February 23, 2023 • 42 mins
Phil agrees to travel to Georgia to assist Chester in assembling his graymail defense. Questions about Clay William’s unsolved murder arise when it’s linked to testimony in Operation Lonestar. Covering the sprawling investigation pulls a young reporter named CB Hackworth into Chester’s corrupting orbit and the presence of Happy Miles.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio previously on
Murder in Miami. So you offered Lamar a million dollars
to land at his island and to bring the coke
back to the United States.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
One of the most significant things in this whole case
was Lamar Chaster's appearance before a Royal Commission of Inquiry
in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So at the time that the inquiry was happening in
the Bahamas, were you even aware that it was going on?
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Well, it was shortly after this that the mysterious Morgan
Cherry mentioned that I got a call from Bob who
said that Lamar wanted to hire me as a consultant.
There was going to be a pre trial hearing in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
You didn't worry that you were getting into something that
you might not escape from.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
I just sort of walked right into it.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Here's Chester talking to CB about Phil Stamford.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I am an eye, I mean, I am not by
any mean any and me and Agne all.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Right, So it's the fall of nineteen eighty four, and
basically you agree to go to Georgia to help Lamar Chester,
who you fully believe is a drug smuggler and who
fully believes that you were in the CIA create a
gray male defense pretty much. Yeah, and your girlfriend Mickey's
okay with all.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
That, not exactly. Remember Bob and I were at the
Mutiny to meet Lamoiar, drinking pretty much all afternoon before
finally got to see him, and when we're finished, were
both drunkard than Skunk's. Drove back to the apartment I
got out. It was getting dark by then, so I
guess I figured time to take a nap. Is So
(02:04):
I dozed off, and when I wake up, for some reason,
I decide I need to call this girl I met
in Washington, d C. When I was up there, and
it's dark in the apartment and I'm still so out
of it. I don't hear Mickey open the door, and
she's probably standing there for several minutes before I hang up,
(02:26):
and there she is. By the time the call was over.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I guess that was it.
Speaker 6 (02:31):
For Mickey and me.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Phil, I'm sorry, that's kind of awkward.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
And the funny thing is the girl in DC didn't
even remember my name when I called her.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
I'm Lauren brad Pacheco and this is murder in Miami.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
So I moved out of the Amsterdam Palace and ended
up renting a room from Jack McClintock, a writer friend
who actually did the piece you referred to earlier about
the Cardozo. He and his girlfriend had a place in
south of Miami.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So when Bob called about the pre trial hearings, you
were basically available for a consulting gig.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Whatever that might be. Yeah, Bob said, I was supposed
to look for inconsistencies in the daily transcript, and I'd
be paid a couple hundred dollars a day plus travel,
So it didn't sound like such a bad idea. Bob said,
I could stay at Lamar's place in Cleveland while I
was up there, and he was going to get the
tickets and we'd fly on.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I mean, not to sound like a broken record, but
you seriously didn't have any hesitation about getting messed up
with a federal investigation.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
You've got to realize I still didn't quite believe that
what was going on was even real. But if Lamar
thought I was with the CIA, and I told him
the God's honest truth that I wasn't, who was I
to turn down the money? Mostly though, I was just
going whichever way the wind was blowing.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Well, you know, at this point you had to have
put some thought into why he would have thought that
you were actually a CIA operative. I mean, those guys
weren't exactly naive or stupid.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Well, it has taken me years to get my head
around that one. But here's what I think they were thinking. Now,
here's this guy down here from Washington, DC. He's written
for the New York Times on national security matters, for
Christ's sakes, and everyone knows the agency uses journalists as
cover all the time. He's even worked for congressman on
(04:41):
the House Armed Services Committee and for a think tank
in DC. It would be easy enough for them to
have looked it up. So here's what they're thinking. Here's
this guy. He's not down here writing, he's not asking questions,
and he's obviously not interested in the money. No one's
that dumb, so he must be with the c I A.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, you know there's another possible reason too. Here's the
recording of the taped phone call between Chester and C. B.
Speaker 7 (05:11):
Hackworth.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I have a guy I'm made together our agreement Watt
would I am not, by any meaning comment that he's
(05:36):
not currently and to one of the guys that worshiped
with his own attorney of.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
The combers on the guy, Russell Burt.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I don't know who this guy is, Russell Burns or
Russell Brooke. I never met him. There was a Russell
Brooke who was in the indictment, so he would have
testified in the Lone Star grand jury or have been
a subject of the Lone Star brand jury. But whatever
it was, I have no idea how he could have
come to that conclusion. Probably just the same as Lamar
(06:16):
and Bob. No one can be that dumb, so he
must be with the CIA for background.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Operation Lone Star was a sprawling federal investigation of money laundering,
but it began in nineteen eighty one as a probe
of oil price manipulation in Houston. One of the principal
targets of the initial probe, Miami tax lawyer Lance Eisenberg,
also happened to represent Lamar Chester, which is how the
(06:43):
former Miami based Eastern Airlines pilot and his opulent lifestyle
caught the attention of the US Customs and Internal Revenue
Service agents assigned to the Lone Star task Force. As
its scope widened, Lone Star spread to Atlanta, Charleston, West Virginia, Pittsburgh,
New York City, and Florida. Eisenberg was indicted in Houston, Atlanta,
(07:07):
and Charleston. He was suspected of masterminding the funneling of
billions of dollars of laundered money through the Bahamas, Grand
Cayman Islands and South Florida Banks. That's also why his client,
Lamar Chester's involvement with a Nassau trust company and ownership
of islands became the focus of the sprawling investigation that
(07:30):
continued into Atlanta. And so you fly to Atlanta.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Yeah, and when we land, Bob gets a rental car
and we drive out to Lamar's place in the countryside
outside Cleveland, which was what's left of a tiny old
town in the Georgia Hills, about seventy five miles north
of Atlanta. A gas station, hardware store, little diner with
a fifties rock and roll theme.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
What was the atmosphere at Chester's place when you arrived,
It was kind of strange.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
First thing, they put Bob up in the guest house
on their property, drop them off there, and I'm staying
at the main house with Lamar and artists his wife,
who I can tell right off, really doesn't want me
there at all.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Why did you get that impression?
Speaker 4 (08:15):
I remember her as sort of a glowering presence, very dark,
always in the background. I don't think she said a
word to me the whole time I was there.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Sounds welcoming.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
It was kind of strange, and I guess starting then,
but certainly over the years, I've come to think of
her as sort of a driving force beyond all. This
sounds to me like she sort of egged Lamar on,
and she was quite capable of doing that. Lamar was
always trying to please her. Her previous marriage was to
a guy from a mob family. Happy and Elliott both
(08:47):
told me that Lamar got started buying airplanes with mob money,
which is a big thing to consider here when we're
considering possibilities that sometime later, when everything was going downhill,
Ron Elliot showed up and there was that previous husband
coming out of the Chester's house in Georgia. So, you know,
(09:09):
my impression was that she was making it easier for
Lamar to fulfill his fantasies. Drug smuggling were part of it.
