August 20, 2024 • 63 mins
Experience the story of Richard "Dickie" Lynn, a man whose life journey took him from the serene shores of Michigan to the high-stakes world of marijuana smuggling in Key Largo. Listen as Dickie recounts his early years, the pivotal moment when his family moved south due to his father's health, and the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Donna. Discover how a sports-loving high school student found himself drawn into the thrilling yet perilous realm of drug smuggling in the 1970s, driven by the allure of easy money and the absence of significant law enforcement.
Unravel the complexities of marijuana smuggling operations of the late 1970s, as Dickie narrates the transition from boat-based smuggling to sophisticated air operations from Belize to Louisiana. Get an insider's perspective on the intricate logistics of these covert missions, and the unsettling reality of corrupt Customs Officials like Charlie Jordan. This chapter vividly portrays the high-stakes environment and the unpredictable twists that defined this dangerous chapter of Dickie's life.
Follow Dickie's harrowing experiences behind bars, from a daring escape attempt to his time in ADX Florence, one of the most secure prisons in the world. Hear his heartfelt reflection on the consequences of his actions, his fight for compassionate release, and his redemptive journey advocating for criminal justice reform. The episode concludes with insights into the harsh realities of the prison system and the powerful impact of inmate advocacy—offering a raw, honest look at crime, punishment, and the long road to redemption. Join us for this eye-opening discussion that challenges conventional narratives and highlights the importance of resilience and hope.
Produced by: Citrustream, LLC
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today we have Richard Lynn, aka Dickie Lynn, from Key
Largo, who I had the pleasureof meeting two weeks ago,
recommended a wonderful place tohave a fish fry on a Friday in
the Keys, which I got to tellyou it was unbelievable, it was
really good and I willdefinitely head down to Florida
(00:24):
City again.
Dickie is a great story.
He's been involved in thecriminal justice system.
He had a book written about him, the Trials of Dickie Lynn,
which I've read, even about twoyears ago I think I read it,
(00:44):
even about two years ago, Ithink I read it and here today
to talk with him and discuss hislife and, more important, his
future, and when we're going togo have a fish fry again,
because I really enjoyed it alot.
So anyway, dickie, welcome andit's great to have you on.
(01:07):
Justice Then.
Justice Now.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, it's great to be here and I'm very happy to be
here, and it was a pleasuremeeting you a couple weeks ago,
and I think you're working for agreat cause and that's a
wonderful thing.
We need reform in the system.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Thank you very much.
Yes, we do.
That's the whole purpose ofthis is to get a discussion
going on criminal justice issues.
Then and now we have everybodyfrom different spectrums and
perceptives of the system, fromdifferent spectrums and
perceptives of the system and,more important, if there's a way
to fix it and make it better.
(01:48):
I think for everybody that'sthe main thing.
You know, as I told you, Imajored in this in grad school
and it's always had my interest,the whole spectrum.
Anyway, usually I started outas if you could give me your
(02:09):
background, a little bit aboutyourself, and you know how you
ended up in the Keys.
I know the answers to this, butour viewers would definitely
like to hear it.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, I ended up in the Keys.
We were.
I was born in Michigan and myfather had a very bad bronchitis
and and so he was verysusceptible to catching
pneumonia and the doctor toldhim he needed a warmer climate.
So he packed us all up and wemoved to the Keys in 1958.
(02:41):
And I was four years old and westarted.
You know just, my fatherstarted a smoked fish business
and in 1960, it got wiped offthe map in Hurricane Donna and
it was moved to another spot.
And then my father, after a fewyears of smoking fish, he was a
(03:03):
carpenter also and he got hiscontractor's license and was
building houses down here.
And I grew up down here mywhole life.
The school I went to waskindergarten through 12th grade.
There was no junior high,senior high, all that.
It was just one school CoralShores.
And we, you know, we live on anisland, so everybody knows
(03:27):
everybody, everybody knowseverybody's business, everybody,
you know.
So it's a very small littleclicky place.
And in high school I was, youknow, I was more of the and I
was more of the.
I don't know whether you'd callit a redneck, but I was a jock.
(03:50):
I was into sports.
I played sports and baseballand football, and I was into all
that.
I was not into drugs.
But when I graduated out ofhigh school, the year I was
supposed to graduate, my fatherwas killed in a car accident and
so, instead of putting a burdenon my mother, because we didn't
(04:11):
have a lot of money, she was awaitress and so, instead of
putting a burden on my mother, Istarted construction and I was
working with my brother, whobasically took my father's
business over, and I was making$4 an hour digging ditches,
pouring concrete.
(04:32):
And so a friend of mine that Iwent to high school with came to
me in 1973.
And he told me that his dadwanted me to work for him
because I knew the back country.
I knew the water is very goodaround here because I grew up my
whole life in a boat, divingand fishing.
So I said, yeah, well, you wantme to work.
(04:53):
What does he want me to do?
He's like well, he wants you togo out and meet the mothership.
I was like, with what?
And he's like well, with somepot on it.
And I go oh, you know.
At first I was like, oh, no,you know.
And he goes no, all you have todo, you don't have to touch it,
all you have to do is lead theboat in.
So I went out and I put a lightdown in the gunwale on my boat
(05:15):
and I led a 55 foot lobster boatinto a house that they had
secured as a as an offloadingsite and a few days later I got
a brown paper bag with $35,000in it and, to say the least, I
(05:41):
was kind of ruined.
I was recently married and Ididn't want to tell my wife
because I thought she would justflip out.
So I did I don't know four orfive, six trips, whatever it was
, and I saved up all the moneyand when I finally threw the
money out on the bed and saidhere it is, she kind of freaked
out.
What did you do, rob?
A bank?
What happened?
What you know?
(06:01):
She was panicking and I said,no, you know, and I explained to
her what I was doing.
And you know that it wasmarijuana and it's okay, I'm,
you know, and that was, that wasthat, and I was, you know, we
were just we decided I'd stopwhen I made $250,000.
Well, when you are in a businesslike this and the money's
(06:25):
coming so easy, back then therewere no customs.
There were no DEA down here.
There was Coast Guard, marinePatrol and the local police and
I went to high school with allthe local police guys so of
course they were on our payroll.
We had the Coast Guard, we hadeverybody and there was not much
(06:45):
risk involved.
And back then if you got caughtheck, guys were getting caught
on boats with 25,000 pounds anddoing five years it was.
You know, there was nosentencing guidelines and it was
a lot different than it is thisday and age.
You know, this day and age aguy can be on the corner with a
handful of drugs in his in hishand and end up getting 40 years
(07:08):
or sometimes and there was nomoney laundering statutes anyway
.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Right, there was nothing in the late 70s there
was nothing back then.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, there were no treaties with the cayman islands
or the whoever there was.
Just it was wide open and anduh, so I I was going to stop
when I made 250, 000 and thatcame and went, and then I was
going to stop when I made 500and that came and went and you
get the greed factor takes over.
You know it's it's kind of it'sso easy and it's like it's easy
(07:39):
money and it's fast money, andso I just got entrapped in it.
I got you know it's fast moneyand so I just got entrapped in
it.
I got you know it's like awhirlpool.
The whirlpool spins you up andyou can go to the top of the
whirlpool or you can get spitout along the way or you can get
sucked down in it, you know.
And so in 1980, I got busted ona sting with a kilo of cocaine
(08:01):
and I went away to prison.
I went away to a camp.
Back then, a kilo of cocaineheld a sentence of 24 to 36
months.
Well, when I went away toprison which I mean people, you
really can't hardly call it aprison it was like a college
campus.
We had weights and you playedsoftball and you ran I mean,
there was no fence and you'rearound all these people in there
(08:25):
that have done crimes likegrowing pot or make
counterfeiting money or flyingdrugs in or whatever they're
doing, and you're around themand next thing you know you're
talking was.
It was a finishing school andand it was like, uh, when you
(08:46):
get out, it's like, do I want togo back and start digging
ditches again or or or what youknow?
And it was just I got out andand I tried to go back I just
want to ask you what, what uhcorrectional facility?
Speaker 1 (09:02):
was this for our viewers?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Eglin Airport Base.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Okay, and that's up on the panhandle right.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Up on the panhandle.
I've been there as a marshal,we talked about that.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And it is the way you described it it's a camp.
It was a camp.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, there's tennis courts Bowling alley.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I remember going there, yes.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
So go ahead.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
You were released and went back in.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I was released and I started building, you know,
doing construction, and somebodycame to me and said, hey, do
you want to do a trip?
