Jimmy Chagra - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 4/26/25

Guest Host George Knapp and Author Jack Sheehan discuss the of infamous Las Vegas figure Jimmy Chagra and his connection to a Hollywood actor's family.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Jackshi and you get to spend a lot of time
with Jimmy Shagra later in his life, and we'll get
into how that happened in a little bit. But did
he describe for you and can you describe for us
how big he got, how quickly it happened, how much
money he was raking in, and how much marijuana he
was smuggling.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, it's Jimmy was prone to exaggerate a little bit,
but I think most things he told me were pretty
close to the truth, because I interviewed enough other people
who backed him up. They would bring in through the Bahamas. Typically,
Jimmy greased all the wheels he needed to. So the
Prime Minister of the Bahamas back in the seventies was

(00:46):
a guy named Lyndon Pindling, and he was as corrupt
as you can imagine. He'd take money from anybody for
free passage past the Bahamas up to the East coast
of the United States. And not only did Jimmy pay
off Pendling to have his boats and planes go through
or by the Bahamas without interference, but he also went

(01:09):
up to Boston and introduced himself to the godfather of
New England, a mobster named Raymond Patriarca, and he worked
out a deal with Patriarca to pay him X number
of dollars per pound that could be safely unloaded off
the ships on the Boston coastline. And so Jimmy was

(01:31):
smart enough and fearless enough to go right to the
people that would help him build his empire. And by
the time he was at his peak, he had at
least three or four airplanes, a couple freighter ships, if
not more, and a huge number of workers who were

(01:51):
being paid exorbitant amounts of money to bring tons and
tons of marijuana from Columbia, Mexico City any place they
could find it, even across the border, from El Pasa
to Warez. He had a distributor in Warez, Mexico, which

(02:11):
was a driver of five iron in golf terms from
El Paso, and he would get good stuff from him
as well. I think Jimmy told me on good months
he would make ten to fifteen million dollars gross, of
which he would probably collect half of that said, there

(02:33):
were a couple of years where he made for himself
well over one hundred million dollars again, factor in inflation,
it's just ridiculous. You can't even calculate how much money
that was. And because he was I have to say
he's a degenerate gambler because he couldn't stop if he
wanted to. But he wasn't a horrible gambler. A degenerate

(02:56):
gambler is just one who can't stop. He's addicted to
the action, and you know he would win and lose
these astronomical amounts at Caesar's. And the reason I don't
think Jimmy was fudging on his figures is because the
people at Caesar's backed it up and said that the
tips they were making in twenty one and in the
crafts table were it was the best money they ever

(03:18):
made in their time at Caesar's. There's a cute story,
and I won't go into it because it takes too long,
but we were having dinner with Jimmy and his wife
and another couple friends of ours at the Palms in
the Forum at Caesar's Palace six years ago, and I thought,
wouldn't it be fun if I could find a really

(03:39):
old twenty one dealer who might remember who the Chagras were,
and so I went out and there was this older
gentleman at a dead table. He had no action there,
and I came up to him and I said, I
think his name was Victor. I said, Victory, you look
like you've been here a while at Caesar's, and he goes, yeah,
I opened this joint in sixty six, is when Caesar's

(04:01):
Palace opened by Jay Sarno and Andy Williams was the
headliner on opening night. And I said, how are Tipsy's
days and they said, yeah, they're not like they used
to be. And I said, well, you mind, if my
little group sits down, we'll play ten dollars black check
with you. Oh, I'd love to have your company. So

(04:23):
we sat down and it was Jim and Joanhammer, these
friends of ours, Jack and Carol Shean, Jimmy and Linda Shagra.
Six of us sat down at the table, and I
was just thinking this could be fun, and so I said, guys,
Victor's been at caesar since nineteen sixty six. And he
tells me that the tips are okay now, but they

(04:44):
are like they used to be. And I said, when
were they really good, Victor, And he said, oh, in
the nineteen seventies. I'm not making this up. This guy
played played his part perfectly in the nineteen seventies. Why
was that, Well, we had some big players back then,
we had the Shager brothers. And Jimmy's sitting right next

(05:05):
to me, and he kind of perked up and he
looked at the guy, trying to figure out if he
remembered the face. And I said, oh, really, tell me more. Well,
you know, Lee and Jimmy Chagra, they had reputations in
the drug business, but we didn't care. We were making
great money. And I said, like, how much would you make?