Women were part of it.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
A quick note here, I did request an interview with
the artist through her daughter aj Henderson, who declined my
request to speak with either one of them or to
comment on Phil's characterization. It's interesting though to me that
when you got there, you're the one staying in the
main house and Bob staying in the guest house.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Yeah, it didn't make much sense to me at the time. Actually,
nothing about this was making any sense. What I eventually
figured out was that they must have done this to
make it easier for me to talk to Lamar about
what my boss is back at CIA headquarters had in
mind for him.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
What was your interaction like with Lamar? What did you
guys talk about?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Not too much for sure, because I, for one thing,
I didn't say that much. One time though, I remember
we were driving around the grounds there. He had about
five hundred acres there, rolling hills and pasture, and we
passed by this pond, an irrigation project that he was
having some work done on at the time, and for
(10:21):
some reason it reminded him. And this was right out
of the blue, because we'd never spoken about the subject before.
Of Clay Williams, the intercept detective who was found dead
in the Everglades.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
We will wait. I'm sorry he brought up Clay Williams.
Why didn't you mention that before?
Speaker 4 (10:38):
It just came to my mind when we were talking
about driving around with Lamoire passed this irrigation project, and
he said, you know, when they found him there, a
lot of people thought I did it, which I didn't,
but it sure gained me a lot of respect. I'll
tell you that is sort of laughing when he said it.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Not exactly comedic.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Five.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
But did you push him for more details about what
had happened?
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Like I have said before, I didn't ask too many questions.
I think that's one of the reasons I was able
to get along so Will. But I don't know then,
and I certainly didn't know now exactly why he brought
it up. You know, Lamar was always working the angles.
Was efficient for information from me? Or was it a warning?
(11:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Speaking of Clay Williams, let's pause here for a quick update.
At this point, I'd poured through newspaper clippings that covered
the Atlanta leg of Lone Star's grand jury hearings. In them,
there were multiple mentions of a man murdered and left
to alligators in the Everglades. Leslie Bickerton, a controversial witness
who is in accounts described as Chester's former accountant, tax consultant,
(11:53):
and or mistress, recounts conversation she had with Chester that
involved A Clayton sometime in Ed Clayton quote and two
other men had been murdered and fed to alligators unquote,
and that quote Lamar was very mad at him unquote.
I was now pretty convinced that Ed Clayton could be
(12:15):
Clayton Williams, as the timing also checked out. MS. Bickerton's
testimony placed that conversation in the fall of nineteen eighty one.
After making little headway with my initial records request, I
reached back out again to Jeff Lewis, the former Miami
Dade detective I interviewed in our first episode, who kindly
linked me with the man you're about to meet.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
My name is David Denmark, and I'm a detective with
the Miami Dade Homicide Cold Case Unit. I've been a
cop since nineteen ninety three, so going on thirty years,
and I spent twenty of those in homicide.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Although the Records Department had done a thorough search, they
were unable to locate the police report on Clay Williams's death.
It was complicated by the fact that the department recycled
case file numbers in those days, and when they pulled
what they initially thought was the correct one, it contained
the report for an entirely different murder. Frustrating but somewhat
(13:13):
understandable given the time. According to Detective Denmark.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
There's over ten thousand goal cases in Miami Dade, which
is a staggering number. I would tell you that the
eighties were a very large part of the ten thousand cases.
Compared to other years, they were handling two and three
a day, and that lasted for quite.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Some time, particularly since eighty one and eighty two saw
record numbers of homicides in Miami.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Yes, and to speak on that, the type of homicides
that they were receiving were in vehicles, are in pools,
meaning they would come out to the scene and there
were three people unidentified in a pool and gagged and
shot in the head. Or they would come into an
apartment and there'd be two or three people bound and gagged,
where they'd open up a trunk of a car and
(14:07):
find two people bound and gaged. So it was rough
on them. They were really a different type of investigator
as to the investigator today because they didn't have the
technology that we have today with advancement in DNA. DNA
in general don passes, tag readers, computers, websites.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
And so those reports compiled pre computer era were contained
in folders, consisted of physical paper clippings and photos stored
in files and warehoused storage that has withstood physical relocation
due to moves and catastrophes like hurricanes and flooding, all
of which makes locating older case files much more complicated
(14:50):
than simply searching a database.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
There's a process that we follow as Gold Case Detectives
to locate files, and that includes our archived files. We
contact our Property and Averdance bureau along with warehouse personnel
and we'd give them the case number. Sometimes it takes
two to three weeks for them to go through everything
documentation folders that were created back in the day. We
(15:13):
try to exhaust all of that before digging into the
medical examiner records.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And that's the point we'd gotten to. As Detective Denmark
pursued tracking down the medical records for Clay Williams, I
continued to look for anything that linked him to Lamar Chester.
(15:39):
Back to Phil Stamford and his nineteen eighty four visit
to Lamar Chester's five hundred acre farm in Cleveland, Georgia.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Looking back on it all, I guess one of the
reasons he thought I knew more than I did was
because I never said that much. Most of the time,
I just listened. Another time, we were sitting in their
living room, nothing fancy about the place, shag carpets, heavy
wooden furniture, big picture window, overlooking the gravel parking lot,
(16:08):
listening to country music, and Lamar, for some reason, starts
talking about this valuable German pistol he's recently acquired and
brings it out to show. Actually, he says he's got
two of them, a matching pair. And I say, Lamar,
are you a pretty good shot? And he says, yeah,
not bad, at which point I say, hey, Lamar, why
(16:29):
don't we go out and get some target practice? Which
was really a strange thing for me to say. I
don't know where it came from, because I'm not a
gun person. I'd been to the target range in Miami
with Bob and some of the other Intercept guys maybe twice,
but I'm really less than an average shot, and here
I am challenging Lamar to a shooting contest.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Well, I remember Lamar and artists. It was in the
living room then looking at each other, exchanging glances. I
even thought I saw a flicker of or at least
uncertainty in his eyes. No, I don't think so, he said, because,
as I realize now, he was probably worried that I'd
take the opportunity to shoot him and say it was
(17:12):
an accident. As he was telling everyone at the time,
they were either going to have to drop the charges
against him or they were going to have to kill him.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
So do you think maybe at this point he was
getting a little paranoid?
Speaker 4 (17:26):
And to this day I have no idea how consciously
I was playing on Lamar's fears or his belief that
I was a CIA agent whould come to help him
with his great meal defense. But I can see now
I was really getting into it too.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Wow. So how long were you a house guest and
that dysfunctional dynamic before the pre trial hearings began in Atlanta.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
It couldn't have been too long, you know, just three
or four days and Bob flew back to Miami, and
Lamar R moved operations to Atlanta pre trial hearings were
going on. And here I am staying at the rich
Carlton Hotel, which I know is costing more per night
than I'm probably paying a month in rent back in Miami,
(18:14):
watching these proceedings in federal court. Exactly why, I don't know.
I'm supposed to be a consultant, but no one Lamar
or anyone else ever asks me to do anything, So
I just watch.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Did any of the testimony really stick out as noteworthy?
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Well? Yeah, the star witness, In fact, the whole point
of the hearings was this tall, slim woman in her thirties,
Leslie Bickerton, who the newspapers were billing as Lamar's bookkeeper
and mistress.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Do you remember seeing her testify? What do you remember
about her?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Lamar's lawyers are trying to get the case thrown out
before it even gets to trial, and this is their claim.