I'll pay you $250,000.
And I was like, yeah, I'm in.
And so I went down, I took aboat, went to the Bahamas,
brought back a load of cocaineand then that load of cocaine
(09:49):
went into another one and I didthree or four trips and we had
bought a hunting camp in Alabama, my partner and I, and we went
up there one time and the guywas like one of the guys, one of
the owners of the of the tripsthat we had done with with the
cocaine.
He was like, why don't we justfly it up here?
(10:09):
And so we started flying it upthere.
We had worked in Belize and wehad a connection in Belize to
stop and get fuel, and so westarted flying it into Alabama.
And Alabama was, you know, bythe time this rolls around,
we're talking like 1985, 86, 87,and it's a lot different than
(10:31):
it was in the keys in 1973 andin the.
In the keys then now they hadDEA, they had customs and they
had they were doing interdictionin the keys quite, you know,
quite heavy.
And so the radios that welistened to, the scanners and
everything we listened to wouldbe squawking all night long.
(10:51):
They'd be chasing people.
Everybody was.
You know, there was differentpeople trying to do, different
organizations trying to bring indrugs.
They'd be chasing people allover the place.
We'd go up to alabama with thesame scanners and same
frequencies and plug them in andit'd just be flatline.
It'd be nothing.
You hear nothing, you know.
And so it was like we went backinto the 70s in Alabama.
(11:13):
You know, there was nothingthere, nobody there, to stop you
.
And so we started working thereand all I ever did with the
drugs was transport them.
And all I ever did with thedrugs was transport them.
I brought them from point A topoint B and I handed them off
and I collected the money for it.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Where was this in Alabama?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
What part.
We were bringing it into alittle strip called Demopolis,
alabama, and it's right outsideof Livingston, it's about 30
miles from Meridian Mississippi,and so we were refueling the
airplanes in Belize.
We would leave Miami, flyacross Cuba, land in Columbia
(11:54):
It'd be an eight-hour trip andthen we'd fuel up in Columbia,
put the drugs on and fly toBelize, which is a six-hour trip
, put fuel on there and then toAlabama was five hours and we
would come right in throughMobile Bay, right on the deck,
and then, once we got to by theMobile airport, we'd fly up and
(12:15):
raise up to 2,500 feet and flyup to where my hunting camp was
in Demopolis, and it was backthen.
It was fairly easy to do.
The only thing you had to worryabout we'd slow down.
When you'd get 100 miles out,we'd get down on the deck and
slow down and we'd look like ahelicopter that was flying
(12:35):
people back and forth to the oilrigs.
You know, at night out there.
And um, it was, it was.
You know, it was a very easy todo.
There was, um, it wasn't.
You weren't getting chased allthe time, you, the only time we
ever had any problem with anyanybody getting jumping on us
was um, there was fog, the wholethe whole Bay golf was fogged
(12:59):
up and the pilot had to climbabove the fog and he went up
about 2,500 foot and they pickedhim up on NORAD when he broke
the 80s and so they scrambledjets on him and they couldn't ID
him and he was only doing 100knots.
So they came by him two orthree times in F-16s and tried
(13:20):
to ID him, but it was pitchblack and he didn't have his
lights on, and so they said hewas a high wing single and they
returned to base, which was inEl Paso.
Okay, that was the only Goahead.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Let me just ask these questions.
So you were most of themarijuana smuggling and that was
in the late seventies and itwas coming out of the Bahamas
into the Keys?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, we know the marijuana was coming from
Columbia.
Okay, yeah, they were bringingshrimpers, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Okay, coming in that way.
How did you get involved in theair smuggling business?
How did that come up, did you?
I mean, how did you learn totrade with that, did you I?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
mean, how did you learn the trade with that?
Well, I had a partner who was apilot and when I, when we first
started working in Belize, weused to race boats.
And so when I, when we firststarted working in Belize, it
(14:25):
was a guy that we raced boatswith had a connection there and
he told us about this, you know,and we saw, we went down and
checked it all out andeverything, and we ended up
flying some marijuana out ofBelize and back into Louisiana
and throwing it out, you know,airdropping it, and that led to
the refueling spot.
And that led to the refuelingspot.
(14:45):
Since we had the connectionthere for the marijuana, we had
to get the fuel anyway when we'dgo to get the pot.
So we ended up with the samespot, same strip and everything
we were using down there.
We had two or three differentstrips we were using and we used
the same people that we usedwhen we were picking up pot, but
we didn't pick it up.
(15:06):
We were stopping there to justget fuel and it would take 20
minutes on the ground to get thefuel, yeah, and then we'd head
into Alabama with it.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Okay, all right, and now let me just ask, and I'm
very interested I didn't getinto the drug investigation
business until 1993.
Okay, prior to that, you know Itold you before I was a marshal
and we'll talk about theinstitutions later and that and
(15:36):
the conversation, and I was infraud and money laundering
before I went into the narcoticsfield.
Um, was this, if you coulddescribe, uh, was this part of
like there's a movie, uh, withTom Cruise, that uh.
American Berry Seal yeah, withBerry Seal.
Did you run into these kind ofpeople in your trade or?
Speaker 2 (15:59):
oh yeah yeah I, I did , absolutely.
You know, uh, I never met barryseal, thank god, but um, he he
was, he flew basically the sameairplanes we were flying.
We were flying panther navajosand, um, he was, from what I've
heard and you know, from peoplethat knew him and that I met
(16:19):
later on, um, he was a very goodpilot, he was, uh, he didn't
look like Tom Cruise, he washeavyset, but um, I think you
know, the movie that they madewas pretty much on point as far
as his, his life and and, uh,what he did.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Okay, and did you?
Uh, what, uh what, who is?
Who is the?
Uh, what group of thecolombians was there?
Was it carlos later's territoryback then, or or?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
ochoa, carlos, yeah, it was, it was, uh, the ochoas
and and pablo esc.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, later he was gone.
I think he got busted in 86, ifI'm not mistaken, I think his
whole empire in the Bahamas atNorman's Cay and everything.
I think that all crumbledaround 1986.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Okay, and with this, now, one of the things that I
worked for Customs.
As you know, we have anindividual, his name is Charlie
Jordan, and he was involved withcorruption within Customs, and
that Did you have theopportunity to meet him.
(17:33):
Yes, I did, and that Did youhave the opportunity to meet him
.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yes, I did.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I know our viewers that are going to be in customs.
This was quite a turbulentperiod.
I came in 1988 to customs andhis name was thrown around.
I think he was still a fugitiveback then.
But if you could explain yourinteraction with Charlie Jordan,
that would be very informative.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Well, like I told you before, we started flying out
of Belize and airdropping in alittle place called Whiskey Bay,
right outside Baton Rouge,louisiana, and I went to look at
some strips up there to offload.
We were planning on landing atfirst and I met a guy you know
(18:26):
through the racing boat racing,and so we flew up there to see
him and went to a little towncalled Apalouse and we went
right into the middle of ahornet's nest.
It was, you know.
When I called him on the phone,his phone was wiretapped and so
I said, hey, I'm here, this isDickie, you know.
And he says oh, I'll meet youat the airport.
(18:49):
So he drove over to the airportand he got in the airplane with
us and back then they didn'thave GPS, they had just Loran.
And back then they didn't haveGPS, they had just Loran.
But we went flying around hisarea there in Opelous and he had
(19:10):
crawfish farms and so down themiddle of the crawfish farms you
had these get our way pointsand mark a few of these and just
land on these, on thesecrawfish farms.
And after we came back to theairport and dropped him off, we
flew to Baton Rouge and customsfollowed us in an airplane and
then we landed, we went and gota hotel room and then went out
(19:32):
to dinner that night and thenthe next night we flew to to
dinner that night and then thenext night we flew to meridian,
mississippi, and rented a van togo to our hunting camp.
Well, they tried to break inthe airplane at baton rouge and
put a transponder in it and thenthey couldn't get into the
airplane.
And so then they went and theyput a.
They put a guy in the tower atmeridian to watch the airplane,
(19:56):
because they figured we weregoing to do something there.
Well, we went hunting.
We went turkey hunting.
So when we came back, the womanat the rental agency, I got in
the van and she drove me backover to the airplane from the
fixed base there and she handedme a card of a customs agent and
(20:18):
she said this man was veryinterested in you and I gave her
a pretty good size tip and saidthank you so much.