(05:26):
He said, well, three to four times what we're making now.
And I said, well, gee, what happened to those guys?
Of course I knew, but he said, well, Lee Shager
was murdered in his office down in Texas in nineteen
seventy eight, and I think Jimmy's probably dead too. And
I said, I don't think Jimmy's dead. He goes, well,

(05:48):
how do you know. I said, well, because I'm pretty
sure he's sitting right next to me. And Victor looked
at him and goes, oh, my god, Jimmy, is that you.
Jimmy goes, yeah, I think I remember your Victor, how
you been man? And Victor closed down the twenty one
table and he went and got some of the older

(06:10):
guys that had been around forever and brought him over.
We stopped playing, and they crowded around Jimmy and Linda
and the Hammers and the Sheans decided let's let him
have his moment of glory and we just left. I
told Jimmy the next day. So that had to be
fun for you, he goes, man, I was crying most
of the time. All these guys acted like we were

(06:32):
the greatest guys that ever lived. It was really nostalgic
for him.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, he was a generous tipper, big gambler, friendly guy,
but not always he went bad. You had told me,
and I remember hearing these stories about him traveling with
what's described as a pack of killers, I mean, higher
guns who were very dangerous people.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
I've got a great picture at his wedding reception when
he married Liz, who was his third wife and really
the love of his life. And poor Liz spent sixteen
years in prison and died in prison of over Yeah.
He the wedding picture I have is of six of

(07:13):
the toughest looking guys you've ever seen, and they were
all his groomsmen, and he called them my stone cold killers,
and I think that title was appropriate.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
So things start going bad for him and he ends
up on the run. Yeah, describe the circumstances of him
being on the run. He thought he was going to
be killed, right.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, he did. You were actually part of the story,
you remember, well, I know, so in nineteen when the
plane crashed in seventy seven, he got way more attention
than any criminal wants to get. And then they got
busted the next year. I believe in fact that the

(08:02):
pilot of the plane that got busted in Ardmore Oraclehoma,
they had twenty one thousand, twenty one thousand pounds of
marijuana on this plane and they got busted in Ardo
Oracle Homa, and it became The group of guys became

(08:23):
known and kind of famous as the Ardmore twelve. And
their attorney to get them off these charges was none
other than Lee Schagra, Jimmy's brother, and he was such
a brilliant attorney. Even though it looked like they were
dead to rights, Lee got him an acquittal. He got
the case thrown out for you know, governmental malfeasans or something.

(08:48):
I've got it in my notes, and so all these
guys didn't spend a day in prison. But an interesting
sidebar to the story is of the twenty one thousand
pounds that Jerry Wilson and Jimmy Toldy were on that plane.
The report that was given to the government was only
seventeen thousand pounds, and Jerry Wilson said, well, as typically

(09:10):
happened when there's a huge drug bust like that, the
guys in the dea kind of look at each other
and think, you know, we're not getting paid that well
for this job. And so four thousand pounds mysteriously was
not reported taken off the plane. And that's happened several times,
and I guess human nature, we can sort of understand it.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
And there's a similar story to when he was apprehended
in Las Vegas. We had a diaper box full of
cash and some of that disappeared too.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, there was Jimmy had himself arrested. He knew that
the cops that were closing in on him, and he
had his wife and two little kids in a motel
down across from where the Haciendi used to be. Way
at the south end of the strip, and Jimmy described
it as that scene in Butcher casting The Sundance Kid
where they're cornered and all these guys have their all

(10:06):
the cops have their rifles drawn and they just kind
of run for it at the end of that movie.
And Jimmy told Liz, he said, I'm going to go
get arrested or they're going to start shooting and the
whole family could get killed. So he jumped in the
car and he just drove down the strip and he
looked for a black and white cop car and he
found one and he kind of pulled in front of it,

(10:27):
made the cop stop, and he jumped out, and it
happened to be right in front of where the Venetian
is now, which is the former side of the Sands.
It was the Sands Hotel then, and he jumped out
and he said, I'm a federal fugitive. Arrest me. And
the cop, who was not even on duty that day,
hadn't intentionally pulled him over. He just stopped because this

(10:49):
card pulled in front of him. So that cop makes
the arrest, and the cop who took the money out
of the back of that car. It was a diaper box.
I won't name the cop. He was an elder metro
cop who retired shortly after he had a nice retirement fund.

(11:09):
Jimmy told me there was like eight hundred and sixty
thousand dollars in cash in that diaper box, which was
not an uncommon amount for him to be carrying around.
The foot lockers had two and three million in those
things that he took into Caesar's palace. And when you
and I interviewed that cop and asked him how much
money was in the diaper box, did he say, like

(11:31):
seventy thousand dollars. Yeah, so it was it was roughly
ten percent of what Jimmy said was in there. And
all we heard through the grapevine is that that cop
left his job a little while later. And you know
about a membership in a country, I'm making that up.
He started doing a lot of fishing and hunting and