They say that Leslie, who at one point had skipped
out on Lamar and gone over to the Feds, gave
them some phony documents to make Lamar look even guiltier
than he was. That they actually created some false documents
and along with the investigator in Houston inserted them into
(19:16):
a collection of actual documents she'd kept from her time
working for Lamar, and those documents were used as evidence
for the grand jury. And after that, they say she'd
had a change of heart and gone back to Lamar
and told his lawyers all about it.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Yeah, from what I've read, she seemed kind of caught
in almost a tug of war in terms of her
loyalty between the prosecution and the defense. You know, I
did go back through old newspaper archives and looked into
the testimony she'd given in Houston, and it would appear
that Leslie Bickerton had gone to Georgia to help set
(19:53):
up that college campsite River Hills for Chester, and that
she ends up moving to Hugh and becomes a paid
witness for the government there. You know, the papers do
fluctuate between calling her Chester's mistress, bookkeeper, or accountant. But
you know, the interesting thing to me anyway, is that
(20:15):
she also mentioned that Chester had told her that he
quote got rid of a man and fed him to
the alligators. And she says that he mentioned the man's
name as Ed Clayton. So if the timing works out,
that's a pretty big coincidence, don't you think.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Oh yeah, it's extremely important, and it sounds to me
like she's someone we definitely ought to talk to her.
I haven't talked to her, by the way.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, you know, I've been trying to track her down.
The problem is that in the paper they mentioned that
she may or may not be in the witness Protection Plan.
I mean, they spell her name in several different ways
given the different publication. But I I've tried every single
possible combination to search for her and reached out to
(21:06):
even people I think are possible relatives in multiple states.
I mean, I'll keep you posted if I can and
get in touch with her. But Ceb Hackworth was also
covering at the same time that you were that pre
trial hearing in Atlanta, and he shared some pretty interesting
stories about driving Lamar to the Ritz Carlton to meet
(21:28):
Happy Miles.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
I had never done anything in close proximity to Lamar
other than in the Bahamas under the circumstances I had
described before, so it was totally unexpected that he wanted
me to give him a ride back to his hotel,
which was the Ritz Carlton. Of course, my car was
(21:57):
the car of a reporter who was making nine thousand
dollars a year, and I lived in my car. It
was full of trash, and I didn't even know if
another person could fit in the passenger seat. So I
was embarrassed to begin with. I might have made excuses
not to do it, except that he wanted to introduce
(22:19):
me to Happy Miles. I recognized the name from the indictment.
He was not indicted, but he was an unindicted co
conspirator in the case. I didn't know a great deal
about him. The name kind of drew attention to itself.
I was trying to be a reporter to gather information,
(22:43):
so yes, I wanted to meet Happy Miles for whatever
it was worth. As it turned out, it was well
worth the trip.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
But first Cbe had to deal with the issue of
his cluttered car and rather empty wallet.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
There was some embarrassment and professional tight rope that I
felt like I was walking there for a minute, because
I knew that I had barely enough money to get
out of the parking lot that my car was parked
in at the Federal Courthouse, and I knew that I
(23:18):
was not going to have enough money to park at
the Ritz Carlton and get out. So, in addition to
being embarrassed about the transportation situation, period, I didn't know
what to do about the money. People today may have
difficulty placing themselves in my circumstances, but ATMs were not
(23:43):
a thing. I did not have access to run and
get money somewhere. Even if I had it, I don't
know that I did.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So all of this is running through his head as
Cbe walks to his cluttered car with an international drug smuggler.
Lamar Chester, did you rush before him and try to
clear a space on the seat.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
My recollection is that I did not have time to
even attempt to clean up my car. But at that
point in my life again, I lived in my car,
and I had valuable things. In the middle of the trash.
McDonald's wrappers was just a pile of garbage. You opened
(24:26):
the door and it spilled out. It was like something
out of a comedy, except to me it wasn't. On
top of the embarrassment, I was not entirely comfortable giving
him a ride, period, because I wanted to keep him
at arm's length, and he was closer than arm's length
(24:48):
in my car. Lamar folded himself into my car. Somehow
he didn't seem to mind sitting in my used McDonald's.
I believe it was before we even left the parking lot.
I brought up to Lamar that I wasn't going to
(25:09):
be able to do this without borrowing enough money for parking,
and I think seeing my car, he understood it perfectly well.
And this was one of the more disconcerting moments to
me of my entire experience of knowing Lamar Chester, because
(25:34):
I was so careful to try to keep that professional distance.
He said he would loan me the money, no problem,
and he was in the passenger seat. He held out
his wallet, opened it and it was full of large bills,
(25:56):
and he turned his head in the other direction in
a almost exaggerated manner.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I cannot even imagine that moment.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
It was a moment that I was not really prepared for.
And by that I don't mean in any way that
I was tempted to take any of that money for myself.
It was that it was so obvious to me what
he was doing. He was turning his head, and it
was a tacit invitation to take whatever I wanted. I
(26:30):
had written enough articles about other people who had come
under his influence, the chief of Police of Cleveland, others
who were literally on his payroll. Dan Davis, who had
been a reporter at one time and ended up as
an officer of the company that held River Hills with Leslie.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Bickerton, basically working as a publicist.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Almost very aware of Dan and his transgressions, certainly as
a reporter, because he continued to write about Lamar after
he had was working for Lamar. You just don't do that,
You certainly don't do it without telling your readers that
(27:22):
you have that conflict. Dan wrote the notorious article in
the Telegraph that had a glaring headline that said unglued
agents pursue White County farmer. As if that was as
simple as the government's investigation of Lamar Chester was. I
(27:43):
was very keenly aware of people like Dan Davis and
Charlie Harrington, the chief of Police, who had become financially
beholden to Lamar Chester. I had written. I certainly was
not going to be one of them. So I was
(28:06):
quite uncomfortable taking even the money for parking. So he
held out his wallet. It was full of large denomination bills, hundreds,
and I looked while his head is turned for a
small bill, and I believe it was a ten dollars bill.
(28:31):
I reached in there with my fingers, my forefinger and
my thumb. If I had a pair of tweezers with me,
I would have tried to use them to pull it out.
I so did not want to touch any of the
real money in the drug smuggler's wallet. But I got
this ten dollars bill out and I said something like okay,
(28:54):
And when he looked back at me, I was holding
the ten dollar bill in my four finger and thumb
for him to see what I had taken.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
What happened after he saw you holding a ten dollar bill?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
He was grinning. I think that there was an unspoken
understanding of what had just happened. That he gave me
the opportunity to be bribed and I did not take it,
and he was kind of amused. I told him profusely
that I was going to repay this ten dollars, the
(29:30):
ten dollars that I borrowed. Aside, I wasn't sure why
I was going to the Ritz Carlton to meet this fella.
I didn't know why he wanted me to. This is
all sort of you know, back room drug smuggling buddy stuff,
and he's inviting me to have an inside view at it.