And I went back and I told mypartner.
I said hey, customs waschecking on us here and you know
this and that.
And he said what do you thinkit's from?
Said I don't know.
So when we got back to the keys.
Charlie Jordan lived about fourhouses away from him on a on a
(20:41):
lagoon, so he flagged him over,you know, over to the dock one
day he says, hey, can I talk toyou for a minute?
He comes over and he says, well, what do you have to do with
Louisiana?
And of course my partner waslike, well, nothing, you know
what are you talking about.
And he threw down theinvestigative reports that had
(21:04):
been generated by all the agentsthat had been tracking us and
following us around and he said,well, read that and tell me
it's nothing.
And then he says I want to work.
And when my partner came to meand said that he wanted to work,
I was like, oh, you've got tobe crazy.
You know, he's the head guy andhe goes.
I'm telling you he wants towork.
(21:25):
So he ended up we would doairdrops in the bay behind.
You know, back here in the Keyswe would do airdrops and
Charlie Jordan would be on abridge and when the airplane
came across the bridge he'd tellthem you know, you're clean and
green, everything's good.
And he'd be talking to us onthe radio and he was very
(21:46):
corrupt.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So how would he do this?
Would he have the customs radioand your radio?
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, and he'd talk to you, tell me how it worked.
Yeah, he would send his guys tonorth key largo or something.
He'd say, you know, there wassomething going on up there, and
he'd send the guys up up northand we'd be down south and, uh,
he would just, or he would just,they wouldn't be out there.
He would just say, you know?
I mean, he knew when they weregoing, he knew their schedules,
(22:15):
and he would tell us you knowwhen, when the awacs was up, and
he would tell us who was flying.
Yeah, he would tell useverything, wow.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Because you know his exploits are within the agency.
There was a lot of—he was afugitive and, quite frankly, an
embarrassment to the US CustomsService for this kind of thing
that was going on.
Plus, he put the agent's lifein Alabama and in the area and
(23:03):
everything coming in.
What happened and where didthings go wrong?
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Well, nothing ever really went wrong.
I mean as far as I mean whatwent wrong was I got busted
wrong.
I mean as far as I I mean whatwent wrong was I got busted, but
really I mean as far as I neverreally got busted in the middle
of doing anything.
You know, it was all, it wasall.
You know people saying this,people saying that, and they,
(23:31):
they made a case by profferingthese people and debriefing
these people.
I never.
You know, it's like a bankrobber goes into a bank and robs
a bank and a dye pack blows upin his face and he's painted red
and he comes out he's guilty ofrobbing that bank.
You don't need anybody to say,yeah, that's him, he did it.
You know, but I was nevercaught with my hand in the
(23:54):
cookie jar.
I never got caught with anydrugs.
And it was, you know, and I wasguilty of what I did.
I know.
You know I tell people I said Iwas guilty of smuggling drugs,
but I wasn't guilty of smugglingwhat I was charged with.
You know that the amount ofdrugs that I was charged with
(24:15):
there was I never.
I didn't do that.
And then you know, you knowthat the amount of drugs that I
was charged with there was Inever I didn't do that.
And then you know you you take,when you go to trial and your,
your people that you worked for,you brought trips for, are
testifying against you on thestand and they're trying to say
that you're the big guy.
And and you know, I wasn't thebig guy I was.
(24:35):
I was just a guy that offloadedairplanes and brought airplanes
.
I wasn't.
It wasn't my drugs, I didn'town the drugs.
I was getting paid to transportthe drugs and you know they
make you out, they want it, wantyou to be the kingpin and it.
I guess it's better for themthe press is better if they got
a drugink then than if they gotan offloader and I was made the
(25:00):
poster boy there.
You know I was like it was meand I ended up getting really I
got the only life sentence.
Out of the whole there was 20,28 people finally got arrested
in my case.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
This was a CCE case Continuing Criminal.
Enterprise when it just cameinto effect.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Right, it was fairly new yeah, 1987.
And that was when the new lawcame into effect had a good
lawyer and we fought.
They offered me a deal, if Iwould plead guilty and testify
against my friends andeverything, that they would give
(25:42):
me a life sentence.
And you know, first off, Iwasn't going to testify against
my friends and secondly, a lifesentence isn't a very good deal.
And so I had to go to trial.
I was, you know, I.
I, I was the cce, that was akingpin statute.
Uh, you got acquitted of, hesaid.
(26:23):
So you know, at least you'renot facing life.
Well, they use acquitted conduct.
The judge uses of what's calledacquitted conduct.
They've been using it for 30some years and what acquitted is
is they go by a standard that'sa lot lower than the beyond
(26:43):
reasonable doubt.
The standard that they go by isthe preponderance of evidence
standard.
And so at my sentencing, eventhough I was acquitted of being
the leader, even though I wasacquitted of being the leader,
the judge enhanced me saying bythe preponderance of the
evidence and by everybodytalking in court saying this and
that about me, because theywere trained to say that.
(27:17):
He felt that I about 26 years,so I go and I'm automatically a
36.
And now I've got four morepoints, which puts me at a 40.
Then I get two points forcarrying a firearm, which I
didn't carry a firearm, and thejudge by the preponderance of
evidence, because one of thecooperating individuals said
(27:42):
that I had a Uzi in the trunkwhile I was in a suburban.
There's not a trunk in asuburban, so I mean it was just
something to better histestimony and make him look
better, and so I got two pointsfor that.
And then I got two points forobstruction of justice because I
(28:05):
was hiding assets when in factI gave all of our.
My ex-wife was indicted becauseI wouldn't cooperate.
So they indicted her with,charged her with money
laundering.
So as part of her pleaagreement we gave them all the
assets that they had taken, andso I'm now a level 44.
Well, the highest the levelgoes in the guidelines is 43.
That's a life sentence.
And so I got life on sevencounts.
(28:29):
And you know to say that thesentencing is draconian is an
understatement, because if youget a 10-year sentence, after
five years your life has changedquite dramatically.
Your wife's gone, your kids arecalling somebody else daddy and
(28:50):
your money's gone.
The lawyers have got your moneyand then you do another five
years on top of that.
So those 10 years would bepretty hard on you.
But then when you give somebodya life sentence where you have
no hope of ever getting outbecause the life sentences that
are today they're not an old lawsentence where a 30-year
(29:14):
sentence was a life sentencebefore.
Under old law you were eligiblefor parole in 10 years and the
most you had to do was 30.
But nowadays you have to die inprison.
If you get a life sentence it'slife without parole, and so the
sentencing that they do today isjust, I mean it's so unjust and
(29:36):
so unfair.
It doesn't fit the crime.
I know, if there's a heinouscrime, I understand why you
would want to give somebody lifeto keep them off the street.
But in my case, and a lot ofpeople that I know that are
friends of mine, we never hurtanybody in our life.
We didn't shoot people up, wedidn't kill people.
(29:57):
I mean I had murderers that Iwas in prison with, that got out
before I got out, you know, andthey killed people inside the
institution also, you know, andI was around that type of
individual most of my sentence.
But you know you give somebody10 years, it's enough time to
(30:19):
make you change your life.
You give them 20 years, it'slike what's the extra 10 for?
And then you give them 30,what's the extra?
You know, it's just like itmakes no sense to keep somebody
in prison, especially if they'rerehabbing.
But there's not really a wholelot of rehab in the federal
system because there's nothingthere.
They don't have any type oftechnical schools to help you
(30:42):
when you get out.
I saw so many people in the 31years that I was incarcerated.
I saw so many people come andgo.
Come and go because they wouldget out.
They didn't have any people outthere because their sentences
were long to begin with but theyburned all the bridges out
there because they were addictedto drugs or whatever they were
(31:03):
doing and they would come backto prison and it would be like,
hey, how you doing, I'm back andthen next thing you know
they're leaving again.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
The other thing that's interesting is and I've
talked to Evelyn Bazan-Poppaabout that is you would actually
see correctional officers gointo and watch them retire.
They were rookies.
Then they retire in 25 yearsyou know which is amazing.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I saw that Yep.
I saw a lot of them retire.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Now, when you were convicted, where did you go
let's talk about that after yourtrial, where did you do your
time at and what happened whenyou were incarcerated?
I know you've had escapes andthat, but just talking about
that, and if you could let thepeople, the people know what
(31:59):
what prison life is like I'veseen the inside of marion and uh
, been there and dealt with thegangs inside and when I was a
marshal doing intelligencereports and things like that.
