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You are now listening to True Murder, The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that have written about them. This is the remarkable story of Frank Matthews, a charismatic drug kingping from the late nineteen sixties and seventies who organized a huge criminal enterprise before jumping bill in nineteen seventy three with fifteen to twenty million and a beautiful woman
nicknamed Black Caesar. Matthews has never been seen again in what has become one of organized crime's most intriguing mysteries. Lewis Rice spent twenty six years as a special agent with DEA nineteen seventy four to two thousand and one. During that time, he conducted hundreds of major international narcotic investigations and was assigned to New York, Kingston, Jamaica, Miami, Washington,
d C, Philadelphia, and Detroit. He retired as a Special Agent in Charge in New York Division, the largest operational office in the DEA. The book that we're featuring this evening is Black Caesar, The Rise and disappear Sperience of Frank Matthews Kingpin, with my special guest, journalist and author, Ron Chepzik, and also Lewis Rice. Welcome to the program, Lewis Rice, and thank you for Jesus interview.
Good to be with you to night.
Thank you very much, and for our audience. Ron seems to have not called in as of yet, but I'm sure he will, and so we'll just proceed with this interview and then your perspective personally, and well here's Ron right now, so maybe we'll just get him in the conversation. Hello, good evening, Ron, How are you good evening?
Fine? How are you doing? Dan?
Very good? Thank you. We just introduced the synopsis of the book and did a brief introduction for Lewis Rice. You're our co guest and so welcome to the program. Ron Chepsick, Welcome, back to the program.
I appreciate being back on the show. A good guests as well with lou Rice.
Yes, and a very very intriguing story. So let's get right to this. Then, tell us a little bit about as much as you could. I know there's much more information of Frank Matthews and his later criminal life, but take us back to where it all started and tell us where Frank Matthews is originally from, who he was raised. Tell us a little bit about that. Ron about Frank Matthews's background.
Well, he's a very intriguing character. He's Southern born and bred. He was born in Durham, North Carolina. His mother died when he was young and he was raised by his aunt Marcella. And the stories about him as a kid growing up in Durham, you know, this was during racial segregation times, you know, in the fifties and the sixties were thing. He was a natural born leader, uh, fearless. Everybody seemed to uh to like him. He was entrepreneurial and all those qualities uh did him well later when
he decided to become a gangster. But he he was pretty ambitious and uh, like a lot of young blacks at that time UH that went that went north. He decided that he wasn't gonna do the straight route. He was going to do the gangster route, and UH he went to Philadelphia and ended up in the numbers business, UH, in the black community, and he stayed everybody year and was very kind of hazy about why he left uh Philadelphia.
But anyways, he ended up in New York and of course if you wanted to make a mark in the in the criminal world, that was the place to go to. New York City, you know, it was the hub of of everything gangster. So he ended up again in the numbers for a while, and he wanted to break into the uh into the drug trade, and at that time it was controlled by the Italians through what is called
was called the French connection. Was called the French connection because the laboratories were were in France, in Marseilles, and but it was run essentially by the Italian mafia. And at that time, this was in the sixties when he came. He came, uh probably around sixty three or sixty four UH to New York City. And at that time, if you were black and you were and you wanted to uh, you know, to work in the drug trade. You eventually essentially were subservient to the Italians the way to Italians.
And uh, he did get some some financing. He wanted to break in, but they wouldn't let him in. They wouldn't you know, which which was in most cases, it would have closed the door to him. But there was another gangster named Rolando Gonzales, a Cuban who had great connections in Venezuela, and he had to jump bail and he fled the country and he kept contact with with Frank, and that's how Frank got started. He started through a connection through his connection in in Venezuela and in heroin,
and it was the perfect storm. I mean, this is when when when heroin was becoming really big, you got Vietnam veterans coming back, twelve percent of them we're addicted to heroin. Uh. In Vietnam, you had poverty and and drugs were widely used. You had the counterculture and uh, you know, the qualification of drugs. And so he entered the drug trade at at a very opportune time. But
nobody really knew any think about him. It was really strange because he was rapidly becoming you know, one of the biggest drug dealers in in the country and UH and the law enforcement didn't really didn't really have anything on him, and it was by a stroke of luck that they did uncover, you know, Frank matt Use as
a as an emerging drug dealer. So that sets him up, you know, when he is about to be discovered by the UH, uh DA and UH and the NYPD and the Drug Task Force they set up to investigate drug trafficking in UH in New York City.
The thing I'd like to talk about that we just kind of skipped over a little bit, because you do outline a little bit about Durham, North Court, North Carolina basically, and and the part of the reason why, or the thing that shaped Frank Matthews is that this Durham is a is an unusual community, a very very successful black community. And and as you point out, there's many people from
a certain high school that went on to college. So it's a yeah, right, sort of an example of a very very affluent, uh black community at a time when there weren't so many affluent black communities that were majority of the business were blackness, and so it was it was something that anybody that lived in that community sort of that rise for success or that that the ability to achieve some modicum of success seemed to be possible in Durham.
So right, yeah, he had plenty of examples of success around him.
Uh.