(29:53):
In my car. He's telling me that Happy Miles had
cut a deal with the government in exchange for immunity,
and he was supposed to testify against Lamar and other
defendants in the case. Yet apparently Happy Miles was in
(30:15):
Lamar's hotel room. I really couldn't quite reconcile that if
the guy is going to be testifying against you, why
have you got him in your room?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
As CB Chaufford chester to the Ritz Carlton, his thoughts
were spinning.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I mean, are there people in his room waiting to
kill me? You know, those kinds of thoughts flash in
your mind when you're dealing with someone who was accused
of the things that Lamar was accused of, and that
had the kind of testimony that had arisen in the case.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
A quick aside, in addition to the mention of a
man fed to alligators who may or may not have
been Clayton Williams, I discovered that in pre trial transcripts,
a prosecutor involved in the Houston leg of Lone Star
specifically refers to Clayton Williams by name as a potential
witness against Lamar Chester. This lends extra weight to possible
(31:12):
motive for his murder, particularly since Chester was quoted as
calling him a snitch who had to be gotten rid
of because information he possessed made him a threat. In
addition to Williams, there were also several other lone Star
witnesses who died prior to or shortly after testifying. I'll
let Phil Stanford explain yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
One of them was Sibley Riggs Papers, described as a
beautiful young yacht salesman whose body was found stuffed in
a trunk of a Mercedes in the Fort Lauderdal Airport
in late nineteen eighty one, shortly after she'd been subpoenaed
to appear before the grand jury in Houston. Another was
(31:53):
her boyfriend, a mobster named Alan Rivenbark by all all accounts,
a slightly crazy, dangerous person who had already testified before
the grand Jury. He died in a plane crash on
his way with some others to a mob hangout in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
There was also an Alfred J. Miller, a business associate
of Chesters with ties to River Hills, who died under
suspicious circumstances in Nashville and was cremated almost immediately as
in the next day. This happened in nineteen eighty two,
shortly after he learned he was about to be subpoenaed
to testify before Lone Star's Atlanta grand jury.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
So the question is, you know, were these connected if
they had testified against Lamar, where they have been a
further danger to him? If Lamar wasn't involved, was the
mob because the mob certainly didn't want anyone expanding the
scope of the investigation. Whatever the answer is, certainly it
would have weighed heavily on Lamar's mind at the time,
(32:55):
whether it was involved or not. Because of the additional
deaths around him, he was quite worried about his own future.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Back to Ceb Halfworth meeting mister Happy Miles at the
Atlanta Ritz Carlton in nineteen eighty four, mister Miles having
just returned from a sort of two year exile that
was part of his immunity deal, two years basically spent
sailing around the world.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Lamar was happy, no pun intended. He could not have
been more pleased that Happy Miles had made a deal
that got him off the hook, even at Lamar's expense.
What Lamar had to say about that was that he
wasn't worried. He had nothing to hide, that whatever Happy
(33:52):
was going to testify to truthfully was not anything that
would get Lamar in trouble, according to Lamar.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
As Lamar escorted Cbe through the hotel lobby, they were
met with a rather warm reception.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
It's hard to tell where Lamar ended and the Riz
Carleton began because their customer service is so good they
know their guests. As we walked in, somebody who worked
at the Ritz, Carlton did say welcome back, mister Chester.
He stayed at the Rich Carleton when he was in
Atlanta for those prolonged pre trial hearings. It was his
(34:34):
home away from home.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I want to hear your first impressions of Happy Miles
when the door opens.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I would say his name suits him, almost like something
Carl Hyason would come up with for a novel. I'm
not at all sure that Lamar had even told Happy
that I was coming, or who I was. It may
have been a surprise to Happy. Didn't really matter. We
(35:04):
got this warm reception. I think Happy had already had
a few drinks and was making one for himself. Happy
was not physically what I had imagined. The other codefendants
who I had seen, like Ron Elliott, they were all
(35:25):
what you would expect an airline pilot to look like,
you know, a former airline pilot. I could always picture
Lamar wearing an Eastern Airlines uniform. I could picture Ron
Elliott wearing an Eastern Airlines uniform. I saw Happy Miles,
and I could not picture him wearing an Eastern Airlines uniform.
(35:46):
I'm not sure I could have pictured him wearing an
Eastern Airlines mechanics outfit. Happy radiated good times. Without knowing
his biography, you could infer from his physical appearance that
he was a guy that liked to have a good time.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
A persona that didn't seem too dampened by the current circumstances.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
It's hard to say what I expected, but it was
not laughter and this gregarious reception from somebody who is
so immersed in consequential legal actions with the United States government. Here,
(36:34):
I've got on one hand, Lamar Chester, who is flaunting
practically his relationship with a member of the news media,
and you've got Happy Miles, who is virtually flaunting the
fact he's just got the deal of a lifetime.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And in true form, that's not all Happy was flaunting.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
These days, you'd use the word bling. I don't think
that was a thing then. It was unusual in my
experience to see someone wearing so much of it. He
had a rolex, he had something gold around his neck.
He had a bracelet that spelled out his name in
(37:18):
what I took to be diamonds. And I assumed that
all this jewelry that looked like it was gold probably
was gold. And again, what little I knew from Lamar
on the way over to the hotel was about an
immunity deal. I learned more about it in the room.
(37:42):
Federal prosecutors in this case obviously did not make public
developments like immunity deals. First of all, often it would
get someone killed. But they didn't want us knowing anything
that wasn't in open court.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And yet here was a very happy, happy Miles, happily
sharing his story with a young reporter on the record.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
I mean, you couldn't make this fella up as a character,
and he's real, and he is in Lamar Chester's hotel room.
Speaker 7 (38:23):
So happy basically backed up what you had heard Chester
testified to in the Bahamas his claim that he had
done everything with the understanding of the DA and the CIA.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Happy absolutely backed up Lamar's claims. Happy backed up everything
Lamar said in terms of general statements about the drug
smuggling having been done in concert with different government agencies
and agents, that agents supposedly got information from Lamar, passed
(39:04):
it on, acted on it successfully, according to Lamar, and
in turn they let him continue to smuggle marijuana.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
After all these years. What sticks out most to C. B.
Hackworth about the surreal gathering at the Ritz Carlton was
the way it contrasted with the reality that other potential
witnesses involved with the investigation, like Clay Williams, wound up dead.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
They didn't know who killed who, but there were dead people.
It bothered me. I was a lot younger and braver
than I am.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Now.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I wouldn't say I was ever reckless, but I didn't
take as many precautions as I probably would now. But
here I am in this room with two of the
major players, and I can't believe that Happy Miles is
in the room if he's going to testify against Lamar Chester,
if even a small amount of what has been either
(40:07):
implied or outright stated about Lamar Chester being dangerous is true,
then how can you be a witness against him? A
newly agreed upon I'm getting immunity, and I'm going to
testify against you, witness, and they're sitting now yucking it
(40:30):
up about old times. I mean, Lamar could killed him
in front of me for all happiness. But I did
take that to mean that Happy Miles literally was not
afraid of Lamar Chester.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
But cb he was beginning to fear. The real danger
involved the information Chester had shared and the people linked
to it.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I'm the person he called in the middle of the night.
I worried that I knew too much.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
It's really interesting to feel like you're the confidante of
somebody who knows things that may or may not have
gotten people killed, and you're now on the receiving end
of that information. Yes, on the next murder of Miami,
Perseverance pays off on double fronts in a connection with
(41:26):
a mysterious key player in the Lone Star legal proceedings.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
I can understand she would have been worried back then.
For sure, bodies turn it up all over the.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Place, and a major break in the search for information
about the murder of Clay Williams. This man who was
going to turn on him and had to get rid
of him. Murder of Miami is a production of iHeartRadio.
Executive producers are Lauren Bright Pacheco, Taylor Chicoigne, and Phil Stamford.