So if you could shed whathappened after that and uh, then
we'll talk.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
We'll go back to talking about your sentencing,
what you're trying an FCI, whichis a medium security prison and
(32:39):
that was where I was designated, and there were quite a few
guys there that had lifesentences, and I got sentenced
on December 15th of 1989.
And my mother passed away onJanuary 5th of of 90.
And uh, I started.
(33:02):
I started plotting to escape,because, you know, when a man
gets down to nothing, he's gotnothing to lose.
And I really had nothing tolose.
And uh, so I started plottingto escape and I saw a produce
truck came in and I was workingin the kitchen.
They had had a riot rightbefore I got there.
(33:24):
The Cubans had rioted and so Igot a job in the facilities as a
welder, and I'd never welded,but they were going to teach me.
And so they wanted me to goover to the Cuban unit and weld
these plates over the windows,because the Cubans had been
breaking the windows out.
And I refused to do that, youknow, because it's a security
(33:49):
job and it's something that theyshould have to do, not inmates.
So they wrote me an incidentreport for refusing to work and
they locked me up and I was inthe.
I was in the hole about a weekand my unit team came in and
they said well, we're going tolet you out, but we're going to
put you in the kitchen.
And I said I don't care, youcan put me anywhere you want to
(34:11):
put me.
So they put me in the kitchenand I think it was like either
the first or second day I was inthe kitchen, I went out on the
back dock and I was sitting outthere on like having a taking a
little break and here come theproduce truck in there and it
had muffler, was hanging off andit was loud and it came
(34:34):
bubbling in, you know, and Isaid, wow, this is, uh, this is
pretty interesting.
I said, you know, in the keyswe had we had a truck similar,
you know, to what I had in mind,to we used to haul pot out in
and had a false wall built in it.
So I I got together with a.
(34:55):
He was a dirt track racer and Istarted talking to him about who
fabricated his cars and he hada guy that was local there.
He was, he was a local guy, hewas from Georgia and he said he
had a guy that you know wasgreat fabricator.
And I said, well, how about youthink he would work on a truck
for me?
And he's like, yeah, for what?
(35:16):
And I said, well, how about youthink he would work on a truck
for me?
And he's like, yeah, for what?
And I said, well, I want to puta false wall in the truck and
bring some produce in here.
And he was like, well, yeah,can I go with you?
And I'm like, hell, yeah, youcan go with me, you know.
So he started plotting with meand we've got it all set up.
We got the bill from thewarehouse of the produce, which
(35:40):
it was the same produce everyweek, but they had two different
companies that would bid on it.
They had Dixie Produce and theyhad Gladstone Produce, and so
we didn't know which company wasgoing to get the bid for when
we were getting ready to leave,because they came every Tuesday.
So we had magnetic signs madeup with Dixie and we had
(36:00):
magnetic signs made up with theGladstone produce, and so we got
, we found out who got the bidand we went and got our own load
of produce at Atlanta at thefarmer's market.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Where did you get these signs made?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
We had somebody out there, you know, make them.
We had, his father was involvedand his brother was involved
and uh, I had, I had money backthen they hadn't seized all my
money yet, so I had money and Iwas kind of putting the bill on
everything.
And so they, they, uh, they gotthe produce, they got the signs
made up and and, uh, tuesdayrolled around like clockwork I
(36:42):
mean it worked out perfect.
And uh, they, that was probablythe worst possible thing that I
could have ever done was escape, because from that, you know, I
was gone.
I was out on the street forfive months and in those five
months, uh, my appeal, I gotcaptured.
(37:02):
I was gone five months and Iescaped on March 27th and I was
captured on August 29th and myappeal was dismissed on August
14th.
So those 15 days that after myappeal was dismissed I got, I
got captured, and so we askedfor reconsideration because I
(37:24):
was now in custody, because thereason they dismissed my appeal
was because I wasn't there to beadjudicated, yeah.
I was a fugitive and theycouldn't adjudicate me.
So they said I had no right toan appeal and it was an old
doctrine from 1896.
And so they dismissed my appealand my two co-defendants I only
(37:44):
had two co-defendants out of 28people there were, five of us
went to trial, two got acquittedand three of us got convicted
out of 28 people.
So my co-defendants, theirappeal was heard about 16 or 18
months after I was captured andit got reversed or remanded due
(38:07):
to prostitorial misconduct.
Now, if I hadn't escaped, I'dhave been right there with them
and I'd have been home many,many years ago, and that you
know.
It's a coulda, shoulda, wouldathing.
But I know now you know I wouldnever have escaped.
But when I was in that situationand everything, every motion
(38:30):
that we filed in court during mytrial, every motion was denied.
There was nothing that wasgranted, nothing and it was just
like it was like, and after,after the escape and my
post-conviction stuff that Ifiled, everything was denied.
It was all procedurally barredbecause of the escape.
So I had nothing coming fromthe court period.
(38:50):
Yeah, it was not good.
The escape was a bad plan.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
So how did you get captured?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I got captured, I had put money away overseas.
Captured, I had put money awayoverseas, and so I contacted my
friend that had helped me putthe money over there.
And it just so happens that hewas in the process of thinking
it was his money and so he toldme I couldn't go near it.
It had been froze, so Icouldn't go and get a job
(39:23):
anywhere and work anywhere and Ididn't have money.
So I started putting together atrip and Pablo Escobar was
still alive.
He didn't get killed until 93.
And so I started puttingtogether a trip and I got hooked
up with a DEA informant and acustoms informant.
And I'm sitting in a restauranthaving lunch with these two
(39:49):
informants and neither of themknew each other was an informant
.
And yeah, yeah, and there was a$50,000 reward on my head.
So I was a prize for this guy,the customs informant.
And the DEA informant was arogue.
He was lying to his handlerthat you know we were bringing
(40:12):
the drugs into El Paso, texasand this, and that they were
going to rob, they were going tosteal the drugs.
It was just completely a mix,bad mix.
I went out of my domain and Igot with the wrong people, and I
ended up getting captured overit.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Okay, and what happened after that, after you
were captured?
Speaker 2 (40:35):
After that, yeah, then I went to.
Since I left an FCI on theescape, my security was jacked
up.
So I went to a penitentiary nowand I went to Terre Haute and,
uh, when I got to Terre Haute,indiana, I started plotting
(40:56):
again because I wasn't, I wasnot giving up, I was trying to
get away, because that was theonly hope I had, I you know.
So I started plotting again andI got my sister involved and I
got with a guy that I thoughtwas a good guy and of course, my
, my character judgment was hada had a big flaw in it with this
guy too, and he was tellingthem everything that was going
(41:19):
on.
So I mean the, the, the escapewas doomed from the day we
started plotting it and I thinkhe had a 30-year sentence for a
CCE out of Michigan and he endedup getting that squashed by
setting the escape up andgetting me busted, getting my
sister busted, getting thisother friend of mine busted, and
(41:40):
so from there, the next stopwas Marion, which is they built
Marion to take the place ofAlcatraz, and so I went to
Marion and I'm in Marion forabout three years and it's
locked down.
You're locked in your cell for23 hours a day.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
You said you were there so you know how it is
Control unit.
I know exactly.
And that was that was the topof the line back in the day and
you had 23 and a half hours inthe half hour exercise.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, yeah, your exercise is in a little dog
kennel area yeah.
It was a very, very nasty place, and you're around a bunch of
very dangerous people too youknow, um, it's probably the most
safe, uh, safest, uh place asfar as the guards go, because
(42:36):
they're you know they're,they're when they're when you're
out of your cell, you're inhandcuffs if you're around an
officer, there's, and there's,always two of them.
But even at that they still hadtwo guards murdered there in
1983.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Yes, in 1983.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
And from there.
When they opened up ADX inColorado, I was transferred
there and basically they justmoved everybody out of Marion to
ADX.
So I was moved to ADX.
I I did about three more yearsthere at and before they
transferred me out, and thenthey sent me to Atlanta and from
(43:14):
Atlanta they trumped up somekind of an escape plot that I
had.
I didn't do anything in Atlanta.
If I, if I did, I would tellyou now because I'm an open book
, I have nothing to hide.
But in Atlanta I really did notdo anything.
It was just some guy was tryingto get him better himself and
he got, came up to me rightafter they opened the doors at
(43:37):
count time and shook my hand andI said, well, he, you just got
here and I walked him around theyard and introduced him to
people and the whole time he wastrying to set me up on an
escape and there was two orthree people that were involved
with me that I didn't even knowthem.