You know, it was called the Harlem of the South Durham and they had what they called the Black Wall Street, you know, with very successful bankers, a lot of money. Uh you know, it's a segregated community, but BLACKSI okay, and Durham actually a lot of them. And so so you know, he grew up in this entrepreneurial environment and uh he saw you know a lot of uh blacks becoming successful. So I think that they had impact on him.
Now, lewis uh you we have been involved with the Drug Enforcement Agency, the DEA. Obviously you might not have been around right at the very beginning of this, but based on your research of the DEA itself, like Rona said that Frank wasn't really on authorities radar all the time as prominent as maybe he obviously.
He should have been.
But at the time, based on your research of the DEA, who were the main players in New York that the DEA felt were the important drug dealers? Heroin dealers at that time, and not Frank Matthews.
So Dan, I think it's important always to set the context. DEA was formed just a little over forty years ago, probably forty years ago, in a couple of weeks in July of nineteen seventy three, by then President Richard Nixon, and he formed the Drug Enforcement Administration because the country had a major problem with heroin. You had soldiers, as Ron mentioned, coming back from the Vietnam War, addicted to
opium poppies. We had large numbers of heroin addicts in New York City, and addicts commit a lot of petty crimes, carjackings, robberies. The media will write about these events, they lead these six o'clock news and daily papers, and the politicians say, we have to do something about it. The law enforcement system was not as strong and sophisticated back in the seventies. You had a lot of corruption in New York City.
You had the Cerproco issues, you had the Knapp Commission, and President Nixon said, I'm going to form a special agency and named it the Drug Enforcement Administration, which was a combination of various federal investigative agencies and intelligence agencies. With the sole purpose to go after major narcotic dealers.
At the time that DEA was formed in seventy three, Matthews was already a fugitive, having been identified as a major, significant dealer heroin and cocaine, the leader of an organization that was distributing, you know, large amounts of drugs throughout the Eastern Seaboard. I think at one point we tracked him in the distribution throughout twenty one states and you know,
he was arrested. These guys were colorful, not only Matthews, but you had guys in the seventies, a lot of African American dealers like Frank Lucas, Nikki Bonnes, Robert Stephanie, Zach Robinson. Each one was colorful, had a crew, threw around a lot of money, attended only sporting events. They liked to be seen in public, and the medialy write about them. So he kind of made it somewhat easier for law enforcement to, you know, zero in on these guys and try to find out how they were making
their money. And so Matthews of course came to the attention of especially a very young agency to try to show that they can develop the major cases, arrest the major drug dealers and bring some calm to the streets of the city throughout the country, and they went after Matthews. Unfortunately, forty years later he still has not been caught, but it was not because of a lack of effort.
So outline the plan to what was the plan to try to infiltrate this gang, and what was the methodology that you tried to employ here to try to bring down this guy. What was some of the techniques.
Well, as I said when I joined in seventy three, Matthews was joined in seventy four. Rather Matthews was already a fugitive, but it was normal investigative techniques. I mean, to the extent that you can. You try to insert an undercover agent so you have firsthand knowledge of the planning of the organization, who's in the leadership position, how they acquire the narcotics, and then how they move their money and any properties they may be purchasing around the country.
If you cannot get an undercover agent in there, because sometimes these organizations are extremely insular and they're not open to new faces, you know, you would have arrested maybe someone in the organization and that person says, hey, I'll give you the information to maybe reduce my federal sentence and take you inside, or I'll be your eyes and ears on the inside and let you know what's going on.
And of course behind the scenes, you know, we would try to corroborate what they're saying and telling us to
make sure that we have a strong prosecutal case. And usually again, since this is the Drug Enforcement Administrations and these cases going to be prosecuted in federal court, and you're working throughout the investigation, which may last for six months to well over a year before you actually arrest somebody, you're working closely with a federal prosecutor, and so you're going to charge these people at the highest level of the federal trafficking charges so they can, you know, will
upon conviction, serve the maximum sentence, and that will kind of encourage them to cooperate. Realizing that the only thing a lawyer can do for you is basically drain you drive by charging your lawyer fees. But the case is so tight because we had the advantage of working six months to a year before we actually put handcuffs on you, that there is no wiggable The only way out of going to prison for a long period of time is
to cooperate, and slowly but surely people start to realize that. Then, you know, they try to reduce their liability by joining the team, either cooperating as a witness for historical informational conspiracy cases or actually becoming a witness and introducing other people into the organization.
Now, Ron, we got to go backwards where I was gonna Well, I want to go back and explain how we just talked about how they did some research or they did the operation was six months in the making, but you talk about it being a courier for the for this French connection that he has directly in Venezuela that ends up leading to the downfall of all these guys.
So tell us about the actual indictment and how it came that Matthews was finally even though it looked like he couldn't be caught, how he finally was indicted.
Well, they built they built a case, like Louis saying, you know, gradually, and I was gonna add too that they used two very important techniques as well. Uh they got cort ordered wire taps you know, to uh to to uh uh to listen in on conversations with with Matthews and some of his associates, and they also did old fashion and surveillance too. And what's really interesting about Matthews is that he seemed to know that this was going on, but he didn't seem to seem to care.