(42:00):
Written by Phil Stamford and Lauren Greg Pacheco, Audio editing
and sound design by Nicholas Harder, Evan Tyer, and Taylor
chackoine featuring music by Evan Tyre, Phil Meyer, John Murchison
and Taylor Chackoinne. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get the stories
(42:21):
that matter to you.
Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio previously on
Murder in Miami. So you offered Lamar a million dollars
to land at his island and to bring the coke
back to the United States.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
One of the most significant things in this whole case
was Lamar Chaster's appearance before a Royal Commission of Inquiry
in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So at the time that the inquiry was happening in
the Bahamas, were you even aware that it was going on?
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Well, it was shortly after this that the mysterious Morgan
Cherry mentioned that I got a call from Bob who
said that Lamar wanted to hire me as a consultant.
There was going to be a pre trial hearing in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
You didn't worry that you were getting into something that
you might not escape from.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
I just sort of walked right into it.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Here's Chester talking to CB about Phil Stamford.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I am an eye, I mean, I am not by
any mean any and me and Agne all.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Right, So it's the fall of nineteen eighty four, and
basically you agree to go to Georgia to help Lamar Chester,
who you fully believe is a drug smuggler and who
fully believes that you were in the CIA create a
gray male defense pretty much. Yeah, and your girlfriend Mickey's
okay with all.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
That, not exactly. Remember Bob and I were at the
Mutiny to meet Lamoiar, drinking pretty much all afternoon before
finally got to see him, and when we're finished, were
both drunkard than Skunk's. Drove back to the apartment I
got out. It was getting dark by then, so I
guess I figured time to take a nap. Is So
(02:04):
I dozed off, and when I wake up, for some reason,
I decide I need to call this girl I met
in Washington, d C. When I was up there, and
it's dark in the apartment and I'm still so out
of it. I don't hear Mickey open the door, and
she's probably standing there for several minutes before I hang up,
(02:26):
and there she is. By the time the call was over.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I guess that was it.
Speaker 6 (02:31):
For Mickey and me.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Phil, I'm sorry, that's kind of awkward.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
And the funny thing is the girl in DC didn't
even remember my name when I called her.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
I'm Lauren brad Pacheco and this is murder in Miami.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
So I moved out of the Amsterdam Palace and ended
up renting a room from Jack McClintock, a writer friend
who actually did the piece you referred to earlier about
the Cardozo. He and his girlfriend had a place in
south of Miami.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So when Bob called about the pre trial hearings, you
were basically available for a consulting gig.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Whatever that might be. Yeah, Bob said, I was supposed
to look for inconsistencies in the daily transcript, and I'd
be paid a couple hundred dollars a day plus travel,
So it didn't sound like such a bad idea. Bob said,
I could stay at Lamar's place in Cleveland while I
was up there, and he was going to get the
tickets and we'd fly on.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I mean, not to sound like a broken record, but
you seriously didn't have any hesitation about getting messed up
with a federal investigation.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
You've got to realize I still didn't quite believe that
what was going on was even real. But if Lamar
thought I was with the CIA, and I told him
the God's honest truth that I wasn't, who was I
to turn down the money? Mostly though, I was just
going whichever way the wind was blowing.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Well, you know, at this point you had to have
put some thought into why he would have thought that
you were actually a CIA operative. I mean, those guys
weren't exactly naive or stupid.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Well, it has taken me years to get my head
around that one. But here's what I think they were thinking. Now,
here's this guy down here from Washington, DC. He's written
for the New York Times on national security matters, for
Christ's sakes, and everyone knows the agency uses journalists as
cover all the time. He's even worked for congressman on
(04:41):
the House Armed Services Committee and for a think tank
in DC. It would be easy enough for them to
have looked it up. So here's what they're thinking. Here's
this guy. He's not down here writing, he's not asking questions,
and he's obviously not interested in the money. No one's
that dumb, so he must be with the c I A.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, you know there's another possible reason too. Here's the
recording of the taped phone call between Chester and C. B.
Speaker 7 (05:11):
Hackworth.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I have a guy I'm made together our agreement Watt
would I am not, by any meaning comment that he's
(05:36):
not currently and to one of the guys that worshiped
with his own attorney of.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
The combers on the guy, Russell Burt.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I don't know who this guy is, Russell Burns or
Russell Brooke. I never met him. There was a Russell
Brooke who was in the indictment, so he would have
testified in the Lone Star grand jury or have been
a subject of the Lone Star brand jury. But whatever
it was, I have no idea how he could have
come to that conclusion. Probably just the same as Lamar
(06:16):
and Bob. No one can be that dumb, so he
must be with the CIA for background.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Operation Lone Star was a sprawling federal investigation of money laundering,
but it began in nineteen eighty one as a probe
of oil price manipulation in Houston. One of the principal
targets of the initial probe, Miami tax lawyer Lance Eisenberg,
also happened to represent Lamar Chester, which is how the
(06:43):
former Miami based Eastern Airlines pilot and his opulent lifestyle
caught the attention of the US Customs and Internal Revenue
Service agents assigned to the Lone Star task Force. As
its scope widened, Lone Star spread to Atlanta, Charleston, West Virginia, Pittsburgh,
New York City, and Florida. Eisenberg was indicted in Houston, Atlanta,
(07:07):
and Charleston. He was suspected of masterminding the funneling of
billions of dollars of laundered money through the Bahamas, Grand
Cayman Islands and South Florida Banks. That's also why his client,
Lamar Chester's involvement with a Nassau trust company and ownership
of islands became the focus of the sprawling investigation that
(07:30):
continued into Atlanta. And so you fly to Atlanta.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Yeah, and when we land, Bob gets a rental car
and we drive out to Lamar's place in the countryside
outside Cleveland, which was what's left of a tiny old
town in the Georgia Hills, about seventy five miles north
of Atlanta. A gas station, hardware store, little diner with
a fifties rock and roll theme.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
What was the atmosphere at Chester's place when you arrived,
It was kind of strange.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
First thing, they put Bob up in the guest house
on their property, drop them off there, and I'm staying
at the main house with Lamar and artists his wife,
who I can tell right off, really doesn't want me
there at all.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Why did you get that impression?
Speaker 4 (08:15):
I remember her as sort of a glowering presence, very dark,
always in the background. I don't think she said a
word to me the whole time I was there.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Sounds welcoming.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
It was kind of strange, and I guess starting then,
but certainly over the years, I've come to think of
her as sort of a driving force beyond all. This
sounds to me like she sort of egged Lamar on,
and she was quite capable of doing that. Lamar was
always trying to please her. Her previous marriage was to
a guy from a mob family. Happy and Elliott both
(08:47):
told me that Lamar got started buying airplanes with mob money,
which is a big thing to consider here when we're
considering possibilities that sometime later, when everything was going downhill,
Ron Elliot showed up and there was that previous husband
coming out of the Chester's house in Georgia. So, you know,
(09:09):
my impression was that she was making it easier for
Lamar to fulfill his fantasies. Drug smuggling were part of it.
Women were part of it.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
A quick note here, I did request an interview with
the artist through her daughter aj Henderson, who declined my
request to speak with either one of them or to
comment on Phil's characterization. It's interesting though to me that
when you got there, you're the one staying in the
main house and Bob staying in the guest house.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Yeah, it didn't make much sense to me at the time. Actually,
nothing about this was making any sense. What I eventually
figured out was that they must have done this to
make it easier for me to talk to Lamar about
what my boss is back at CIA headquarters had in
mind for him.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
What was your interaction like with Lamar? What did you
guys talk about?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Not too much for sure, because I, for one thing,
I didn't say that much. One time though, I remember
we were driving around the grounds there. He had about
five hundred acres there, rolling hills and pasture, and we
passed by this pond, an irrigation project that he was
having some work done on at the time, and for
(10:21):
some reason it reminded him. And this was right out
of the blue, because we'd never spoken about the subject before.
