Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren go.
Hey, Hi Elizabeth Arnett, how are you.
I was just having quiet time, my head down on my desk, like I finished my test early.
I love quiet.
I know you do. I know you finished your test early, Love quiet.
Listen. Yes you know it's ridiculous.
Oh my goodness. Jim Morrison yeah right, yeah, period, No, I liked.
I have to admit I was a Jim Morrison Stan when I was a young man, Like I was that kid. But I just found out recently that there was a memorial bust of Jim Morrison at the perry Leche Cemetery of Paris, and it was like a head and shoulders and it was like kind of very famous.
Yeah, and then it.
Was stolen in nineteen Yeah, it was stolen nineteen eighty eight and it's been gone for a long time. The family eventually paid for a new one to replace it, but after thirty seven years, the Paris police just found it. Good job Paris police years turns out totally by mistake. They were just they were serve a warrant on an unrelated case. No, yeah, as they said a quote, this was a chance discovery made during his search order than by and examining magistrates.
That's the Paris quotes.
Wow, so they just stumbled across the gym Morrison busy.
Yeah, is this important?
It is tacking on the charges now.
So there you go.
I thought that was a ridiculous That is ridiculous French police recovery.
Years later.
Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Please? Smuggling literal tons of weed? Like tons? Oh oh, this is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons It is always always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
I hope that.
I hope so too. I would like to open with a reading a poem of sorts from a poet I can't stand, but that I think you'll appreciate and through whom this tale I tell you today resonates strongly. This won't be a close reading, just a contemplation on a theme.
Okay, I'm prepared here.
It is as the son of a son of a sailor, I went out on the sea for adventure, expanding the view of the captain and crew like a man just released from indenture. As a dreamer of dreams and a traveling man. I have chalked up many a mile, read dozens of books about heroes and crooks, and I learned much from both of their styles.
Son of a son, son of a son, son of a son of a sailor, son of a gun load the last time, one step ahead of the jailer.
Thank you, thank you. That's right. It's the lyrics to the song son of a Son of a Sailor by Jimmy Buffett, James Buffett, Jimmy Buffet.
My dad.
My dad loved Jimmy Buffett. I can tell because he was all about like sailboats in the ocean and cheeseburgers, and and I think, well, then you know my nephew is the son of a son of a sailorically. But I can't stand Jimmy Buffett. I think I was trying to what I was trying to investigate this. It was
like Elizabeth, I always think he's a good time. Anytime that you really like don't like someone, you really have to investigate and think a lot of times, not all the time, but many times it's the things that you don't like about yourself or what you see in that person or what you're afraid you are.
But then I really you're afraid you're a beach bomb who at all?
What irks me about Jimmy Buffett, I decided, is the longing that his fans feel for this like life of no obligation, and then their search for it they kind of abandon obligation, like the obligation to not be drunk in public.
You don't like the divorce dad energy.
There's so much divorced energy, like the fans didn't or don't like. Do like the infantile describing of any minor responsibility as quote adulting. Sure that is nails on.
I know you hate that term, but the one that you don't want Sunday scary.
Sunday scary never I hear that.
I Like, I used to be in pitch meetings and then people would say that that in Monday morning.
They'd be like, I had a real bad case.
It's Sunday scaries, and I'd have to keep a straight face a zoom call.
I'm just not you know me, I'm more of a cowboy that I've never gone even.
If that life is about obligations. And I think I've told you before that my big run in with a Jimmy Buffett fan was when I was like maybe eight years old and the neighbors across the street were like pre partying for a Jimmy Buffett concert, and this lady came up to me, like I can see her leathery dec letee and like the visor over crispy bleached hair, Like you can see like her bikini straps under the tank top.
Yes, if you wear a tank top over a bikini.
Yes, yes, yes, and then like shorts and flip flops and like an anklet and she's no, that'd be amazing. No. And she was the one who said, you know, like unbidden walks up to a child and says, the best cure for a hangover is a tuna sandwich, French fries and a chocolate shake.
Well, you've always remembered it, so apparently.
It is burned. It is like, yeah, but so.
You ever used medical advice? No, and like good advice, I never got it's actually correct.
Yeah, So if parent heads we want to hear from you ridiculous crime dot com.
Oh, by the way, I will represent I've been to multiple show I have the appeal.
Of Jimmy Buffett's people. Like, okay, So life is about obligations. People depend on us, systems depend on our reliability. There should be satisfaction in stepping up and embracing responsibility.
This is the cowboy adulting. Yes, this is where I'm got it adulting.
Just do your life. The Jimmy buz Well, the aesthetic of Jimmy Buffett is all about abandoning responsibility for pure relaxations and enjoyment. I love to enjoy things, and I wish I knew what relaxation felt like. But there are limits, boks. That's what I say. So today I want to tell you a very Jimmy Buffett story. Yes, yeah, it's got a dash of Stephen Still's.
I'll take it thrown in there. I love, I get this.
This is more Buffet than Stills, I think.