But slowly they put together a case. And at that time, in nineteen seventy they passed the Rico statue where you can prove conspiracy. You know, a person didn't have to handle drugs, you just have to be part of a conspiracy that dealt with drugs in an organization, and so it was a very effective tool. It was a new tool. But they build a conspiracy case against Matthews in about eighteen others in his organization, and he didn't stick around
for the indictment. He was gone July second, nineteen seventy three, and it wasn't until next year that the others in his organization were prosecuted.
Now, how is it that they'd let somebody like him go? They obviously wanted to post a big bail with him. And what was the initial bail that was demanded from him? And what did he eventually negotiate that down to? And then how on earth? And why explain because it's a great story on why he was going to court. He didn't have no reason to think that he was going to do life. He thought he was confident in this
court case. But what happened? So take us back how he even got the bail in the first place, What was the bail, and then how it was that he decided to.
Move. Well, the law enforcesmen decided to They're worried that he might he might skip town because they're getting word that he knew that they're on to them. So he went to Las Vegas with a girlfriend named show Denis Brown and was on his way to the Super Bowl that was played between Washington Redskins and Miami Miami Dolphins in nineteen seventy three Super Bowl, and he was arrested at McCarron Airport in Las Vegas. And when he went before the judge, it was an astounding veil. It was
like five million dollars bail. It was the biggest bail in history, and it was, you know, just incredibly. They really late. They made a good case for why the bill should be high, but even the uh the prosecutors that came down from New York were shocked by the thing. But by the time he left went down to two point five five million, and he was extradited back to
New York City. And when a couple of months later, when when bail was set, uh, he went before the judge and they argued for a very strong, very tough bail sentence on him because they were afraid that he was going to jump jump bail once it was set, because there was a belief that he was putting away money. Uh, you know, every month he was putting away money, and they the DA suspected that that he was getting a nest egg that he would use if if he had
to flee down. So it came he went down to three hundred and twenty five thousand, which was you know, considered outrageous by the prosecutor because they thought it was too far, too low. And of course he was easily able to raise that money. And and like he hung around and in July second, a couple months later, he jumped in.
Now, but tell us why he did that, because that's a very good point, because I think in hindsight you could always.
Say obviously that was you know, not the right decision, because he fled. But you know, bail is basically to ensure somebody's going to go to court and come back to court and look at roots in the community. You know, does he have family ties, is he married, does he have kids? What's a likelihood you know that we think that he will return, even though the offense may be very serious. You know, most defendants do show up a most defendants do upon conviction, you know, go to jail.
There's a lot there's a percentage that become fugitives. But you know, there's some tough decisions. You got to way back and forth, and the courts try to be fair and balance everything out. But obviously, you know, Frank had plans that he wasn't He didn't want to spend any more time in jail and realize that he was caught
in a very serious investigation. That this was not you know, the police doing some surveillance, making some observations, arresting him, and the only thing they knew about him but that you know, he had a large amount of narcotics or them that this is an investigation that had been going on for a substantial period of time. They arrested various members of his organization and identified him as the leader of the organization, so he's going to face the most, the more significant charges.
But ron I understood that there was a and no one's been secifically, I think, but some authority said listen, Frank, another indictment's going to be coming down, and you're going to be looking at life at this thing, and you might get it. And that he actually asked. He actually asked because he heard the rumor that they were going to throw the book at him.
I think it was it was lose eight forty eight I think, yeah, which is yeah, eight forty eight right right, and they're gonna throw And so the story goes that he was in the courthouse a day or two before he jumped in, and he asked Raymond Dearry, who was a federal prosecutor at that time, you know that question, are you going to throw the eight forty eight at me? And and he he left it very nebulous. You know, he didn't say, yes, we're going to throw it, but he said in such a way that it could have
been interpreted that they were going to do that. And so the story goes that, you know, that was probably the reason, you know, the thing that pushed Frank to decide to to flee. But you know, we really don't know, you know, if he was planning to do it, what he was planning to do. We hear all kinds of stories. That's the hard part of researching gangster history. And in Frank's case, you know, it's very difficult to research it because directors are missing from that trial. I mentioned in
nineteen seventy five of his all of his lieutenants. A lot of people wouldn't talk. A lot of people are dead. So you know, you had to if you're a writer, you have to couch what you say. You know, you know, it's very hard to make a definitive statements about certain events in the story.
Well, you could make an inference to a certain degree if if if he did get information, whether the person said definitively you're going to do a life sentence for this new indictment. Maybe he didn't want to take the chance he had.
He didn't He didn't say that. He said he said he said maybe maybe Frank. Maybe he left it very you know, it wasn't like it wouldn't have definitive.
Well, if you had the possibility of doing a life imprisonment. You might just take all the money that you made and flee. You got a beautiful woman and a young, beautiful woman, and so he goes. I mean he had the ability to do that. Now, tell us a little bit about this Cheryl Brown who is she? Because he has a wife that's was involved in his business. They called her. I guess she was involved in counting the money.
She knew about she was in a confidently she was indicted, and she was indicted, even though on a technicality she beat it. But tell us about Cheryl Brown who she is, and then tell us about his former wife and his three children. So again we kind of skipped over those things.