But they locked me up and sentme back to ADX for this escape
(43:58):
and so then I left ADX.
That time I ended up doing like10 years total in ADX and
Marion.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Tell our viewers what ADX is.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
ADX is it's ADMAX, it's the prison that's in
Florence, colorado.
It's probably the most secureprison in the country or in the
world.
I mean it's got.
That's where they keep theterrorists, that's where they
have the trade know the, thetrade center bombers.
They have Eric Rudolph, theyhave you know a lot of the high
(44:35):
profile gang members are thereand it just cuts your
communications with your theoutside world off completely.
You are, there is nothing.
You get one phone call a monthand I mean it's, it's not, it's
not a good place to be.
And so I left there and wentfrom there across to the
(44:56):
penitentiary and I left thepenitentiary and went to Coleman
Florida and I was in ColemanFlorida and that's where I ended
up.
I ended up going, coming homefrom Coleman, okay On a
compassionate basis.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yes, Can we?
Can we?
We're going to talk about that.
And, and you had, you had thesupport of the DEA agents
involved in your case, and Ithink that's important too.
We talked about that.
Um, and if you could go intowhen you went to Coleman and
what led up to your, yourrelease.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
The um.
I had filed a couple of times,uh, I had filed a pro se motion,
uh, for compassion release andit had been denied.
And then the professor her nameis Katie Tinto, she's the law
professor at UC Irvine inCalifornia and she saw she read
(45:56):
about I had a lot of supportfrom the Keys.
Like I said at the beginning ofthis, you know the Keys are,
it's a small place, we live onan island and back in the day I
I don't know if you'd say I wasa bank, but I gave a lot of
people money.
I, anybody that came to meneeding anything a car, a house,
(46:20):
a lot, whatever.
They needed money for thismoney.
For that I gave people money.
I wasn't, you know, I wasn'trobbing and like Robin Hood, I
wasn't doing the Robin Hoodthing, but I was.
I had money and so I didn't.
I was, I gave it away freelyand I mean I tipped the
waitresses and the barmaids andeverybody very well and I took
(46:42):
care of everybody and peoplethat weren't really even my
friends I'd lend money to.
I just was good.
I was good with people and I.
So I had a lot of people thatcared about me and and and love
me and they were, you know, theywere all advocating for my
freedom and the Miami Herald haddone an article.
(47:03):
The little paper down here, thelittle free press, had done an
article about me coming home andthey had a parade where they
were had some flags and stuffwith my you know, banners on
there with my names and stuffbring me home.
And so when, when Katie readthis in the paper, she wrote me
(47:23):
a letter and she said you know,she explained who she was and
she said I've read your case,I've read everything about your
compassion release, she said andyou know, now that the first
step act has come into play, shesaid the criteria has changed.
And she said and the judge inyour case, I think that he
(47:43):
really went by the old criteriaand not the new criteria.
Well, the new criteria is thatyou have to show extraordinary,
compelling reasons why youdeserve a compassion release and
you have to have done 10 yearsof your sentence.
Well, I had done 10 years of mysentence, I'd done 31.
And I had some issues with myheart.
(48:05):
My, my medical was not good andso I had stents in my heart and
some kidney problems, and youdon't get very good medical care
in the prison.
I mean, it's anything that you,anything that you have wrong.
It takes a very long time andmost of the time you have to go,
you have to.
(48:26):
It's like the administrativeremedy process is like filing a
lawsuit against the prison, butit's in-house.
So you have to go through thesesteps, which they call it.
There's a BP-8, there's a BP-9,bp-10, bp-11, and they go all
the way up the chain of commandto Washington.
(48:46):
You go from the.
The first person you ask isyour counselor and he's that's
an informal resolution which isis a BP 8 and he denies whatever
you're requesting.
And then you go to the wardenon a BP 9 and he denies it and
it goes to the.
Then you go to the regionaldirector and they deny it.
They all just say we go, we'regoing to go with what the warden
(49:09):
said, we're going to go withwhat the regional director says.
And this process takes a yearor two, sometimes two years, and
sometimes, when it gets to thelast phase of it, you won't even
hear from them.
They won't even answer you back.
So then you have, once you'veexhausted these remedies, then
you can go into court with alawsuit, a civil suit, and say
(49:30):
that you're not getting medicalcare, and the Supreme Court says
that you're, you're supposed tobe, you're supposed to have
exactly the same medical careyou would have on the street.
But it's not like that in thefederal system.
So I, you know, I had, I had alot of medical issues.
And so Katie said she wanted toput three of her students on my
(49:53):
case.
And I was like how much youknow?
She's no, no, no, we're free,we're a nonprofit.
And I'm like, come on down,cause I had spent so much money
with lawyers over the years.
I'm like this is amazing,you're going to do my work, this
work, for free.
And so they filed the petition,and, and when they filed the
(50:13):
petition, I, the government, hadto respond to it.
And of course, they came withexactly the same thing that
they'd always, you know.
Oh, I had escaped.
I'm this, I'm that, I'm violent, I'm no, oh, I had escaped.
I'm this, I'm that, I'm violent, I'm no, you know, it just was
(50:34):
25 pages of the same rhetoricthat I had read so many
different times, and I justthrew it on the locker and I
said I don't have anythingcoming, you know.
And a few days later the dooropened up.
The officer was standing thereand he asked me for my name and
my ID card and I gave it to him.
He asked me my number.
(50:56):
He's looking at my card andyour card has your number and
your picture on it.
I said it's on the card.
He said no, I want to hear itfrom you.
I told him my number and hesays well, come with me.
And I said, all right, let meget my shoes.
And he goes no, you don't needthem.
And we were locked down becauseof COVID and so I said no, I'm
getting my shoes.
So I sat on my bed and I tied,laced my tennis shoes up and I'm
(51:18):
going down the stairs.
And as we're going down, ofcourse we had to wear a mask.
And he, he had a mask on and hesays uh, he asked me if I
believed in God and I saidabsolutely.
And he said, uh, okay.
I said what's this about?
He goes, he goes yo, you'regoing to find out.
And I'm like is it my lawyer?
Or who is this?
(51:39):
Where am I?
You know?
He says you're, you're, you'regoing to find out.
So I went in his office and hedialed the phone and he's got a
folder in his hand and I said isthis, what is this my lawyer?
And he's like he says, justhang on, you're going to find
out.
And so he said, I got him righthere and he hands me the phone
and it's Katie on the other endscreaming that my compassion
(52:00):
release had been granted.
And so I started crying.
She was crying and I lookedover and he was crying yeah, it
was something else, you know.
And then I had to go back up thestairs because, like I said, it
was locked down so nobody wasout of their cells.
And I had to go back up andeverybody's in the window
(52:21):
looking what's going on, youknow.
And I had to go by my buddy'scell and tell him hey, I was
granted compassion release and Ihad 14 days before I was
released.
So you can imagine 14 days ofjust waiting and shredding
papers all my legal, all mystacks of transcripts and all
(52:42):
the motions I'd filed over theyears.
I was just shredding him up andputting him in garbage bags
every day, every day.
Yeah, it was pretty special.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
So tell me about your release.
They took you to R&D and yourfamily came out.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
My God, not only my family, everybody came.
I mean, I went to R and d andthe officer I knew him, of
course, you know I, because I, Iwith the officers, I, I have
officers to this day, okay, thatwere guards guarding me, that
are friends of mine, that comedown here and go out on the boat
(53:21):
with me.
You know they're, they're, theywere good guys and and I I
always treated them with respectand they treated me with
respect.
And and the ones that would,the ones like that you, you know
they're just like, they're justlike us, they're just, they're
good people.
You know there were, there weresome that were that tried to be,
they tried to be hard,hard-nosed with you and be
(53:42):
assholes to you Excuse my French, but they tried to be bad to
you.
And those guys, I don't careabout having a beer with them or
taking them out in a boat, butthe guys that gave me respect, I
care for them.
They're good people.
They weren't there, they werejust there to do their eight
hours and go home, that's it,yeah, and that's you know.
(54:05):
You give respect, you getrespect 100.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
So what have you been doing since you've been
released and what do you see inthe future?
I know that you've givenlectures and Smuggling the Keys,
which I watched.
It was very interesting, andwhat are you planning to do?
You know you obviously havegrandchildren, which are
(54:35):
wonderful.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Yeah, I have five and one on the way and they're all
great kids and you know I'd liketo take them out, you know, go
fishing with them.