But this is criminal.
This is about a complex character, a guy with shifting obligations that he embraces and abandons in equal turns. So this is the story of Raymond Grady Stancil Junior.
A name Grady Stancil j.
Yeah, we're gonna call him ray He was born in nineteen thirty seven. He grew up in Saint Petersburg, Florida. You could say that he was the son of a sailor. His dad was a commercial fisherman, and that's a punishing job. Yes, he was born into a very outdoorsy family and he fell he fell right into it is your family outdoorsy Some of.
Them are, yeah, some are very bookish and scholarly, and others are really outdoors Yeah.
Yeah. My dad's side of family very outdoorsy. My mom's side not so much. They make an effort good you know. Anyway, Ray total outdoors man. So he started young with the f when he was six, he helped his dad by casting out a net to pull in bait for like big fish.
Oh total yeah, great fish.
And he loved and respected the water. You have to you've got sailor waterman.
Yeah.
And when he was in his teens, he saw the destruction around him that dredging was doing to the wetlands in Florida.
Yeah.
So he went out one day and he sank one of the big dredging vessels out in Tampa Bay. Yeah. So a little bit of a folk care outlaw. He got out of high school in the mid fifties and listed in the Air Force, but he bailed on that really quickly, and then he went out to follow in his dad's footsteps. He became a professional fisherman. So there's this really great feature ray in the magazine Outside Magazine.
It's a great one. Here's a quote from that where he's basically painted as the most interesting man alive.
Nice quote.
Stancil was said to be able to back a forty six foot sport fishing boat into a slip with the wind blowing fifteen knots and the tide running against him. Legend has it he wants single handedly brought up a ninety foot barge that had sunk in one hundred foot waters using only scuba gear and inflatable tubes. He was caught more than two thousand pounds of grouper in a
single weekend. All this despite the fact that he was blind in his left eye, a consequence of being struck in the face with a broom as he and a friend swept the cafeteria floor in middle school. This is good, right, I shouldn't laugh at the last bit about the eye that whatever falls shortened. Yeah, exactly. So by the time he was thirty, married, four kids, nineteen sixty five, he gets hired to be the private captain for the founder
of the Dallas Cowboys, Clinton Murchison Junior. Oh wow, fun fact. Clint was an oil air who funded the creation of a Swedish pirate radio station that operated off the coast of Sweden from March of nineteen sixty one to June of nineteen sixty two. No one did, I just made that up. Okay, it really is true. So Ray's gig for Clint that only lasted a couple of years, and then when it wrapped up, Ray picked up moved his family back to Florida. So he started his business running
charter boats. But the waters and the weather very yeah, and so it's an unpredictable weather, unpredictable business, which is not good business.
It's a tough business. I was saying.
Yeah. So he tried setting out stone crass.
Business where you're what you're investing in you have to feed it or if it floats.
Is a rough business.
That's that's good. That is good.
Saren told that one.
I like that.
He tried doing stone crab traps, but the pickings were slimm and like he just couldn't eke out a living. But then he did, Oh, Zaren, how do you think Ray was able to make money in Florida in the early seventies when he had a boat and lots of maritime experience and skill.
Elizabeth, how was Ray able to make money in the early seven when he had a boat and limited maritime skill, lots of marriage talking about me.
You're right there, you got it right, Drugs.
Drugs, muddeling, you got He was moving the marijuana rugas.
Yeah. I don't know how he first got into it, but he was really good at it, really like he moved weight. So at the time, weed super cheap in Jamaica. The good stuff grown up in the mountains was sold by the fifty pound bat sack on the beach to those who were in the no ten dollars a pound, if you can believe it, ten bucks a pound. So dealers they'd pick up a few sacks and then they would sell it for one hundred and seventy five a pounds.
That's market. Yeah, but that's a lot of stuff, like hundreds of pounds.
It's a lot to move.
You aren't just shoving that in your undies when you go through customs.
Now you're now a trucker.
Yeah. So the dealers they contracted with Ray, he's a pro. He knew every nook and cranny on the coast. Yeah, he could pilot a boat swiftly, safely. Remember you get like back at us a.
Lot of sandbars and navigate in Florida. I mean that's areas.
He could read the weather.
You don't want to get beached with the bales.
Of Oh no, he was the ace. So Jamaican weed was known to be good, but the best weed was supposed to be coming in from Columbia. So that's where Ray set his sight.
Nice, there you go.
So he teamed up with this big dog weed supplier named Raoul Davila Jimeno. And to the rest of the world, that guy was like a sugar, coffee, and petroleum exporter. Sure to the drug world, he was the major supplier for the Black Tuna Gang. Black Tuna Gang got its name because that was Raoul's radio code name. Ever called him Black Tuna, and most of the gang members they wore these solid gold medallions, these necklaces that had like a black Tuna emblem on it.
Oh yeah, that looks cool.