Of Clay Williams, the intercept detective who was found dead
in the Everglades.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
We will wait. I'm sorry he brought up Clay Williams.
Why didn't you mention that before?
Speaker 4 (10:38):
It just came to my mind when we were talking
about driving around with Lamoire passed this irrigation project, and
he said, you know, when they found him there, a
lot of people thought I did it, which I didn't,
but it sure gained me a lot of respect. I'll
tell you that is sort of laughing when he said it.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Not exactly comedic.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Five.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
But did you push him for more details about what
had happened?
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Like I have said before, I didn't ask too many questions.
I think that's one of the reasons I was able
to get along so Will. But I don't know then,
and I certainly didn't know now exactly why he brought
it up. You know, Lamar was always working the angles.
Was efficient for information from me? Or was it a warning?
(11:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Speaking of Clay Williams, let's pause here for a quick update.
At this point, I'd poured through newspaper clippings that covered
the Atlanta leg of Lone Star's grand jury hearings. In them,
there were multiple mentions of a man murdered and left
to alligators in the Everglades. Leslie Bickerton, a controversial witness
who is in accounts described as Chester's former accountant, tax consultant,
(11:53):
and or mistress, recounts conversation she had with Chester that
involved A Clayton sometime in Ed Clayton quote and two
other men had been murdered and fed to alligators unquote,
and that quote Lamar was very mad at him unquote.
I was now pretty convinced that Ed Clayton could be
(12:15):
Clayton Williams, as the timing also checked out. MS. Bickerton's
testimony placed that conversation in the fall of nineteen eighty one.
After making little headway with my initial records request, I
reached back out again to Jeff Lewis, the former Miami
Dade detective I interviewed in our first episode, who kindly
linked me with the man you're about to meet.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
My name is David Denmark, and I'm a detective with
the Miami Dade Homicide Cold Case Unit. I've been a
cop since nineteen ninety three, so going on thirty years,
and I spent twenty of those in homicide.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Although the Records Department had done a thorough search, they
were unable to locate the police report on Clay Williams's death.
It was complicated by the fact that the department recycled
case file numbers in those days, and when they pulled
what they initially thought was the correct one, it contained
the report for an entirely different murder. Frustrating but somewhat
(13:13):
understandable given the time. According to Detective Denmark.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
There's over ten thousand goal cases in Miami Dade, which
is a staggering number. I would tell you that the
eighties were a very large part of the ten thousand cases.
Compared to other years, they were handling two and three
a day, and that lasted for quite.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Some time, particularly since eighty one and eighty two saw
record numbers of homicides in Miami.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Yes, and to speak on that, the type of homicides
that they were receiving were in vehicles, are in pools,
meaning they would come out to the scene and there
were three people unidentified in a pool and gagged and
shot in the head. Or they would come into an
apartment and there'd be two or three people bound and gagged,
where they'd open up a trunk of a car and
(14:07):
find two people bound and gaged. So it was rough
on them. They were really a different type of investigator
as to the investigator today because they didn't have the
technology that we have today with advancement in DNA. DNA
in general don passes, tag readers, computers, websites.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
And so those reports compiled pre computer era were contained
in folders, consisted of physical paper clippings and photos stored
in files and warehoused storage that has withstood physical relocation
due to moves and catastrophes like hurricanes and flooding, all
of which makes locating older case files much more complicated
(14:50):
than simply searching a database.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
There's a process that we follow as Gold Case Detectives
to locate files, and that includes our archived files. We
contact our Property and Averdance bureau along with warehouse personnel
and we'd give them the case number. Sometimes it takes
two to three weeks for them to go through everything
documentation folders that were created back in the day. We
(15:13):
try to exhaust all of that before digging into the
medical examiner records.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And that's the point we'd gotten to. As Detective Denmark
pursued tracking down the medical records for Clay Williams, I
continued to look for anything that linked him to Lamar Chester.
(15:39):
Back to Phil Stamford and his nineteen eighty four visit
to Lamar Chester's five hundred acre farm in Cleveland, Georgia.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Looking back on it all, I guess one of the
reasons he thought I knew more than I did was
because I never said that much. Most of the time,
I just listened. Another time, we were sitting in their
living room, nothing fancy about the place, shag carpets, heavy
wooden furniture, big picture window, overlooking the gravel parking lot,
(16:08):
listening to country music, and Lamar, for some reason, starts
talking about this valuable German pistol he's recently acquired and
brings it out to show. Actually, he says he's got
two of them, a matching pair. And I say, Lamar,
are you a pretty good shot? And he says, yeah,
not bad, at which point I say, hey, Lamar, why
(16:29):
don't we go out and get some target practice? Which
was really a strange thing for me to say. I
don't know where it came from, because I'm not a
gun person. I'd been to the target range in Miami
with Bob and some of the other Intercept guys maybe twice,
but I'm really less than an average shot, and here
I am challenging Lamar to a shooting contest.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Well, I remember Lamar and artists. It was in the
living room then looking at each other, exchanging glances. I
even thought I saw a flicker of or at least
uncertainty in his eyes. No, I don't think so, he said, because,
as I realize now, he was probably worried that I'd
take the opportunity to shoot him and say it was
(17:12):
an accident. As he was telling everyone at the time,
they were either going to have to drop the charges
against him or they were going to have to kill him.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
So do you think maybe at this point he was
getting a little paranoid?
Speaker 4 (17:26):
And to this day I have no idea how consciously
I was playing on Lamar's fears or his belief that
I was a CIA agent whould come to help him
with his great meal defense. But I can see now
I was really getting into it too.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Wow. So how long were you a house guest and
that dysfunctional dynamic before the pre trial hearings began in Atlanta.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
It couldn't have been too long, you know, just three
or four days and Bob flew back to Miami, and
Lamar R moved operations to Atlanta pre trial hearings were
going on. And here I am staying at the rich
Carlton Hotel, which I know is costing more per night
than I'm probably paying a month in rent back in Miami,
(18:14):
watching these proceedings in federal court. Exactly why, I don't know.
I'm supposed to be a consultant, but no one Lamar
or anyone else ever asks me to do anything, So
I just watch.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Did any of the testimony really stick out as noteworthy?
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Well? Yeah, the star witness, In fact, the whole point
of the hearings was this tall, slim woman in her thirties,
Leslie Bickerton, who the newspapers were billing as Lamar's bookkeeper
and mistress.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Do you remember seeing her testify? What do you remember
about her?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Lamar's lawyers are trying to get the case thrown out
before it even gets to trial, and this is their claim.