And I've been doing a lot offishing.
I've been doing, you know, andI've done a lot of odd, you know
, odd jobs, handyman jobs andstuff like that around town here
(54:57):
, and it's I've just been.
I've been blessed to be whereI'm at right now.
I've got a beautiful girl andwe have a great life together.
She's got three grandkids ofher own and we spend a lot of
time with her family and we havea great time.
(55:21):
We're blessed to have eachother a great time.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
We're blessed to have each other.
What message?
Because you've had seven lifesentences and that's probably
the most sentenced prisoner I'veever or inmate I've ever heard
of getting seven.
I mean even the guys that, likeyou said before, that were part
of committed homicides inprison.
They got life.
(55:52):
And they got, you know, anotherconsecutive conspiracy to
commit murder.
They got two lives, you know.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
You got seven.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
That's how the times were back then, and not what
would you give as advice to afirst-time inmate in the future
Just based on, I mean, yourstory.
The book, everything gives abig picture.
But what would be the biggestadvice you would give and I
(56:24):
appreciate the candor what wouldbe the biggest advice you would
give?
And I appreciate the candor,you know, like you said, you
were making $4 an hour andsomebody hands you a bag of
$35,000 in the 70s.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
I mean, that's like amazing, Exactly yeah.
But what advice would you giveto somebody?
You know, as far as givingsomebody advice, uh, you know, I
, like my son, I, you know if,if, if something sounds too good
to be true, it it, it is toogood to be true, it's, it's
(56:58):
usually it, and it's like tothis day and age, it's.
You get all these things onyour phone, these people trying
to scam you online and stuff,and I, you know, if it sounds
too good to be true, you stepaway from it.
You know, and as far as thedrugs go, I, you know I never
really saw the the addict sideof the drugs until I got into
(57:21):
the Mobile County jail.
I, you know there were a lot ofheroin users that were in there
and in the prison system too.
I mean, there's a lot of drugaddicts and you know we call
them dope fiends and they were,literally they would do anything
(57:41):
to get drugs and I guess theywere the same on the street,
that's, you know, robbing,stealing, doing whatever you
know, carjacking, doing whateverthey had to do.
And it's like I would tell myson, you know, when you stop at
a red light, when he was inTampa going to school, I said,
when you stop at that light atthree o'clock in the morning and
(58:03):
there's nobody around.
I said you know they'll run outand take your car.
And he was like, oh dad, no,they won't do that.
I said, no, I hear storiesabout it every day.
I hear them in here talkingabout it, so I know that they do
that.
And I said and if you don'tgive them your car, they will
shoot you.
And I said so, just, you know,you got to just be careful.
But as far as somebody I gave, Imentored a lot of people when I
(58:26):
was in prison.
I tried to get guys off ofdrugs and I tried to work with
them and stuff.
And we had a group.
When I was in Florence no, Imean, I'm sorry, excuse me when
we were in Coleman, we had agroup and we called it Ste it,
stepping Out, and what we did.
(58:47):
There was a in Colorado Springs.
There was a juvenile detentioncenter and we would write, we
would have these meetings and wewould write letters to these
kids that were in the juveniledetention thing and we all we
all had different kids that wewould write to and we'd write
them and try to tell them.
I mean it wasn't a scaredstraight thing, but we would try
to tell them.
(59:07):
You know what it's like in there.
You know it's like I've alwayssaid that if the judges in the
federal courts were to have tospend two weeks in a
penitentiary, they would thinktwice about giving somebody
these draconian sentences.
(59:27):
You know, because in two weeksyou would see some crazy stuff
go on.
You know and it's.
You know there's predators,there's.
It's not prison.
A penitentiary is not a goodplace and the only thing I could
tell somebody that was comingin is to try to better yourself,
(59:49):
try to take courses, try totake class.
You know, whatever class youcan take, I took the Microsoft
computer, I took everything thatwas offered to me, and
especially when you're in ADX,because you're locked there in
your cell and everything you hadto take, every class you took,
was on the TV you didn't havesomebody instructing you.
But in penitentiaries or inFCIs you have to have people
(01:00:14):
teaching you.
You know other inmates willteach you.
You know a lot of kids come inthere.
They don't have their GEDs andthat's the first thing you would
want to get get your GED.
And so when you do get out ofprison, you have, you have
something to fall back on, youknow, but um, I you know it's uh
, I just think that the the timethat people get for the crimes
(01:00:38):
that they're committing, thatthis day and age is.
It's ridiculous people there.
I mean there's still peopledoing life sentences for
marijuana, and it's legal inwhat?
28 states, and soon to be legal, maybe even in the federal
system.
Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Yeah, the drug that's really poisonous today is
fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Fentanyl yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
And that is something you take and you die, I mean
the population they're losing isof the population of Lake
Lakeland, florida, and day.
I mean, that's just frightening, that's.
That's something that I mean.
Don't get me started.
You know how I feel aboutborder control.
(01:01:20):
I retired from ICE and and youknow the people that are getting
here and coming in a differentmethod let's just say, not the
method that my ancestors camehere from Ireland.
So so I think that needs, thatneeds to be addressed.
(01:01:41):
Plus, the United States has thebiggest supply and demand for
drugs in the world.
Absolutely, you know, yeah, soit's uh something that they hope
to to address, but uh, no, Iwant I I hope you'll come on
again because we're having uhdiscussions on this.
(01:02:02):
I'm'm.
You know, I've had all theeverybody on here is a
practitioner one way or another.
One of the things that I feltwas important in doing this is
to have the whole spectrum.
You know there's plenty ofshows, just law enforcement,
just correctional advocacy andall that, but combine them and
(01:02:24):
most of your people that you seein the media, they're talking
heads.
Let's just call it like it is.
You know, dickie it is.
They were chiefs of police, theyhad political careers.
Other people talk about youknow advocacy for inmates, and
(01:02:46):
the best people to talk aboutthat are people like you that
are out now and moving on withtheir life.
It's just plain and simple.
I mean, we have the experience,we have white hair now and a
little heavier and that, butit's something that, that, uh,
(01:03:08):
that needs to be brought to theattention.
Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
so thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
Please give my best to judy and uh, we'll talk,
thank you I will okay see youbye.
Today we have Richard Lynn, aka Dickie Lynn, from Key
Largo, who I had the pleasureof meeting two weeks ago,
recommended a wonderful place tohave a fish fry on a Friday in
the Keys, which I got to tellyou it was unbelievable, it was
really good and I willdefinitely head down to Florida
(00:24):
City again.
Dickie is a great story.
He's been involved in thecriminal justice system.
He had a book written about him, the Trials of Dickie Lynn,
which I've read, even about twoyears ago I think I read it,
(00:44):
even about two years ago, Ithink I read it and here today
to talk with him and discuss hislife and, more important, his
future, and when we're going togo have a fish fry again,
because I really enjoyed it alot.
So anyway, dickie, welcome andit's great to have you on.
(01:07):
Justice Then.
Justice Now.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, it's great to be here and I'm very happy to be
here, and it was a pleasuremeeting you a couple weeks ago,
and I think you're working for agreat cause and that's a
wonderful thing.
We need reform in the system.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Thank you very much.
Yes, we do.
That's the whole purpose ofthis is to get a discussion
going on criminal justice issues.
Then and now we have everybodyfrom different spectrums and
perceptives of the system, fromdifferent spectrums and
perceptives of the system and,more important, if there's a way
to fix it and make it better.
(01:48):
I think for everybody that'sthe main thing.
You know, as I told you, Imajored in this in grad school
and it's always had my interest,the whole spectrum.
Anyway, usually I started outas if you could give me your
(02:09):
background, a little bit aboutyourself, and you know how you
ended up in the Keys.
I know the answers to this, butour viewers would definitely
like to hear it.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, I ended up in the Keys.
We were.
I was born in Michigan and myfather had a very bad bronchitis
and and so he was verysusceptible to catching
pneumonia and the doctor toldhim he needed a warmer climate.
So he packed us all up and wemoved to the Keys in 1958.
(02:41):
And I was four years old and westarted.
You know just, my fatherstarted a smoked fish business
and in 1960, it got wiped offthe map in Hurricane Donna and
it was moved to another spot.
And then my father, after a fewyears of smoking fish, he was a
(03:03):
carpenter also and he got hiscontractor's license and was
building houses down here.
And I grew up down here mywhole life.