It was super cool. It's like their good luck charm. But it was also a symbol of their gang, and so Raoul's basically got this like small private army, and he ruled Santa Marta, Colombia, which happened to be where most of the Colombian marijuana was.
That is like a beautiful coastal city. Beautiful, it was just incredible.
So the Black Tuna Gang they ran Santa march To Columbia, but they operated out of a suite at the Fontaine Blue Hotel in Miami Beach. Yeah, and they had they had like in their pocket this vice president of this fancy Fort Lauderdale yacht brokerage, and he got them access to specialized boats that could carry tons of marijuana without
sitting like suspiciously low the water. So the contraband was transported in these modified boats and they unloaded it at these there were all these stash houses along the water, really nice neighborhoods.
Interesting.
Yeah, so they like, you know, you wouldn't be surprised.
Neighborhood dumped some stuff at late at night onto the dock, and.
It's just everyone just kind of mind's your own business. It would take Ray five days to get from Jamaica to Florida, and it took him ten days to get from Columbia to Florida.
Yeah, this is in the era before the go fast boats and cocaine, so they're doing the opposite.
They're taking the slow boats exactly.
So he'd pilot this like specially fitted boat through the maze of as you were saying, all these Florida inlets in the middle of the night. His crew would move the bales of weed from the boat to the beach, and then the marijuana bundles, which like one of his guys later said that it looked like horse feed because it's just big bales of it. The bales of it would be weighed on these huge, like enormous scales and then transferred to the stash houses. And this went on
for years. They were moving like one hundred thousand pounds at a time, like I said weight. So when a criminal enterprise is doing really well, like bringing in a lot of cash, it often becomes really hard to store and keep that physical cash. So you can't just you can't just deposit it in the bank for so many reasons. You know, they're the daily limits. You need to be able to like pick up.
And run, you need to pay your guys, and you don't want to go to the bank to get your payroll.
For criminal enterprise, you need to.
Be totally liquid and transferable and like free from seats, definitely. So Ray he dealt with his cash storage problems by storing stacks of hundreds in orange crates in his parents' attic. But then one day his dad found, of course, and that's hard to explain. I wonder if he had like break some off to his dad to be quiet, like you didn't see this. Here's a crate.
Totally keep your.
Ray's like, I gotta get serious about this. I can't stash it at my parents house. He opened a bank account in the Cayman Islands, so now he's adultings. Then he used some of the cash to get gold bars. And it's all about the laundering obviously. So he established like seafood and boat building companies in Panama and Honduras. Smart and then he invested it, bought.
More boats, good grof you want to grow.
Yeah, So here's the thing, though, fishermen have to be observant, like they monitor all the little changes and shifts around them, same with sailors and the fo Yeah, the fishermen who shared the docks with raised boats, they noticed something like he goes out a lot, comes back fully laden, but he never left the pier with ice, and like, you have to have that if you're going to go out and plan on catching fishes. Never loaded up ice.
You don't want hot fishing on your boat.
Okay. So this big full boat comes back and his nets were always unused and dry.
That's another give away.
Yeah, so it just wasn't adding up. So in June of nineteen seventy four, the cops they're onto him. He gets arrested. When he got busted, he had five four hundred and seventy six dollars in cash in his pockets. He also had a briefcase in sight there was another twenty grand in US currency. Yeah, he had cash from Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Kenya. He had some really sweet picks of marijuana, like nice photos weed shot. Yeah, Like I don't know, is it souvenirs? Is it request? Yeah? Look
you look, look what I can get for you. Also in the briefcase blank tourist visas, so he could get into Nicarago whenever he wanted. Oh, he had blank checks
for a Swiss bank account. This paperwork from a German company about a new Mercedes that was ready to be shipped out to him, and then his passport, and according to Outside magazine, it was quote so thick that it stretched out like an accordion and indicated that he had been to twelve countries in the past thirty days, including Jamaica, Columbia, Japan, Hong Kong, Panama, and the Cayman Islands. It's like red flags.
Yeah, my friend Dave used to travel a lot and he had no I know, I've never seen anyone have this.
There's an extension.
Yeah, yes, yeah, I've seen that too. Oh my goodness. His bond when he's busted, like, it's red flag city, right, there's all this evidence again against him. The bond is set at five hundred thousand dollars and he had to surrender that crazy passport. Three months later. His lawyer handed over a cashier's check for the whole amount. Didn't go through a bail bondsman. He's like, ray, we're out of here. It was the largest bond ever posted in Florida's history at that point.
In Florida's history. Yeah, and some history.
Uh huh. So this grand jury indicted him for smuggling more than twelve tons of marijuana and the prosecutors were calling him like a soldier of fortune, tree top flyer of the seas basically. So the trial was supposed to start on January fifth, nineteen seventy five, and he was looking at five years if convey of the smuggling charge, only five because the War.
On drugs had had not started. Yeah, totally.
He probably would get more as more charges would be tacked on. But then something horrible happened. Ray's lawyer went to the court and like made a public announcement that Raymond Grady Stancil Junior had died on New Year's Eve in a scuba diving accident off the coast of Honduras. Well, they were still searching for his body, but it was going to be for like recovery, not rescue.