They say that Leslie, who at one point had skipped
out on Lamar and gone over to the Feds, gave
them some phony documents to make Lamar look even guiltier
than he was. That they actually created some false documents
and along with the investigator in Houston inserted them into
(19:16):
a collection of actual documents she'd kept from her time
working for Lamar, and those documents were used as evidence
for the grand jury. And after that, they say she'd
had a change of heart and gone back to Lamar
and told his lawyers all about it.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Yeah, from what I've read, she seemed kind of caught
in almost a tug of war in terms of her
loyalty between the prosecution and the defense. You know, I
did go back through old newspaper archives and looked into
the testimony she'd given in Houston, and it would appear
that Leslie Bickerton had gone to Georgia to help set
(19:53):
up that college campsite River Hills for Chester, and that
she ends up moving to Hugh and becomes a paid
witness for the government there. You know, the papers do
fluctuate between calling her Chester's mistress, bookkeeper, or accountant. But
you know, the interesting thing to me anyway, is that
(20:15):
she also mentioned that Chester had told her that he
quote got rid of a man and fed him to
the alligators. And she says that he mentioned the man's
name as Ed Clayton. So if the timing works out,
that's a pretty big coincidence, don't you think.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Oh yeah, it's extremely important, and it sounds to me
like she's someone we definitely ought to talk to her.
I haven't talked to her, by the way.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, you know, I've been trying to track her down.
The problem is that in the paper they mentioned that
she may or may not be in the witness Protection Plan.
I mean, they spell her name in several different ways
given the different publication. But I I've tried every single
possible combination to search for her and reached out to
(21:06):
even people I think are possible relatives in multiple states.
I mean, I'll keep you posted if I can and
get in touch with her. But Ceb Hackworth was also
covering at the same time that you were that pre
trial hearing in Atlanta, and he shared some pretty interesting
stories about driving Lamar to the Ritz Carlton to meet
(21:28):
Happy Miles.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
I had never done anything in close proximity to Lamar
other than in the Bahamas under the circumstances I had
described before, so it was totally unexpected that he wanted
me to give him a ride back to his hotel,
which was the Ritz Carlton. Of course, my car was
(21:57):
the car of a reporter who was making nine thousand
dollars a year, and I lived in my car. It
was full of trash, and I didn't even know if
another person could fit in the passenger seat. So I
was embarrassed to begin with. I might have made excuses
not to do it, except that he wanted to introduce
(22:19):
me to Happy Miles. I recognized the name from the indictment.
He was not indicted, but he was an unindicted co
conspirator in the case. I didn't know a great deal
about him. The name kind of drew attention to itself.
I was trying to be a reporter to gather information,
(22:43):
so yes, I wanted to meet Happy Miles for whatever
it was worth. As it turned out, it was well
worth the trip.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
But first Cbe had to deal with the issue of
his cluttered car and rather empty wallet.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
There was some embarrassment and professional tight rope that I
felt like I was walking there for a minute, because
I knew that I had barely enough money to get
out of the parking lot that my car was parked
in at the Federal Courthouse, and I knew that I
(23:18):
was not going to have enough money to park at
the Ritz Carlton and get out. So, in addition to
being embarrassed about the transportation situation, period, I didn't know
what to do about the money. People today may have
difficulty placing themselves in my circumstances, but ATMs were not
(23:43):
a thing. I did not have access to run and
get money somewhere. Even if I had it, I don't
know that I did.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So all of this is running through his head as
Cbe walks to his cluttered car with an international drug smuggler.
Lamar Chester, did you rush before him and try to
clear a space on the seat.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
My recollection is that I did not have time to
even attempt to clean up my car. But at that
point in my life again, I lived in my car,
and I had valuable things. In the middle of the trash.
McDonald's wrappers was just a pile of garbage. You opened
(24:26):
the door and it spilled out. It was like something
out of a comedy, except to me it wasn't. On
top of the embarrassment, I was not entirely comfortable giving
him a ride, period, because I wanted to keep him
at arm's length, and he was closer than arm's length
(24:48):
in my car. Lamar folded himself into my car. Somehow
he didn't seem to mind sitting in my used McDonald's.
I believe it was before we even left the parking lot.
I brought up to Lamar that I wasn't going to
(25:09):
be able to do this without borrowing enough money for parking,
and I think seeing my car, he understood it perfectly well.
And this was one of the more disconcerting moments to
me of my entire experience of knowing Lamar Chester, because
(25:34):
I was so careful to try to keep that professional distance.
He said he would loan me the money, no problem,
and he was in the passenger seat. He held out
his wallet, opened it and it was full of large bills,
(25:56):
and he turned his head in the other direction in
a almost exaggerated manner.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I cannot even imagine that moment.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
It was a moment that I was not really prepared for.
And by that I don't mean in any way that
I was tempted to take any of that money for myself.
It was that it was so obvious to me what
he was doing. He was turning his head, and it
was a tacit invitation to take whatever I wanted. I
(26:30):
had written enough articles about other people who had come
under his influence, the chief of Police of Cleveland, others
who were literally on his payroll. Dan Davis, who had
been a reporter at one time and ended up as
an officer of the company that held River Hills with Leslie.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Bickerton, basically working as a publicist.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Almost very aware of Dan and his transgressions, certainly as
a reporter, because he continued to write about Lamar after
he had was working for Lamar. You just don't do that,
You certainly don't do it without telling your readers that
(27:22):
you have that conflict. Dan wrote the notorious article in
the Telegraph that had a glaring headline that said unglued
agents pursue White County farmer. As if that was as
simple as the government's investigation of Lamar Chester was. I
(27:43):
was very keenly aware of people like Dan Davis and
Charlie Harrington, the chief of Police, who had become financially
beholden to Lamar Chester. I had written. I certainly was
not going to be one of them. So I was
(28:06):
quite uncomfortable taking even the money for parking. So he
held out his wallet. It was full of large denomination bills, hundreds,
and I looked while his head is turned for a
small bill, and I believe it was a ten dollars bill.
(28:31):
I reached in there with my fingers, my forefinger and
my thumb. If I had a pair of tweezers with me,
I would have tried to use them to pull it out.
I so did not want to touch any of the
real money in the drug smuggler's wallet. But I got
this ten dollars bill out and I said something like okay,
(28:54):
And when he looked back at me, I was holding
the ten dollar bill in my four finger and thumb
for him to see what I had taken.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
What happened after he saw you holding a ten dollar bill?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
He was grinning. I think that there was an unspoken
understanding of what had just happened. That he gave me
the opportunity to be bribed and I did not take it,
and he was kind of amused. I told him profusely
that I was going to repay this ten dollars, the
(29:30):
ten dollars that I borrowed. Aside, I wasn't sure why
I was going to the Ritz Carlton to meet this fella.
I didn't know why he wanted me to. This is
all sort of you know, back room drug smuggling buddy stuff,
and he's inviting me to have an inside view at it.