The school I went to waskindergarten through 12th grade.
There was no junior high,senior high, all that.
It was just one school CoralShores.
And we, you know, we live on anisland, so everybody knows
(03:27):
everybody, everybody knowseverybody's business, everybody,
you know.
So it's a very small littleclicky place.
And in high school I was, youknow, I was more of the and I
was more of the.
I don't know whether you'd callit a redneck, but I was a jock.
(03:50):
I was into sports.
I played sports and baseballand football, and I was into all
that.
I was not into drugs.
But when I graduated out ofhigh school, the year I was
supposed to graduate, my fatherwas killed in a car accident and
so, instead of putting a burdenon my mother, because we didn't
(04:11):
have a lot of money, she was awaitress and so, instead of
putting a burden on my mother, Istarted construction and I was
working with my brother, whobasically took my father's
business over, and I was making$4 an hour digging ditches,
pouring concrete.
(04:32):
And so a friend of mine that Iwent to high school with came to
me in 1973.
And he told me that his dadwanted me to work for him
because I knew the back country.
I knew the water is very goodaround here because I grew up my
whole life in a boat, divingand fishing.
So I said, yeah, well, you wantme to work.
(04:53):
What does he want me to do?
He's like well, he wants you togo out and meet the mothership.
I was like, with what?
And he's like well, with somepot on it.
And I go oh, you know.
At first I was like, oh, no,you know.
And he goes no, all you have todo, you don't have to touch it,
all you have to do is lead theboat in.
So I went out and I put a lightdown in the gunwale on my boat
(05:15):
and I led a 55 foot lobster boatinto a house that they had
secured as a as an offloadingsite and a few days later I got
a brown paper bag with $35,000in it and, to say the least, I
(05:41):
was kind of ruined.
I was recently married and Ididn't want to tell my wife
because I thought she would justflip out.
So I did I don't know four orfive, six trips, whatever it was
, and I saved up all the moneyand when I finally threw the
money out on the bed and saidhere it is, she kind of freaked
out.
What did you do, rob?
A bank?
What happened?
What you know?
(06:01):
She was panicking and I said,no, you know, and I explained to
her what I was doing.
And you know that it wasmarijuana and it's okay, I'm,
you know, and that was, that wasthat, and I was, you know, we
were just we decided I'd stopwhen I made $250,000.
Well, when you are in a businesslike this and the money's
(06:25):
coming so easy, back then therewere no customs.
There were no DEA down here.
There was Coast Guard, marinePatrol and the local police and
I went to high school with allthe local police guys so of
course they were on our payroll.
We had the Coast Guard, we hadeverybody and there was not much
(06:45):
risk involved.
And back then if you got caughtheck, guys were getting caught
on boats with 25,000 pounds anddoing five years it was.
You know, there was nosentencing guidelines and it was
a lot different than it is thisday and age.
You know, this day and age aguy can be on the corner with a
handful of drugs in his in hishand and end up getting 40 years
(07:08):
or sometimes and there was nomoney laundering statutes anyway
.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Right, there was nothing in the late 70s there
was nothing back then.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, there were no treaties with the cayman islands
or the whoever there was.
Just it was wide open and anduh, so I I was going to stop
when I made 250, 000 and thatcame and went, and then I was
going to stop when I made 500and that came and went and you
get the greed factor takes over.
You know it's it's kind of it'sso easy and it's like it's easy
(07:39):
money and it's fast money, andso I just got entrapped in it.
I got you know it's fast moneyand so I just got entrapped in
it.
I got you know it's like awhirlpool.
The whirlpool spins you up andyou can go to the top of the
whirlpool or you can get spitout along the way or you can get
sucked down in it, you know.
And so in 1980, I got busted ona sting with a kilo of cocaine
(08:01):
and I went away to prison.
I went away to a camp.
Back then, a kilo of cocaineheld a sentence of 24 to 36
months.
Well, when I went away toprison which I mean people, you
really can't hardly call it aprison it was like a college
campus.
We had weights and you playedsoftball and you ran I mean,
there was no fence and you'rearound all these people in there
(08:25):
that have done crimes likegrowing pot or make
counterfeiting money or flyingdrugs in or whatever they're
doing, and you're around themand next thing you know you're
talking was.
It was a finishing school andand it was like, uh, when you
(08:46):
get out, it's like, do I want togo back and start digging
ditches again or or or what youknow?
And it was just I got out andand I tried to go back I just
want to ask you what, what uhcorrectional facility?
Speaker 1 (09:02):
was this for our viewers?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Eglin Airport Base.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Okay, and that's up on the panhandle right.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Up on the panhandle.
I've been there as a marshal,we talked about that.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And it is the way you described it it's a camp.
It was a camp.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, there's tennis courts Bowling alley.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I remember going there, yes.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
So go ahead.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
You were released and went back in.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I was released and I started building, you know,
doing construction, and somebodycame to me and said, hey, do
you want to do a trip?
I'll pay you $250,000.
And I was like, yeah, I'm in.
And so I went down, I took aboat, went to the Bahamas,
brought back a load of cocaineand then that load of cocaine
(09:49):
went into another one and I didthree or four trips and we had
bought a hunting camp in Alabama, my partner and I, and we went
up there one time and the guywas like one of the guys, one of
the owners of the of the tripsthat we had done with with the
cocaine.
He was like, why don't we justfly it up here?
(10:09):
And so we started flying it upthere.
We had worked in Belize and wehad a connection in Belize to
stop and get fuel, and so westarted flying it into Alabama.
And Alabama was, you know, bythe time this rolls around,
we're talking like 1985, 86, 87,and it's a lot different than
(10:31):
it was in the keys in 1973 andin the.
In the keys then now they hadDEA, they had customs and they
had they were doing interdictionin the keys quite, you know,
quite heavy.
And so the radios that welistened to, the scanners and
everything we listened to wouldbe squawking all night long.
(10:51):
They'd be chasing people.
Everybody was.
You know, there was differentpeople trying to do, different
organizations trying to bring indrugs.
They'd be chasing people allover the place.
We'd go up to alabama with thesame scanners and same
frequencies and plug them in andit'd just be flatline.
It'd be nothing.
You hear nothing, you know.
And so it was like we went backinto the 70s in Alabama.
(11:13):
You know, there was nothingthere, nobody there, to stop you
.
And so we started working thereand all I ever did with the
drugs was transport them.
And all I ever did with thedrugs was transport them.
I brought them from point A topoint B and I handed them off
and I collected the money for it.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Where was this in Alabama?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
What part.
We were bringing it into alittle strip called Demopolis,
alabama, and it's right outsideof Livingston, it's about 30
miles from Meridian Mississippi,and so we were refueling the
airplanes in Belize.
We would leave Miami, flyacross Cuba, land in Columbia
(11:54):
It'd be an eight-hour trip andthen we'd fuel up in Columbia,
put the drugs on and fly toBelize, which is a six-hour trip
, put fuel on there and then toAlabama was five hours and we
would come right in throughMobile Bay, right on the deck,
and then, once we got to by theMobile airport, we'd fly up and
(12:15):
raise up to 2,500 feet and flyup to where my hunting camp was
in Demopolis, and it was backthen.
It was fairly easy to do.
The only thing you had to worryabout we'd slow down.
When you'd get 100 miles out,we'd get down on the deck and
slow down and we'd look like ahelicopter that was flying
(12:35):
people back and forth to the oilrigs.
You know, at night out there.
And um, it was, it was.
You know, it was a very easy todo.
There was, um, it wasn't.
You weren't getting chased allthe time, you, the only time we
ever had any problem with anyanybody getting jumping on us
was um, there was fog, the wholethe whole Bay golf was fogged
(12:59):
up and the pilot had to climbabove the fog and he went up
about 2,500 foot and they pickedhim up on NORAD when he broke
the 80s and so they scrambledjets on him and they couldn't ID
him and he was only doing 100knots.
So they came by him two orthree times in F-16s and tried
(13:20):
to ID him, but it was pitchblack and he didn't have his
lights on, and so they said hewas a high wing single and they
returned to base, which was inEl Paso.
Okay, that was the only Goahead.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Let me just ask these questions.
So you were most of themarijuana smuggling and that was
in the late seventies and itwas coming out of the Bahamas
into the Keys?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, we know the marijuana was coming from
Columbia.
Okay, yeah, they were bringingshrimpers, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Okay, coming in that way.
How did you get involved in theair smuggling business?
How did that come up, did you?
