering the Black Tuna trial down in Miami. I was working at the newspaper. Then I went back to the files and looked him up, and it turned out he had been on the board of a mob bank back in the sixties. The board of directors of a Mayer Lansky bank that's connected to the Teamsters Central Fund and Central States Fund.

Phil remembers talking to Danny Sheen about Judge King, who was presiding over Shean's case.

He'd made this a a court case of I think it was a ReHO case in federal court, and he was going to prove that the US government was complicit in this drugs and arms trade in the wars in Central America. So what do you think of the judge? What do you think of Judge King? He said, Oh, I think he's been pretty fair up to now. Well, it turns out that King was just giving them enough

Okay, back to our timeline and story. It's now June of nineteen eighty five, and.

So I'm back in DC for about a year and I get a call from Bob Adams down in Miami and he says, you're not going to believe it. Lamar just died. He was in a plane crash at his farm in Georgia. Remember how Lamar was fighting to get his pilot's license back. Trial's coming up in a few weeks. The Fed inside to give him his pilot's license back, so to celebrate, he took his Piper cub up little daughter Ajs, five years old with him for a joy ride around his farm and they crashed.

What happened to his daughter, she was in the hospital.

She'd broken her back and no one knew what was going to happen to her. And the official explanation of the crash was that he ran out of fuel, but no one believed that an experienced pilot like Lamar would check the fuel levels before he took off. And the first person on the scene was a GBI agent who Lamar had had some run ins with.

Georgia Bureau of Investigations.

Yeah, he just happened to be there at the scene. He even got to the crash before Lamar's father, who was living on the property.

So you found the story about the crash suspicious.

Not just suspicious, unbelievable. He was murdered.

On the next murder in Miami, Ron Elliott shares his version of being at Chester's farm on the night before he died in the crash.

I yelled at him, be careful that two cars out there. The cars tore off towards the gate. Lamar yelled at me to get in the pickup. He was coming with a.

Shotgun and an expert on the coport activities of the CIA weighs in on the plausibility of the Gray Maale defense of international drug smuggler Lamar Chester.

Absolutely credible, that's credible.

All that makes absolute sense.

Murder of Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers are Lauren Bright Pacheco, Taylor Chicogne, and Phil Stamford. Written by Phil Stamford and Lauren brag Pacheco, Vidio editing and sound design by Nicholas Harder, Evan Tyre and Taylor Chakoyne. Featuring music by Evan Tyre, Phil Mayer, John Murchison, and Taylor Chacoyne. Archival elements provided by Lennon Lewis Wolfson the