Its tragic.
Let's take a break and when we get back entertainment and we get back from dangerous diving diving for deals with these ads, We're going to continue this sad tale, Zaren, Karen, Let's have a moment of silence for Raymond Grady Stancil Junior.
Can I laugh during it? Dead?
No, don't laugh. It's so it's so sad. This is what They're said, because he wasn't murdered. Yeah, of course, not dead at the age of thirty seven.
Yeah, I'm sure his lawyer is broken up.
It is. I don't know why you find this so funny.
I don't know either.
Gave his life to Davy Jones's locker.
What's wrong face?
He died? Jarren shouldn't be smiling, but he didn't. No one believed he was really.
No one would the federal prin He's like.
After a week after he made bail, he hopped on a motorcycle and he tore out of Tampa from there, right, he goes to this small airstrip and a buddy of his is waiting there with the plane. Okay, so the two of them they fly to Key West and they met up with his girlfriend, Janet Wood. Now, wait, Elizabeth, didn't this guy have a wife and four kids?
That's right?
Yes, yes, he did. Great questions there he and the missus were estranged.
Oh yeah, profriend makes.
Sense not to like the Key West girlfriend? Like, is this a Jimmy Buffers?
I think it sounds so.
It gets good. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Janet and Ray met quote after he spotted her at the famed chart Room Bar in Key West in nineteen seventy three. It was a watering hole for an neglectic mix of politicians, millionaires, artists, musicians, treasure hunters, and various unsavory types. Singer Jimmy Buffett and
treasure hunter Mel Fisherman frequent visitors in those days. Ms treasure Hunter and then he's like, sees her across the bar as well, and she's like, ohbuh, there it is Jimmy Buffetts sighting was Jimmy Buffett there and introduced.
Who knows the right of only Carl Town.
So in Key West, he gets there, he's out on it. He begs Janet come with me on the run. They're gonna say I drowned in Honduras.
Not true.
He's like, you don't have to ask me twice. Let's get out. Yeah, So off they go. They didn't have a set plan, but like no, Ray knew all the right people for this sort of thing.
Network.
Yeah, like the people he knew. They knew how to move someone silently invisibly a person like drugs and do that pretty much. So first they went to Honduras. He knew it well. He'd run a lot of drugs out of there down there. In fact, he basically knew the entire Gulf of Mexico like the back of his hand. In Honduras, he walked directly into the American embassy and he was like, hello, I am an American tourist and
I've lost my passport. I mean, he did lose it, but not in the way that he happlired Like, what's your name, Dennis Lafferty? I am thirty three years old. I live in Florida. They're like, okay. So it turns out there was a Dennis Lafferty who lived in Florida who would have been thirty three, but he died a year before this. So with a new ID and travel papers secured. Huh, ray Janet, they moved on damn Son. Yeah,
so they go to the island of Roatan. I'm probably not saying that right, forty five miles off the northern coast of Hondura. So during this Christmas break before he fakes his death, all four of his kids, all between the ages of eleven and sixteen. Yeah, they joined him there and they like lived it up. They went snorkling, never fishing in what may have been a torturous development. They all sat around at night and listened to Janet play the guitar, or maybe it was nice, like there's
just lots of puff. The magic Dragon rock me up to say, she's like singing about blowing out a flip flop top. So when the kids made it back to Florida, the cops were there waiting to ask them and their mom if they knew about Ray, like where can we find him? They're like, no, idea, I don't know. The four of us miners just all went to Honduras and hung out on an island by ourselves. Get over it.
Wow.
So from the island, Ray and Janet they went to Guatemala City, Guatemala, and they came up with a plan. Finally, they're like, how about this, Let's get a forty foot boat and just spend our days sailing the seven seas.
I mean, I like the plan. I like where your head's at? You crazy cos it's not really a plan. Yeah, that's the beginning.
And then they're like, how about how about this part of the plant like a dream, We'll just keep going until we get to the Great Barrier reef Wow, Okay, do you have a general Pacific.
But good luck with that.
So off they go. They went Nicaragua, Anama, Colombia, Aruba, Currasow, Bonair. They ditched the boat for a while and then hopped on a motorcycle and like toodled all over the various like Central American mountain ranges. Okay, And when they got to Belize, things got dicey. They were recognized. One of them was Janet was recognized, and but people didn't think she was Janet. They thought she was Patty.
Hurst because and she was kidnapping, held.
For twenty four hours and then released.
But they're like, oh.
They finally, no, I'm not Patty Hurst. Off she goes. She got pregnant. Congratulations you two. That sounds like a fantastic stable like. So in her condition, the couple opted to ditch the boat for good and just fly everyone.
Also medical care during the pregnancy.