(29:53):
In my car. He's telling me that Happy Miles had
cut a deal with the government in exchange for immunity,
and he was supposed to testify against Lamar and other
defendants in the case. Yet apparently Happy Miles was in
(30:15):
Lamar's hotel room. I really couldn't quite reconcile that if
the guy is going to be testifying against you, why
have you got him in your room?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
As CB Chaufford chester to the Ritz Carlton, his thoughts
were spinning.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I mean, are there people in his room waiting to
kill me? You know, those kinds of thoughts flash in
your mind when you're dealing with someone who was accused
of the things that Lamar was accused of, and that
had the kind of testimony that had arisen in the case.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
A quick aside, in addition to the mention of a
man fed to alligators who may or may not have
been Clayton Williams, I discovered that in pre trial transcripts,
a prosecutor involved in the Houston leg of Lone Star
specifically refers to Clayton Williams by name as a potential
witness against Lamar Chester. This lends extra weight to possible
(31:12):
motive for his murder, particularly since Chester was quoted as
calling him a snitch who had to be gotten rid
of because information he possessed made him a threat. In
addition to Williams, there were also several other lone Star
witnesses who died prior to or shortly after testifying. I'll
let Phil Stanford explain yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
One of them was Sibley Riggs Papers, described as a
beautiful young yacht salesman whose body was found stuffed in
a trunk of a Mercedes in the Fort Lauderdal Airport
in late nineteen eighty one, shortly after she'd been subpoenaed
to appear before the grand jury in Houston. Another was
(31:53):
her boyfriend, a mobster named Alan Rivenbark by all all accounts,
a slightly crazy, dangerous person who had already testified before
the grand Jury. He died in a plane crash on
his way with some others to a mob hangout in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
There was also an Alfred J. Miller, a business associate
of Chesters with ties to River Hills, who died under
suspicious circumstances in Nashville and was cremated almost immediately as
in the next day. This happened in nineteen eighty two,
shortly after he learned he was about to be subpoenaed
to testify before Lone Star's Atlanta grand jury.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
So the question is, you know, were these connected if
they had testified against Lamar, where they have been a
further danger to him? If Lamar wasn't involved, was the
mob because the mob certainly didn't want anyone expanding the
scope of the investigation. Whatever the answer is, certainly it
would have weighed heavily on Lamar's mind at the time,
(32:55):
whether it was involved or not. Because of the additional
deaths around him, he was quite worried about his own future.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Back to Ceb Halfworth meeting mister Happy Miles at the
Atlanta Ritz Carlton in nineteen eighty four, mister Miles having
just returned from a sort of two year exile that
was part of his immunity deal, two years basically spent
sailing around the world.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Lamar was happy, no pun intended. He could not have
been more pleased that Happy Miles had made a deal
that got him off the hook, even at Lamar's expense.
What Lamar had to say about that was that he
wasn't worried. He had nothing to hide, that whatever Happy
(33:52):
was going to testify to truthfully was not anything that
would get Lamar in trouble, according to Lamar.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
As Lamar escorted Cbe through the hotel lobby, they were
met with a rather warm reception.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
It's hard to tell where Lamar ended and the Riz
Carleton began because their customer service is so good they
know their guests. As we walked in, somebody who worked
at the Ritz, Carlton did say welcome back, mister Chester.
He stayed at the Rich Carleton when he was in
Atlanta for those prolonged pre trial hearings. It was his
(34:34):
home away from home.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I want to hear your first impressions of Happy Miles
when the door opens.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I would say his name suits him, almost like something
Carl Hyason would come up with for a novel. I'm
not at all sure that Lamar had even told Happy
that I was coming, or who I was. It may
have been a surprise to Happy. Didn't really matter. We
(35:04):
got this warm reception. I think Happy had already had
a few drinks and was making one for himself. Happy
was not physically what I had imagined. The other codefendants
who I had seen, like Ron Elliott, they were all
(35:25):
what you would expect an airline pilot to look like,
you know, a former airline pilot. I could always picture
Lamar wearing an Eastern Airlines uniform. I could picture Ron
Elliott wearing an Eastern Airlines uniform. I saw Happy Miles,
and I could not picture him wearing an Eastern Airlines uniform.
(35:46):
I'm not sure I could have pictured him wearing an
Eastern Airlines mechanics outfit. Happy radiated good times. Without knowing
his biography, you could infer from his physical appearance that
he was a guy that liked to have a good time.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
A persona that didn't seem too dampened by the current circumstances.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
It's hard to say what I expected, but it was
not laughter and this gregarious reception from somebody who is
so immersed in consequential legal actions with the United States government. Here,
(36:34):
I've got on one hand, Lamar Chester, who is flaunting
practically his relationship with a member of the news media,
and you've got Happy Miles, who is virtually flaunting the
fact he's just got the deal of a lifetime.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And in true form, that's not all Happy was flaunting.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
These days, you'd use the word bling. I don't think
that was a thing then. It was unusual in my
experience to see someone wearing so much of it. He
had a rolex, he had something gold around his neck.
He had a bracelet that spelled out his name in
(37:18):
what I took to be diamonds. And I assumed that
all this jewelry that looked like it was gold probably
was gold. And again, what little I knew from Lamar
on the way over to the hotel was about an
immunity deal. I learned more about it in the room.
(37:42):
Federal prosecutors in this case obviously did not make public
developments like immunity deals. First of all, often it would
get someone killed. But they didn't want us knowing anything
that wasn't in open court.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And yet here was a very happy, happy Miles, happily
sharing his story with a young reporter on the record.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
I mean, you couldn't make this fella up as a character,
and he's real, and he is in Lamar Chester's hotel room.
Speaker 7 (38:23):
So happy basically backed up what you had heard Chester
testified to in the Bahamas his claim that he had
done everything with the understanding of the DA and the CIA.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Happy absolutely backed up Lamar's claims. Happy backed up everything
Lamar said in terms of general statements about the drug
smuggling having been done in concert with different government agencies
and agents, that agents supposedly got information from Lamar, passed
(39:04):
it on, acted on it successfully, according to Lamar, and
in turn they let him continue to smuggle marijuana.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
After all these years. What sticks out most to C. B.
Hackworth about the surreal gathering at the Ritz Carlton was
the way it contrasted with the reality that other potential
witnesses involved with the investigation, like Clay Williams, wound up dead.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
They didn't know who killed who, but there were dead people.
It bothered me. I was a lot younger and braver
than I am.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Now.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I wouldn't say I was ever reckless, but I didn't
take as many precautions as I probably would now. But
here I am in this room with two of the
major players, and I can't believe that Happy Miles is
in the room if he's going to testify against Lamar Chester,
if even a small amount of what has been either
(40:07):
implied or outright stated about Lamar Chester being dangerous is true,
then how can you be a witness against him? A
newly agreed upon I'm getting immunity, and I'm going to
testify against you, witness, and they're sitting now yucking it
(40:30):
up about old times. I mean, Lamar could killed him
in front of me for all happiness. But I did
take that to mean that Happy Miles literally was not
afraid of Lamar Chester.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
But cb he was beginning to fear. The real danger
involved the information Chester had shared and the people linked
to it.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I'm the person he called in the middle of the night.
I worried that I knew too much.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
It's really interesting to feel like you're the confidante of
somebody who knows things that may or may not have
gotten people killed, and you're now on the receiving end
of that information. Yes, on the next murder of Miami,
Perseverance pays off on double fronts in a connection with
(41:26):
a mysterious key player in the Lone Star legal proceedings.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
I can understand she would have been worried back then.
For sure, bodies turn it up all over the.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Place, and a major break in the search for information
about the murder of Clay Williams. This man who was
going to turn on him and had to get rid
of him. Murder of Miami is a production of iHeartRadio.
Executive producers are Lauren Bright Pacheco, Taylor Chicoigne, and Phil Stamford.
(42:00):
Written by Phil Stamford and Lauren Greg Pacheco, Audio editing
and sound design by Nicholas Harder, Evan Tyer, and Taylor
chackoine featuring music by Evan Tyre, Phil Meyer, John Murchison
and Taylor Chackoinne. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get the stories
(42:21):
that matter to you.
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