(11:52):
taking weekends off, let's put it that way.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
So the darkest angle of the Chagra story happened in Texas,
where he is to be tried before a guy whose
nickname is Maximum John. This judge, Federal Judge John Wood,
tell us what happens.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Well, that's a really crazy story, and it's at the
heart and soul of the project that I'm working on.
So Jimmy is been He has been indicted and bonded
out for drug smuggling, money laundering, Rico statutes, all the

(12:33):
powers that be in Texas are going to get Jimmy finally,
all the trouble he'd been in with the plane crash
and the bust and ard miracle home and some other
stories that piled on. So Caesar's Palace told Jimmy, this
is in early nineteen seventy nine. I'm going to say
January February nineteen seventy nine, and he's been riding high

(12:55):
for ten years, just killing them year after year with
these huge scores he was making by playing and by boat.
And Jimmy is told by Caesar's you're too hot right now.
You need to take your gambling someplace else. So he
was friendly with Jack Benyon, who owned the Horseshoe, and
Jimmy and Liz went down to Binyon's and he was

(13:16):
doing his gambling down there and playing poker in the
poker tournaments. And one day, out of the blue, a
girl that he went to, a woman he went to
high school with in El Paso. Comes up to him.
Her name was Joanne, and she said, Jimmy, I just
got married here this week. I want you to be
my new husband. And she goes, Charlie, this is jim Jimmy, Jimmy,

(13:41):
this is Charles Harrelson. I just married him last week,
and they start talking. At the time, Charles Harrelson's name
didn't have any star power to it because his sons
were kids. They were teenagers or thirteen, fourteen years old.
How old would what he be about? Sixty?

Speaker 2 (14:01):
I think so sure?

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Okay, so the twenty five and forty five? What he
was fourteen? Fifteen years old? And Charles Harrelson had left
that wife and those three boys years before. He'd been
in trouble. He'd been jailed for a while with another murder.
He had been busted for a few other things. But
he was a charismatic, colorful, handsome guy. People paid a

(14:26):
lot of attention to him. He was a fast talker,
and Charles that very first meeting at the horse Shoe
in the Horseshoe says to Jimmy, I know you've got
a lot of trouble. Jimmy, you're gonna need my help. Well,
how can you help me? Are you an attorney? No,
I'm not an attorney. But here's my business card. And
he hands Jimmy the business card. And I won't say

(14:48):
all the words on it because it's kind of offensive.
But on the business card it says, and I've got
the card, Charles Harrelson professional hit man. Now who has
a business card like that? And on the left side
is a list of his activities, and the right side
is four or five others, and on the top is

(15:10):
the most offensive thing. But on the left it says
government's overthrown, assassinations plotted, orgy's organized, and then you know
Burglary's par none on the right hand side. So all
these criminal activities that Charles Harrelson can commit for the
right price are listed on this card. And on the

(15:33):
very top, i'll just say the N word. It says
the N word. Shot free. Now, this is when I
got that card. Jimmy had told me about it, and
I got it through another guy and he sent it
to me. And you've seen it. I think I probably
sent you a copy of it. But you look at
that and you go, who in the world hands out

(15:56):
business cards?

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Like that.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
But Jimmy started asking around about Charles Harrelson and he
started to hear this guy's the real deal. He is
a professional hit man. He will for the right amount
of money, he will do some dirty deeds for you.
And as the news started to tighten around Jimmy in
the legal system in Florida, and when he heard that

(16:21):
the judge assigned to his trial in San Antonio was
Maximum john Wood, who was reputedly the toughest judge, toughest
drug judge in the United States, he knew he was toast.
And so the alleged activity that took place then was

(16:42):
that Jimmy arranged for Charles Harrison to put a hit
on the judge for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash,
which was again, that's just another bag of money that
Jimmy had around all the time with all of his
ill gotten gains. And the crime that Liz Shager was

(17:03):
convicted and sentenced to prison for turned out to be
a life sentence for her was carrying a paper bag
of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from where the
Shagers were staying at the Divents Hotel down to the
Jockey Club just up the street to the south of
where the Blagio is now. It's on that side of

(17:25):
the street, on the west side of the street. And
she was convicted of that and sentenced to like ten
years in prison, but she never got out and she
died sixteen years later of ovarian cancer. It's a really
sad part of the story.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Of course.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Charles Harrison was also a suspect of the JFK murder
for a while, And.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Yeah, he made himself a suspect because he bragged the
people that he was on the Grassy Knoll and he
was one of the guys they call the three tramps.
There were three I guess hobos or tramps that were
arrested later on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, And
there was the conspiracy. Theorists still believed that JFK was

(18:13):
shot from the front as well as from the Texas
school Book Depository. And because Charles Harrison resembled one of
those three tramps, he bragged in prison and anybody that
would listen, I not only killed a federal judge, I
killed JFK.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
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