Yes, So they go to Venezuela, Peru, Tahiti New Hebrides now called Vanawatu. Yeah, and it was there that they got married. But then sadly, Janet lost the baby, so they were understandably bereft, and they they headed off to Australia finally, you know, heading towards a great barrier reef. They finally settled in North Queensland. It's super rural and remote and the people their mind their own business and it has amazing fish. Yeah, it's a perfect place for Ray.
So I have to say that Port Douglas, where they went, might be the perfect place for me. It's I mean it is. It's hot and tropical and muggy and prona monsoons and cyclones for you. But according to Google street View it's gorgeous. Gorgeous street are gorgeous and not crowded. Yeah. I don't love all the hot, tropical Oh my god, the bugs, I can't even the bugs. Scene must be horrible.
But anyway, here's from the outside article quote. There's a saying in Australia's Far North Queensland region, your history starts here. For decades, this remote stre of pristine beaches and lush rainforest along the continent's northeastern edge has attracted an odd ball mix of Australian hippies and starry eyed foreigners seeking a fresh start. You could be a German count or a renegade chemist who supplied LSD to the grateful dead.
No one gives us stuff, said Andrew Forsyth, himself a former pilot who ferried Pope John Paul the Second and Queen Elizabeth around the world, and relocated to the area in two thousand and two after first visiting some forty years prior. You could fire a gun down the street and you wouldn't hit anybody, said Norm Clinch, a machinist from Brisbane who often fished out of Port Douglas. The police there was one station and they'd be all in their drunk or asleep.
A man, I would miss live music.
I probably have live music, but you're not going to see the famous people. But you know, I think right now, I think this region. I know Eastern Australia is having terrible floodings.
Oh right now, took the summer the wildfire. God.
Yeah. Anyways, Sarah, close your eyes. Oh really, yeah, really, I want you to picture it. It's October nineteen seventy five, springtime in Australia. You are a bartender at the Courthouse Hotel in Port Douglas. It's the oldest pub in Port Douglas and, according to ownership, one of the most iconic pubs in all of Australia. Clean and breezy. The place sits on a corner of the port's main street and
looks out over Anzac Park and the harbor. From your vantage point at the bar, you can look through the wide open veranda to the street and the coral sea beyond. You hear the rumble of an old fifties station wagon come down Wharf Street. It's a slow afternoon at the pub. The sun is shining and there's a lovely, sweet breeze. You watch as the faded green station wagon eases into a spot by the park, and then you watch a
couple get out of the car. They stretch out and turn their faces to the sun, obviously stiff and tired from a long drive. There's no traffic around them, just the sound of the waves and the wind and some palm trees. He's a tall, shaggy haired fellow with a healthy mustache. She's a fit and happy brunette. As you expected, they make their way from the parking lot to your bar. The only patron inside on this afternoon is peg Leg Tommy. He rests his one barefoot on the leg of his barstool,
with his rough artificial leg dangling beneath him. He's been here since you open this morning like many other days. Nursing a whiskey sour and reading the newspaper out of Townsville City, the couple enter the pub and approach the bar. What can I get for you? Ask in a clear American accent. The man asks for a logger. The woman orders a soda water peg Leg Tommy turns to them, extends his hand for a shake, and introduces himself. The couple are charmed by him. They pull up stools and
settle in. Tommy asks them what brings them to Port Douglas. Yes, they tell him they've just relocated here. Lots of weeds tumble in peg Leg. Tommy tells them they smile weed. The man chuckles. You place their drinks on the bar and share an odd with the man. Tommy asks where they're from. I'm Lee Lafferty from Galveston, Texas in the USA. He says. This is my wife, Janet. She's originally from Michigan. To you and Tommy, that information means pretty much nothing,
but you both nod sagely. I'm a fisherman, Lee tells you both, and my parents are dead. Janet says, you and Tommy exchange side eyes. We really do get the weirdos here, you think. Tommy launches into one of his monologues about life in far North Queensland, regaling the couple with tales of bull sharks and massive crocodiles. He hints that that's how he lost his leg. You know better, he got drunk and passed out at a lumber mill when he was in his twenties in New South Wales.
Tommy asks the couple where they're living in the motel down the road a bit, Lee says, But then he tells you both that he's planning on designing a boat, a fifty three footer they'll live on. That sounds like a plan, Tommy says. He and Lee raise a toast to that. Clinking glasses. You look out at the road and wonder if the couple will like it here, make a home here. You hope they do.
Like a cool couple.
Cool couples there, and you get that wish.
I do so.
Ray. He did build that big boat, and the couple lived on it for seven years. It was their first home.
Oh for seven years.
Yeah, he designed and built this big, big old boat. But meanwhile, back at the ranch or the United States, it was Ray's Stancil sighting fever. Yeah, so tips came in that he was in a brothel in Belize, on the beach in Panama, like sipping drinks and Aruba, hanging out in Florida. North Florida Prosecutor David McGee said, quote, it was like Elvis. He became kind of a legend. So in nineteen seventy six, a hot tip came in from Doris. He wasn't just spotted, he was captured. The
Florida Department of Law Enforcement. They were thrilled, so they released this public announcement that Ray was alive in custody and they were on their way to Honduras to go scoop them up. But when they released, they get down there and the cell is empty. But we knew that because he wasn't he was in Australia.