Yeah, I see you read the book, Dan, Yeah, yeah, you've got you know, all the facts that that's good on that. But the Cheryl Denice Brown was was a girlfriend. And Frank had lots of girlfriends. I mean, one of its meeting about this story was hearing all the women he had in various towns. Uh For example, he was a frequent visitor to the Playboy Club in UH in Atlanta,
and he had a couple of girlfriends there. I met another guy introduced me to a woman in Philadelphia that was supposedly his girlfriend, but he seemed to take a really liking to this. Sheeryld Denise Brown, and we don't know too much about her. She was about five five or six years younger and very beautiful. He saw the picture in the uh in the book and she evidently she liked to hang around in bar. She came from a good family. The her parents evidently were school teachers
and uh. But she met Frank one night and at a bar and was obviously taken by you know him, and he was a very handsome guy. You know, the woman reading the book look the pictures. They say, he's a very good looking guy. So you know, he was attracted to him. And what's really amazing, you know, he was a womanizer. But he also had a wife name Barbara Hinton, uh and three kids at home, and one of them was was by him. And she took a
very active role in her business. She had accounting background and uh, she she really took care of the money. That's what the d agents that that investigated Frank said. You know, they said she was very capable, giveable woman.
And what's really strange is it's hard not to believe that she didn't know all this stuff was going on, you know, Frank's womanizing and all that, you know, because he was gone for a long periods of time because of the because of the nature of his business, and he would travel, and you know, it didn't seem to really bother her. And there's really no stories once once she he left with this woman, well we don't know
if if he left with this woman. We assumed she he left with this woman because she disappeared at the same time he did in that same period there. But actually this is the story for her, is the same story for the story for Frank. There's really no no evidence to prove it conclusively on that. But after Frank left, she never really talked about it. As I mentioned in
the book, she was very close mouthed. The agents went to see her first, the first the d agents that were on the case, and after a year was transferred to the Marshalls, and she didn't really she really didn't say anything. And eventually she moved to Cincinnati. I have a story in there I met. I was able to track down a couple of kids that grew up with the children of Matthews after he fled. She moved to
an apartment on ninety fifth Street. And one of the interesting things they told me was when they went into the house that there was no pictures of Frank anywhere. You know, he was absolutely you know, gone from their
lives as far as pictures were concerned. And I always thought that was interesting, you know it you know, And there's really no evidence that she had a lot of money when when after he fled, which means that that uh, and that he that she got some of the money because he's supposedly fled with with between fifteen and twenty million dollars and again that's not you know, can be proven that, but that's what that's what the DA suspected,
and that's the general wisdom about Frank Matthews. But the Marshalls did have lost the search of the financial records and they couldn't find anything, any evidence that that they had a bumping wealth anytime during the forty years that Frank fled. So whether he talked to them or not after he fled, uh, you know, it's really an open question. I really don't think that that he did, uh. And I have my own theories about what happened to him.
Lewis low of what what exactly does the DA in terms of looking for him. Obviously he was a fugitive and very high up on the list of people that were wanted. What did the what was the what did the DEA conclude after looking for him for a certain amount of time, well in terms of where he might have went and what might have happened to him.
You know, at one point, immediately when he became a fugitive been seventy three, a DA formed a special operation which was funded out of DA headquarters in Washington, d C. With the group of agents and New York City detectives that were intimately familiar with Matthews and his investigation, and they had the money and the resources and the push to really travel and interview people and try to locate him.
I mean, he was as if you can imagine this, this is a new agency up against other federal agencies that have been around a lot longer doing a similar mission, like the FBI Customs, and you have to prove your worth, and you know, you've got a big guy in your area, which is narcotics, and he's on the run. So they spent a lot of time and a lot of resources really having agents dedicated working around the world developing leads
to try to locate him and arrest him. And at some point, I think in the early eighties, there was a mandate from the Attorney General that now all futures of de EA would be turned over to the US Marshals to investigate and pursue. And then the U S Marshals out of the Eastern District of New York picked
up the investigation. Then they worked, you know, over time and over in overdrive, trying to locate him, also redoing the the case file that the DEA agents had put together, putting money out there, talking to new to people again.
You know, sometimes time. Sometimes initially people may not want to talk, but you know, a couple of years ago, buying for whatever reason, money or you know, you know, change in the relationship where they're no longer friends or that tight, you know, they may want to give him up. So the Marshalls tried to do the same thing, and
we never could locate him. And as I moved on through my career, there were points in the early nineties and at the end of the nineties, closing the two thousand in Philadelphia and also New York, we started to beat the bushes again to see if we could drum up some interest and finding out where he was. And we had people, you know, give us some information and
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Do in Philadelphia and working with the agents in New York to really again, you know, travel around the country and then try to increase the award reward for him and see if we can get some information. We did get some information, We did get some leads, and we will we follow those up. But obviously he's not in custody now, so it was not a total success.
What was the theory and what was the theory that where he likely could have gone? I mean, there's only so many countries that you're more likely to go to. What was the idea in terms of where he might have stashed some cash and where he would be able to go in the country that would be friendly to somebody on the run.