I was assuming is that somebody who was using his old passport, somebody had stolen found.
I don't know what the story is. Dotris was just yank in their chain. I don't know. Back in Australia, Ray A Ka Lee and Janet she just used her name because she's like, I'm not on the run. They were doing great, according to outside quote. Lee outfished the locals in part by using live bait caught with the specially designed cast nets that he had Janet made and sold, and quickly established himself as one of the best port Douglas had ever known. He wasn't just fitting in, he
was thriving totally. Yeah, everyone loved him, and he wasn't making anyone suspicious by like throwing cash around totally.
And also just about to say that the thing about I liked about him being good at fishing is you can bomb with locals if you're a good fisherman, no respect that, and they doesn't necessarily challenge them in the way that they're going to get angry.
And it's not like he had these nuts and he was all proprietary about it. He's like, we'll make some sold. At one point he actually he he borrowed eight grand from this other American expat in order to fix his boat. So it was just like he was just a normal guy and he like paid him back or whatever because.
He think he didn't have the money.
I think he took a lot of the money, and I think they burned through a lot of the money flipped all over South America. Yeah, so, but he was just a normal guy. He did not go back for visits to the United States. They can, yeah, and they just became like a part of the fabric of the community. So after they settled in.
His kids never came to visit him again. Now the ones who visited him new interesting.
Yeah, he settles in. He and Janet they had two daughters, Jesse born in nineteen seventy six and Keana born in nineteen eighty. So Lee and Janet ray slash Lee. They told their daughters a little bit about their dad's former life, but they made it clear that this was just house talk, like, don't tell anyone about this, So of course they told people about it.
Well, they told one person.
When they were teenagers, the girls told their horseback riding instructor about their dad and his you know, former smuggling ways. The instructor Christine Doane. She was a former Olympic horseback rider from the United States, So another tumble in. She didn't tell anyone what she'd been told, and then her brother married one of the girls, so she knew it was like best to keep a zipped on family business.
She later though, told Outside magazine that she didn't like the quote lies in secrecy, which created so much collateral damage in the family. The secrecy and paranoia of the entire family is twisted. Janet is one of the most in denial humans I ever met. The family used to treat this as a young man's hoot. They have an enormous need to whitewash this, so let's consider that. Take a break for some ads. When we return more Tales
of life on the run in remote Australia, zaren. When we left off Ray and Janet, they had settled in far North Queensland in Australia. Do you think I can convince Admiral iHeart to pay for us to go to Australia and meet up with AUSSI rude dudes and tour the country at a leisurely pace.
You're very charming.
Do you have any good blackmail materials on the Admiral that would.
Help give me a couple of weeks?
Okay, So anyway, by the.
Way, I'm loving this story because it's like, you know, actors get to do this where they get to live a life that they didn't live by playing apart, whereas I'm hearing a story that's like Oh, the road not taken.
It is the Baker daff and run away to Australia.
It's the Catharsis of Greek theater. We get to actually live it without having to live it. Ray and Janet they settled in kept quiet. So in the early eighties they moved off the boat and they bought some property and then Ray Aka Lee he founded Danetree River Cruise Center and it still exists today.
You can still go there.
Yeah, may I read to you from their website.
It's for IoT have to ask thank you.
In nineteen eighty seven, Lee and Janet Lafferty opened the Danetree River Cruise Center with a vision to share the spectacular wildlife and rainforest in the most environmentally sensitive way possible dedicated conservationists with an infectious passion for wildlife. The Laffarty name quickly became synonymous with eco tourism and the
Danetree River. Lee was one of the original guides on the river and gained a reputation as the authority on its flora and fauna with his encyclopedic memory and constant fascination with the river. He spent the rest of his life educating others and sharing his passion through his tours.
I love on the early wave of eco tourism.
Oh yeah, and like so over the next decade, the business just like takes off. It's an important part of the region and it brought in a ton of tourist dollars. And you see like pictures of it. It's there's a river tour similar to it. It feels like in Kawaii just about ask it looks like yeah, and it's like, so.
It looks like you're in Raiders of the Lost Art South America exactly.
And it was it was important, like the business was really important in establishing best practices for like cultural respect. They got these you know, aboriginal cognition and stuff, conservation community projects, that kind of stuff. So the family ran this business for thirty five years. Ray aka Lee and Janet. They lived happy, loving, fulfilling lives. But then in June twenty eleventh, some major news broke. An American drug smuggler hiding out in far North Queensland since the eighties had
been captured. Not Ray Peyton Edison i'dson.
There was another smuggler hiding.
In Idson or for those living in Juliatan don't j U L A T T E. N apologies. I don't know how to say it. An hour inland of Port Douglas, an our away. They knew him as Michael McGoldrick McGoldrick. But there's so that is right, there's another smuggler had drifted out to Ray's middle of nowhere to start a new life under a new identity just an hour way. So Peyton Idsen he was the leader of a Santa Rosa,
California smuggling ring. He'd been busted operating an ocean going freighter hauling forty thousand pounds at a time of weed from Thailand to the States.
Twenty tons of pop.
Yeah, twenty. This was child's play for Ray, though He's like.
Both twenty that money over here, it's a huge amount.
Yeah, but Ray was doing one hundred thousand pounds at a time.
Yeah, I know, it's still.
It's a lot. Both of those guys, they're both impressive, both day boys.
I'm very impressive, both of them pulling long Daddy's one of them is much more impressive.
Yes.
In nineteen eighty six, this Peyton he skipped bail and he and his wife and daughter used fake passports to flee to Australia, and so just like Ray and Janet, they opened a tourist operation. They had this like health spa and luxury mountain retreat, okay, and just like Ray a Janet, they'd become beloved members.
Of the community gratually.
So at some point in twenty eleven, the Australian authorities figured out that the real Michael McGoldrick had died in Las Vegas in the eighties, So who is this guy? So they contacted the US Diplomatic Security Service and like a little sleuthing here, some snoop in there, boom, they uncover him Peyton and it was just an hour away from Ray. I'm still trying to get my head around this. And since they both owned tourist operations, I wonder if they ever crossed paths.
I'm sure they had to have tourist industry like conventions, Yeah.
Getting awards. Wow.
Can you imagine though, Ray or whatever, Ray's fear when he sees that headline and he's like, there's no cops out the window, but he's.
Like freaked him out, Like the whole thing freaked him out, and like he he and Janet were just squirrely after this bet because then just three years later, someone grasped him, someone ratted him out. I have my suspicions horse raider. Yeah, we don't know, we don't know whoever it was. Didn't go to the cops, though. They went to the press, specifically to Pulitzer Prize winning Florida newspaper reporter Lucy Morgan.
So at this point, she's semi retired, she's seventy four years old, but she has spent like much of her career reporting on Ray and like keeping tabs on all the sightings. She'd written all these articles about him and like that whole smuggling scene, and then as they're like taken down one by one, she reports on it everyone
but Ray. So she got all these tips over the years, and she's like, you know, I get kind of tired of I'll look into this one and like, you know, I mean, Ray living is like an envirol warrior in rural Australia. Like, oh fine, I'll just chase this one down. It's original. So she starts doing her deep dives. Where was Ray at this point, Well, he's still on the tour service, but now he was battling Parkinson's disease.
All right, he's getting up there.
Yeah, And like medication was helping, but it limited his activities, so he couldn't do as much on the boats. He wasn't supposed to be driving. His hands shook something terrible and he was getting really weak, like a lot of muscle loss. On the afternoon of May twenty six, twenty fifteen, a call came into local police. A pickup truck driving on a winding road had wrecked and wrapped around a massive gum tree. There was this old dog of Beichmpfreze in the truck that was like a little bit dazed
but was going to be okay. But the driver gone killed instantly. It was ray this time he really did die.
Oh.
Everyone in Port Douglas is absolutely devastated. The mayor called him a lovely man and a gentleman. His neighbors and his friends like praised his extensive scientific knowledge, his drive for preservation. One guy said that he didn't have a bad bone in his body.
Take surprise, come to your way.
But yeah, and you know they had some bad bones in his body. He had used him in one of the metaphors, are.
There bones in your body? Like doesn't have a racist bone in their body, doesn't have a bad bone in the kid. The whole idea of thematic bones and bodies kills me, right.
Exactly, So the truth comes out. Lucy Morgan broke the story in the Tampa Bay Times, so she gets the tip he dies, and then.
She breaks the confirmation he divorced.
He had divorced Janet in twenty eleven, but.
It really got squirrely.
Yeah, So either because of that or maybe despite that, I don't know. This huge piece runs in the Tampa Bay Times. His sister said, quote, it really just broke my heart when he disappeared. He never tried to contact us again. I felt so bad that his children had to grow up without him. So you know he's this he's two people, Yeah, totally. And about those kids though, two of the boys, Ronald and Raymond Junior, Raymond the third. So if Ronald and Raimon in the third, Yeah, they
did time in federal prison importing cocaine. Hell, you know they were.
In legends like that. You're gonna think this is always an option.
Sure, well, they were indicted in nineteen ninety one. Both of them then immediately went on the LAMB. I learned it from Watching You, Ronald, he got picked up in nineteen ninety four, but Ray the Third he was able to avoid capture for twenty years, just like.
Popa Wow, knock off the bill.