You know, it's a good question he could have gone to some place in the United States because or out of the country. Because the best thing is if these guys can you know, do a one pint eighty in terms of lifestyle, you know, not be highly public, not the fancy clothes, not for a lot of for around a lot of money, and blend in in the community and obey the rules and the of the community and not draw attention to themselves. They increased the chances of
staying out there, you know. Uh, And and they're motivated to do that because they don't have so much at stake. I mean, they know exactly who they are. And if somebody starts to wonder, where did that you get money? How can he hazardless money? Or the story he's telling about how he inherited this money doesn't make sense. I think he's into something illegal. All you have to do is anonymously call the police and an investigation is started.
So it's it's really encumbered upon a fugitive a major future if he wants to stay out there, to really blend in, you know, take a what they call a square job, a nine to five job, and you know, be a productive member of that community and not draw any attention to yourself, you know, in the United States or outside the United States.
You know now, is it likely based on the character that you studied, not that you knew him, but based on what you saw in terms of his lifestyle in his entire life or that you know of, is it likely he got a nine to five job and just blend it in somewhere.
It's likely that he knew that the case against him was strong because he knew as key the key members of his organization were arrested. He knew that with the passing of time, the loyalty sort of is not as strong as it was in the early days, that somebody may cooperate and and really, you know, give a strong evidence against him. And he knew he was facing on the down side, ten years in federal prison or up
to life in prison. And so if there's anybody that's going to be motivated not to trip a wire, it would be that kind of individual. He's a smart guy. I mean, he was a leader of an organization twenty one states and he wasn't even thirty years of age. You know. He was the guy that was challenging the you know, Italian mafia way back when when Omurta meant something in the mafia. Okay, so he was he was a strong guy. He was a bright guy. He was a smart guy. He was a vicious guy. You know.
But he knew that now it's it's over, it's over. You know, I don't want to make that mistake and go back to the penitentiary for the rest of my life. You know, because if you look at all the federal crimes in the books, the probably one of the most severe ones is the ones for narcotics trafficking, you know, and even when you travel outside in the United States you mentioned overseas. I mean, what these major drug dealers
fear more than anything else is a federal indictment. Because if there's a federal indictment with their name or in the United States and we have extradition with that country, they know sooner or later they're going to be in the in the US court system, and at the federal level, that money is not going to be able to help them. They're not can be able to manipulate the criminal justice system. It's not going to help them with the jury, it's
not gonna help them with the judge. The only thing that the only person is going to benefit from that is a lawyer. So what the motivation would have been totally in his interest to really change his lifestyle one hundred and eighty degrees.
Now, Ron, I pose the same question to you, but the some let me ask, well, let me just I was just let me put this because this piqued my interest, the idea that a twenty year old woman would never contact her family again. And like you said, you found it unusual that the photos weren't on the walls anymore.
At the Hinton family and along with his kids. What is your theory about where he went and what actually happened And do you really think that they both survived if there was no contact with those important figures in their both their lives.
Well, let me put this way. There's a lot of people have disappeared in Gangman and all that, but there's always something like Weddy. When Weddy Boyger disappeared, you know, they had an ATM picture of an ATM machine in nineteen ninety eight and the news coming back to Boston. They had very reliable evidence. But in terms of Matthews, and it's described in the book Mike Pizzy, who was a US marshall that tracked the Matthews story for like
fifteen years and all that. You know, he said that when at the end of the day they had lots of reams of paper, but not one solid piece of evidence. There's not one solid piece of When I say not one solid there are no informants. You know, usually somebody talks, they want to save their skin. There's absolutely no informants.
One of the marshals went back about fifteen years twenty years after Matthews disappeared and reinterviewed all those people that were still alive on that indictment, and he came away convinced that none of them had ever seen Matthews after he disappeared. You know, they wouldn't talk. They said, we're not going to tell you anything. But he left, you know, convinced that they didn't they didn't do that. There's no fingerprints,
there's no sightings. There's all kinds of stories and I described them in the book about seeing him, crazy stories. You know, it's like sasquatch. It's like sasquatch. So there's really no evidence. And I think that something could have happened to Matthews soon after he after he jumpail. I think he was alive for a certain period of time.
But in the book, I described a very interesting side story about the CIA right and the Corsican mafia, and Matthews had really disrupted that nice druggering they had going by talking very freely on the phone. And I think part of that was because he had a cocaine problem and it was getting worse near the end, just before he jumped. And you know, if he left the country, he was out of his element. You know, he didn't
have any homeboys to rely on. He wasn't in his neighborhood, and he could easily have been killed by somebody, especially if you're reported to have fifteen to twenty million dollars and you say, well, where's this money. There's absolutely no I mean money laundering laws in those favor primitive and actually there's actually no trail of this money anywhere, and so you know, he could have He was also potentially
a witness in that trial. And the CIA was involved with drugs, just like they were in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and you know, they were very worried about Castro had taken power, and you know they formed the lines of convenience with the Corsican Mafia's mafia and could easily have gotten rid of Matthews. And of course I described in the book where they were going to build a very strong case using the Venezuelan connection, and the CIA told him to drop it, and they did.
They cut off that whole part of the of the case they had against the Matthews ring and those sixteen to eighteen drug traffickers in Venezuela that were busted in that big bust that happened, including Orlando Gonzalez. All of them were quietly two years ago released without any charges being filed against them. Then then when to jail, and
which is very interesting. So I don't think he's a lie, really, I don't, although it's you know, my opinion is conjectured, but I think it's an educated opinion because I think most of the evidence for him being dead is stronger than for him being alive.
Yeah, yeah, you state that, you make that case.
You know.
I found interesting too is the story you tell about the arrogance of Frank Matthews and the Smalls. Basically of Frank Matthews when he moves across the street from Tommy three Fingers and Paul Castillano there and just gives us the finger up the hundred literally there. That tell us a little bit about that because and what that possibly could have done for him as well or done again, you know, not done any good for him.
Lest was that way? Well, you know, he went out. He was living in Brooklyn on Carkson Avenue and a nice apartment and nothing, very very lavish. But of course he had more money than you what to do with. And I give you a plenty of examples in the book about the money that he had was phenomenal on that and so he decided he was going to move
out into a nicer surroundings. And for why he chose Todheil on Staten Island, nobody seems to know, you know, but he must have known when he moved into that house. And I went by that house and I looked across the street and you could see the sign on the on the on the driveway Luchesi right there, and literally you could see into the other house across the street. So that's where he moved. And you know, these Italians
weren't it's actually racially enlightened, you know, back then. And they have this black person move into the neighborhood and there were no black people living in that neighborhood and a gangster the boot because he knew who he was, and you know, living this high, you know, nice lifestyle redoing the old house. There were contractors there. They spent like two hundred thousand dollars for the house. There's a lot of money back then on that. And he didn't
seem to care. And there were you know, they talked about him and they had some of the Manfia guys on the wire. In fact, one of the agents told me that there was even talk about getting rid of Matthews because he was considered a nuisance. And I think that if Matthews would have hung around much longer, there probably would have been some problems and maybe some violence that would have resulted from his presence in that neighborhood. But you know, he put his kids into Staten Island
Academy and so he was a good father. I interviewed the tutor you know, in the book, and essentially he was a good father. He hired this tutor. He came over every day, and I think that Matthews was really thinking about getting out of the drug trade and doing something legitimate because he had a very brilliant business mind, and he had bought a lot of real estate and
he had a lot of businesses. And I think that his long term plan was to get out and he wanted to have a better life, you know, for his kids, and that was evident the way he treated them.
What's the fate of the children now?
And it's interesting, you know, I described it in the book The Marshals interviewing the children, you know, fifteen to twenty years on and it was very shocking because if you know Matthews had been in touch with that, I find it very hard to That's another reason why I think he's probably dead. I talked with the grandson, the son, his namesake, Frank Junior didn't want to talk to me.
I talked to his grands and I didn't get the feeling that you know, there was he was a presence in their lives, you know, Frank Matthews the president in their lives. But their lives went to hell after he disappeared, and I think all three of them ended up in trouble with the law in some way, and the marshals did do us. You know, they never got any money, They never had any money, and so it's very very,
very strange. You know, if if Frank had fled the way he treated them while he was still on this side of the law and then to flee and then to totally ignore his children, now, you know, is he's very strange if he was alive.
Yeah, Now, lou what was the what are the DEA estimates of the kind of business that he was doing. Frank Matthews was doing per year at his peak there for the couple of years or two years that they really know about in New York or two or three years, what was the estimate, and then maybe we could tell us what that kind of money would be in terms of today's money.
Yeah, so so easily. You know, hundreds of kilos of heroin and cocaine throughout the East and seaboard twenty one states. Great obviously leadership skills and contacts outside of the United States to be able to get these drugs in and also you know, supervise the distribution throughout the Eastern Seaboard.
And you look at again contexts when Matthews was in his prime late sixties early seventies sort of dovetails with what was going on in the United States with a lot of racial tension and segregation and African Americans fighting
for equality. You know, Matthews at his young age again less than thirty, put together a meeting with the key African American drug dealers in Atlanta, and the whole focus of the meeting was to get everybody on board and figure out a way to cut out the Italian mafia and go right to the source and maintain control on the importation and distribution and then maximize the ability to make money, you know, so and when he was charged, you know, he was charged, you know, initially the conspiracy
count and which upon conviction you could get anywhere up to twenty years. But there was a lot of talk, and Ron mentioned it before, about the possibility of indicting him for twenty one USC eight forty eight, which to prove that case, the government was convinced that he was the leader of an organization five or more people and they made substantial profits, and upon conviction of that charge, he'd do a minimum of ten years to maximum of
life in prison. And again in context, when you think about the early seventies, with the formation of the Drug Enforcement Administration, with the heroin problem throughout the United States, with the crime the New York City Police Department at one time was tracking over twenty two hundred murders a year, and most of those, of course with drug related murders. You know, it's a good chance that if he was convicted of the of an eight to forty eight, he
would have done life in prison. And so he was again seen as a major drug dealer that the quality of.
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Of life in the country would be enhanced if he was in custody and the goblet was able to laudge prosecutal cases against most of them mem of his organization. But of course he was the leader, and you know, it's not a success until you get the leader in custody, and that never happened.