He headed up to Alaska. He went the other direction, and he used the name Don Davenport. Oh, He's like, I'm Don Davenport from Colorado. Yeah, so he got married. What's amazing is that he married a cop. One of the articles refers to her as a Kodiak police officer. So I like to imagine a big bear in a police So much more fun that way. So Ray the Third, Oh, when he's married to the to the bear. He also had a wife and kid back in Florida. But whatever
did he do it? Just like Papa from Watching You, he got busted in Texas in twenty ten, gets extradited to Florida. Yeah, he told Outside Magazine via a letter written from the Federal pen quote, I think my father picked a good place to have a life, and I'm glad that he won and got out of here when he did. I missed him, but used what he taught me and lived without regrets for my life. That's yeah, devastating about what he taught you. Ronald was right there
with his brother. He wrote in a letter to Outside from the Federal.
Pen quote, they have time.
I don't blame Dad for not showing up. I'm sure that he missed certain aspects of what was left behind. It's like you cut a chunk out of your heart leaving. But things seldom end the way you visualize. In life. You can only take your best shot and roll with the punches.
Wow.
Yeah, he's had some rough emotional lows.
Yeah.
So, like I said, the Riverboat Company still exists. This is from their website. When Lee passed away in twenty fifteen, his daughter Kiana inherited the business and assumed the responsibility of championing this amazing ecosystem to the world. Keana has remained dedicated to operating sustainably and in harmony with the
environment and local community. She continues to uphold all the values put in place by her father and has proven herself not only as a business owner, but also as a passionate environmental activist.
Good for her.
Yeah, So, to close this out, I'd like to leave you with commentary from Norman Duke.
Not the Norman Duke.
Yeah, the world's foremost authority on Mangrove for us and also close friend of Ray Slash Lee. Thank you When asked about how people in far North Queensland talk about Lee as someone who found redemption, as a man running away from a troubled past, who transformed himself into a protector of one of the world's most pristine natural habitats. This is what Duke had to say, quote reflecting on it now, It's just what Australia is all about. It's all about redemption, all about finding a new life.
Interesting way I look at colonialism.
Sorry, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Hearing the road not taken? I am glad I took the road.
I did he too, because living life on the lamb sounds like just punishing for anyone who ever once loved you.
Yeah, that's what I think is my takeaway. Thank you for asking. All right, Yeah, what did you think is the complexity of being these two? He's still in there, there's the bone and the body thing, right, Like, so he's the as a as a fugitive or as a criminal. He's got these good aspects to who he is. He's always been an environmentalist and like you know, but like a very personal likable.
You know, they like people.
He wasn't violent, he didn't hurt people, but there was a certain violence to abandoning the family.
And the kids.
And you see that like his his boys think that he's you know, he was a good role model, I guess, whereas like he took down both of their I don't see it like when from like a they stand back when we get a view from where we see it of like the damage that he did to these guys, because.
I don't fault them for thinking what they think, and I don't even pity them. It's not like that, but I can see the limits of their world like a snow globe, yea, And they don't know that they're in the snow globe, and it doesn't have to be the way they know right and smart for what they know from based on where they what they have, no, you know what I mean. I admire how they reacted to their world. In some ways, I feel bad that their dad pushed him into that snowbe.
And the Horseback Lady talking about Janet being so in denial. We have to survive, Like how having that hang over you that you have you build this lovely life in this community come crashing down in one moment. That the pressure of that, you kind of have to disassociated the same thing. Yeah, what was horse lady?
No, I don't mean that she decided not to snitch because it benefited her family.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's the same. It's the same choice she's not because it benefits her family, exactly.
A choice exactly. But so like this notion of redemption, I am fully a believer in that, and I'm a believer in reinvention of oneself. I think that's an important solitary. But the wreckage in your wake.
Good, none of us are in island, Jack.
No, and it brings me back to.
Obligations, your original thesis.
Thank you, yes that in summary, embrace your obligations. You know that you have. You can't run from them, and it causes more wreckage when you do. Dave, I need to talk back.
I got your covered.
Oh my god, Hella, get.
Hey, producer, d Darren and Elizabeth, this is Heather from Texas. First, thank you for renewing my love of garden and gun with that fabulus story from Alabama a couple of weeks ago. And thank you for being my constant companions in the car. You make me laugh every day. I love widiquitous quime.
Yeah, here we do it for you for the people.
Garden and Guns should cut us in on a new subscriptions.
That's what you want.
Oh, I love that one. Uh that's us for today. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com, which is on the ten most Wanted websites list. Thank again. You can also find us on Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube, Ridiculous Crime Pod. Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Leave us a talkback on the iHeart app. We also, I don't know when it's going to come out, if it has or if it will be in a few weeks. There's the Puzzler podcast
and iHeart podcast. We're on that on two. Yeah. We'll link at places and keep your eyes peeled. Izz Yeah, it's excellent, but whatever you do, reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by noted Australian drifter Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Youith. Research is by fugitive riverboat guide Marisa Brown. The theme song is by One Legged Crocodile Hunter Thomas
Lee and one Armed beer Slinger Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred guest haarn makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Rat Snitch tour Boat Customers on Hold with the Paper in Florida, Ben Bowen and Noel Brown. Ridicous Crime Say It One More Time Gequious Crime.
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