Yeah, you know. The thing is what this story really shows too, is that as charismatic and good looking and nicely dressed as Frank Matthews was, it's the pain and devastation he's bringing to those communities. Because you were talking about Frank Matthews and some of these other people basically started the war on drugs in terms of Nixon declaring war after he was informed by agents that listen, there's a million users, there's a million addicts right here in
New York City. And so they initiated this war on drugs. And when you talk about a third of all available employable men not working, and you bring that kind of devastation to a community and with it comes the violence. And you said, like Frank Matthews, he wasn't his hands weren't tied, his hands weren't bloodied, but he wasn't shy about being involved in whatever it took.
Yeah, it's a no point, Dan. And when you think about the seventy especially in nineteen seventy, President Nixon started the phrase public Enemy number one, and that was narcotics. And so there was a focus at the federal level that you know, the federal government has the resources, it has the connections internationally and the relationships through the state department and through aggressive law enforcement in the United States, that the federal government has to step up and get involved.
And so to let these guys know that there's a price to pay. You know, the mafia, all organized crime groups, which are you know, a lot more dangerous than individual plays. These were organized groups, and to take them to task, and slowly, but surely, you know, one by one, DEA started to pick these guys off, and forty years later, as DEA celebrates his fortieth anniversary, Say, it's a reputation
of success. You know, it's a young agency and junior agency compared to the brother and sister agencies at the federal level, especially in the Department of Justice atf the US Marshals, the FBI and such. But it's an agency that you know, if you're in the criminal world, people will know the power of DEA and the ability of agents to law ad prosecutable cases against leaders of drug organizations inside the United States and those that live in source countries and transhipment countries.
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, the the demand will always be there and so you guys will never you know, be able to say, hey, success. But in terms of organized crime and the mafia and those associated in the same types of businesses, you guys have been, in part with other agencies, very very successful in sort of dismantling some of the biggest crime families in American history.
Well, you look at you, you're very you're one hundred percent correct, man, Because you know, a generation ago, people wanted to be identified as let's say, the leader of one of the five crime families in the mafia. Now they know that's a sentence that they're gonna go to the penitentiary. You know, they don't want to be identified put on the daily papers as this is the leader of the Genevese family, the gain being no family, the
Colombo family, the Luges family. They don't want to be identified as a leader because once they're identified as a leader, you know, the federal government's gonna go after him, you know, working with all their resources, surveillance, federal prosecutors, informants, wiretaps, and sooner or later they're gonna start picking off members of the organization and somebody's gonna be in a situation where he realizes Uncle Sam is his doue best friend
and he's gonna testify, you know, and then there's an apparatus to the witness Protection program to make sure if that person does testify and this organization has the ability to you know, kill them, that they're going to make sure that, you know, he doesn't get killed so he can complete his testimony and send a message to the other criminal criminals out there that if you cooperate with the US govement, we can we can keep you safe, we can make sure you testify and that you can live,
you know, for the rest of your life.
Now, Ron in your research, how was it that Frank Matthews sort of flew under the radar?
Yet?
As Lewis has spoken that he was involved in twenty one states. He was everywhere. He was in all the major centers. Baltimore, he was in Philly, he was in he was everywhere. And he made contacts in Detroit even and obviously this coup where he goes down to Venezuela and deals directly and bypassing the Italians. How is it that he flew under the radar for quite a while though?
How is that?
How did that happen?
Well, simply because he was black. At that time, there were no big African American drug dealers. Now, the drug trade was changing at the time, you know, we had the French Connection, you remember the famous movie The French Connection, and law enforcement was having great success. They were dismantling this monopoly. It was one of the great monopolies in history. The French Connection had ninety five percent of the heroin trade at its peak on that but it was being dismantled.
But which opened up opportunities, you know for minorities like black drug dealers. But you know, law enforcements always a littid behind, They a little bit behind the trend, and
they didn't really pick up on that. And it was really luck because the detective was living in the same apartment complex as Frank, and when they discovered, you know, that Frank was involved with it, they really didn't believe it at first, you know, because they couldn't see how this African American drug dealer can become so big with you know, first of all, given the nature of the drug trade, and second at all without them knowing anything about.
Him, right, and with the the same questions for you, lou, why do you think that he really I mean, other black drug dealers, heroin dealers in New York and other cities were recognized. Why do you think that Frank Matthews. What was it about his his career that made it that he flew under the radar for a little bit of time.
Well, I think you have to look at the strategy of the federal government when it comes to law enforcement.
These are investigative agencies. These are not agencies that see somebody, you know, make a move that they think may be suspicious and they stop them and they question them, so, you know, information would come across that he's involved in the drug trade, but the United States government is going to want to be able to prove it, and they want to be able to prove to a jury because a lot of these guys are going to trial during those times that to a New York jury that this
guy is a major guy. This is not just a one chance, a one move deal. And so to do that, it's going to take time. It's going to take you know, being able to have enough evidence to convince a federal judge to get a wiretap for a certain phone that's only going to be admissible for thirty days, and you have to continue for another thirty days, but you have to convince the court that he's still discussing narcotics business
over that telephone. You're gonna have to do the physical surveillance, follow people and hopefully not be observed during the course of the investigation. You may be able to arrest a member of the investigation and take them out of circulation for a while, thoroughly debrief them and get their life story, and try to orroberate what they're saying through testimony in
the grand jury. So there's a lot of work being done based on what people think is going on and to be able to prove it, and that's when the evidence comes into court. But generally speaking, once those handcuffs go on at the federal level, this is a tight case. The case can't get any tighter because you've been working with a federal prosecutor all throughout those six months, those eight months, you've been working with law enforcement counterparts in
daight throughout the country and overseas. I mean, da has a strong overseas program in the Caribbean and Europe and Southeast Asia, you know, sixty somewhat countries where they have agents stationed working with the police on narcotic matters in all these countries. So taking all that information to go back to the source countries, to the transhipment countries, to
the distribution organizations in the US. So it's a strong prosecutable case that these guys decided to go to trial, that that jewelry will look at the government's evidence and say, these guys are in the business. You know, let's let's let's vote guilty. And that just takes some time.
If it takes some time, Ron, do you think that Frank Matthews, though, did benefit somewhat or to a great degree from not having so many enemies. Basically throughout your research, it seems like this guy was a guy that had a lot of friends, a lot of people who wouldn't speak against him, a lot of people would keep his secrets. He threw some money around, he was nice to a lot of people. He grew up in Durham, and that
bond did even gave money towards his bail. These some of these people, do you think because he didn't make so many enemies and he was a friendly guy and very you know, he's able to get things done and meet people, that maybe that's why he flew under the radar a little bit.
Well, you know, he did have enemies because he did go did have problems in Philadelphia, as I described in the book, But he didn't make a lot of friends because of his personality, you know, people that worked with him, his homeboys and all that. And yes, I think that a lot of them want to see Frank get away, you know, because of who he was, a lot of people you know, you know, claimed they met him because
they want to be part of the legend. I don't think they necessarily saw him or had any contact with him on that And he is a legend, you know, he is a legend within the criminal community. And I think that if he is alive, that's probably helped him. Like I said, there were absolutely no informants, no real informants. You know, there were you know, some people, but they were quickly dismissed.
Now, well, Louke, we're almost near the end of our program as far as the DEEA is involved, Like you had said, how how much money they spent or how involved they were in trying to solve this case and trying to track down Frank Matthews. So in terms of the DEA, I don't know if they sit around and say, oh, here's the ones that got away. Is this the kind of case and the kind of character that guys might sit around and say, hey, here's a guy that's very interesting.
Never did find out? Is that something that happens to some degree.
I mean, there's a the case file of the Frank Matthews investigation is still an open file. So there's an agent assigned to that investigation to report on attempts to try to locate him. But you know, it's been many many years and and and Frank Matthews has beeny clips by a whole host of other major drug dealers and organizations. So the the effort is nowhere near, you know, like it was back in the seventies. But that file is still open. Even the witnesses, most of them have retired
a long time ago from DEA. And I'm talking about the agent, witnesses, the police officer, the witnesses, the prosecutors. It's it's it's sort of old news. But at the same time, the case is still active. And to the extent that if he was located tonight and somebody arrested him, you know, they'd be a hard look at that case file and figure out what can we prove, you know, who's around you know, should we offer this guy a plea deal, figure out some way to dispose of the case.
But it would, it would. It's never going to be a case where people will say just dismiss it. You know, we'll never find this guy because of the length of time that that's not gonna happen. You know, he was a major drug dealer, sold a lot of heroin and cocaine, and there was a leader of the organization and DEA by nature is set up to investigate, identify, rather an investigate and arrest the leaders of organization, so he's he'll always be on the radar for DEA.
Well, that's great, it's very interesting I guess we're just going to wrap up now. I want to thank you very much, gentlemen, you Lewis for coming on the program. Lou, thank you very much for coming on and adding this very very unique perspective, very very interesting to hear about the origins of the DEA and and your obligation to try to do something and try to find Frank Matthews
and the mystery that still is out there. And thank you very much Ron as well, and for arranging to have Lou come on the program and talk from again this unique perspective. Thank you very much, Ron, thank you, thank you.
Thank you Dan. It's always a pleasure to be on the rating with my good friend Ron.
Oh, thank you very much.
Always good to be on it. Always good to be on with Lou. Thank you very much.
Probably probably tell me the name of your book, so I'm sure you oh.
Yeah, right, The Red Black Caesar, uh uh, The Rise and Disappearance of Frank Matthews, Kingpin and you can go to Strategic Media Books dot com. There's also a website Frank Matthews book dot com and of course Amazon and bookstores and also.
Put a plug in for your your radio program. You find radio program that you oh yeah, thank you.
Artists right, we have we have I have a radio show called crime Beat, and you go to the Artists First Radio network Artists First dot com. Tomorrow we have a a gentleman that's going to be talking about the surveillance system UH in America and some of the issues that have been raised about the privacy and UH and rights of citizens. So it's on eight o'clock every Thursday, eight pm.
And Dan, if I could, I'd just like to say happy anniversary, fortieth anniversary to the men and women the present informer of DEA who work under the radar but do a very difficult job in law enforcement investigating dangerous drug dealers and making our country safe. Thank you.
I want to thank you very much, gentlemen, and for a great interview, and thanks very much for another great book, Ron Black Caesar, great thank you, great story, and thank you both for coming on and you guys have a great evening and good thank you, thank you, Bye bye bye