I mean, how did you learn totrade with that, did you I?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
mean, how did you learn the trade with that?
Well, I had a partner who was apilot and when I, when we first
started working in Belize, weused to race boats.
And so when I, when we firststarted working in Belize, it
(14:25):
was a guy that we raced boatswith had a connection there and
he told us about this, you know,and we saw, we went down and
checked it all out andeverything, and we ended up
flying some marijuana out ofBelize and back into Louisiana
and throwing it out, you know,airdropping it, and that led to
the refueling spot.
And that led to the refuelingspot.
(14:45):
Since we had the connectionthere for the marijuana, we had
to get the fuel anyway when we'dgo to get the pot.
So we ended up with the samespot, same strip and everything
we were using down there.
We had two or three differentstrips we were using and we used
the same people that we usedwhen we were picking up pot, but
we didn't pick it up.
(15:06):
We were stopping there to justget fuel and it would take 20
minutes on the ground to get thefuel, yeah, and then we'd head
into Alabama with it.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Okay, all right, and now let me just ask, and I'm
very interested I didn't getinto the drug investigation
business until 1993.
Okay, prior to that, you know Itold you before I was a marshal
and we'll talk about theinstitutions later and that and
(15:36):
the conversation, and I was infraud and money laundering
before I went into the narcoticsfield.
Um, was this, if you coulddescribe, uh, was this part of
like there's a movie, uh, withTom Cruise, that uh.
American Berry Seal yeah, withBerry Seal.
Did you run into these kind ofpeople in your trade or?
Speaker 2 (15:59):
oh yeah yeah I, I did , absolutely.
You know, uh, I never met barryseal, thank god, but um, he he
was, he flew basically the sameairplanes we were flying.
We were flying panther navajosand, um, he was, from what I've
heard and you know, from peoplethat knew him and that I met
(16:19):
later on, um, he was a very goodpilot, he was, uh, he didn't
look like Tom Cruise, he washeavyset, but um, I think you
know, the movie that they madewas pretty much on point as far
as his, his life and and, uh,what he did.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Okay, and did you?
Uh, what, uh what, who is?
Who is the?
Uh, what group of thecolombians was there?
Was it carlos later's territoryback then, or or?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
ochoa, carlos, yeah, it was, it was, uh, the ochoas
and and pablo esc.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, later he was gone.
I think he got busted in 86, ifI'm not mistaken, I think his
whole empire in the Bahamas atNorman's Cay and everything.
I think that all crumbledaround 1986.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Okay, and with this, now, one of the things that I
worked for Customs.
As you know, we have anindividual, his name is Charlie
Jordan, and he was involved withcorruption within Customs, and
that Did you have theopportunity to meet him.
(17:33):
Yes, I did, and that Did youhave the opportunity to meet him
.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yes, I did.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I know our viewers that are going to be in customs.
This was quite a turbulentperiod.
I came in 1988 to customs andhis name was thrown around.
I think he was still a fugitiveback then.
But if you could explain yourinteraction with Charlie Jordan,
that would be very informative.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Well, like I told you before, we started flying out
of Belize and airdropping in alittle place called Whiskey Bay,
right outside Baton Rouge,louisiana, and I went to look at
some strips up there to offload.
We were planning on landing atfirst and I met a guy you know
(18:26):
through the racing boat racing,and so we flew up there to see
him and went to a little towncalled Apalouse and we went
right into the middle of ahornet's nest.
It was, you know.
When I called him on the phone,his phone was wiretapped and so
I said, hey, I'm here, this isDickie, you know.
And he says oh, I'll meet youat the airport.
(18:49):
So he drove over to the airportand he got in the airplane with
us and back then they didn'thave GPS, they had just Loran.
And back then they didn't haveGPS, they had just Loran.
But we went flying around hisarea there in Opelous and he had
(19:10):
crawfish farms and so down themiddle of the crawfish farms you
had these get our way pointsand mark a few of these and just
land on these, on thesecrawfish farms.
And after we came back to theairport and dropped him off, we
flew to Baton Rouge and customsfollowed us in an airplane and
then we landed, we went and gota hotel room and then went out
(19:32):
to dinner that night and thenthe next night we flew to to
dinner that night and then thenext night we flew to meridian,
mississippi, and rented a van togo to our hunting camp.
Well, they tried to break inthe airplane at baton rouge and
put a transponder in it and thenthey couldn't get into the
airplane.
And so then they went and theyput a.
They put a guy in the tower atmeridian to watch the airplane,
(19:56):
because they figured we weregoing to do something there.
Well, we went hunting.
We went turkey hunting.
So when we came back, the womanat the rental agency, I got in
the van and she drove me backover to the airplane from the
fixed base there and she handedme a card of a customs agent and
(20:18):
she said this man was veryinterested in you and I gave her
a pretty good size tip and saidthank you so much.
And I went back and I told mypartner.
I said hey, customs waschecking on us here and you know
this and that.
And he said what do you thinkit's from?
Said I don't know.
So when we got back to the keys.
Charlie Jordan lived about fourhouses away from him on a on a
(20:41):
lagoon, so he flagged him over,you know, over to the dock one
day he says, hey, can I talk toyou for a minute?
He comes over and he says, well, what do you have to do with
Louisiana?
And of course my partner waslike, well, nothing, you know
what are you talking about.
And he threw down theinvestigative reports that had
(21:04):
been generated by all the agentsthat had been tracking us and
following us around and he said,well, read that and tell me
it's nothing.
And then he says I want to work.
And when my partner came to meand said that he wanted to work,
I was like, oh, you've got tobe crazy.
You know, he's the head guy andhe goes.
I'm telling you he wants towork.
(21:25):
So he ended up we would doairdrops in the bay behind.
You know, back here in the Keyswe would do airdrops and
Charlie Jordan would be on abridge and when the airplane
came across the bridge he'd tellthem you know, you're clean and
green, everything's good.
And he'd be talking to us onthe radio and he was very
(21:46):
corrupt.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So how would he do this?
Would he have the customs radioand your radio?
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, and he'd talk to you, tell me how it worked.
Yeah, he would send his guys tonorth key largo or something.
He'd say, you know, there wassomething going on up there, and
he'd send the guys up up northand we'd be down south and, uh,
he would just, or he would just,they wouldn't be out there.
He would just say, you know?
I mean, he knew when they weregoing, he knew their schedules,
(22:15):
and he would tell us you knowwhen, when the awacs was up, and
he would tell us who was flying.
Yeah, he would tell useverything, wow.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Because you know his exploits are within the agency.
There was a lot of—he was afugitive and, quite frankly, an
embarrassment to the US CustomsService for this kind of thing
that was going on.
Plus, he put the agent's lifein Alabama and in the area and
(23:03):
everything coming in.
What happened and where didthings go wrong?
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Well, nothing ever really went wrong.
I mean as far as I mean whatwent wrong was I got busted
wrong.
I mean as far as I I mean whatwent wrong was I got busted, but
really I mean as far as I neverreally got busted in the middle
of doing anything.
You know, it was all, it wasall.
You know people saying this,people saying that, and they,
(23:31):
they made a case by profferingthese people and debriefing
these people.
I never.
You know, it's like a bankrobber goes into a bank and robs
a bank and a dye pack blows upin his face and he's painted red
and he comes out he's guilty ofrobbing that bank.
You don't need anybody to say,yeah, that's him, he did it.
You know, but I was nevercaught with my hand in the
(23:54):
cookie jar.
I never got caught with anydrugs.
And it was, you know, and I wasguilty of what I did.
I know.
You know I tell people I said Iwas guilty of smuggling drugs,
but I wasn't guilty of smugglingwhat I was charged with.
You know that the amount ofdrugs that I was charged with
(24:15):
there was I never.
I didn't do that.
And then you know, you knowthat the amount of drugs that I
was charged with there was Inever I didn't do that.
And then you know you you take,when you go to trial and your,
your people that you worked for,you brought trips for, are
testifying against you on thestand and they're trying to say
that you're the big guy.
And and you know, I wasn't thebig guy I was.
(24:35):
I was just a guy that offloadedairplanes and brought airplanes
.
I wasn't.
It wasn't my drugs, I didn'town the drugs.
I was getting paid to transportthe drugs and you know they
make you out, they want it, wantyou to be the kingpin and it.
I guess it's better for themthe press is better if they got
a drugink then than if they gotan offloader and I was made the
(25:00):
poster boy there.
You know I was like it was meand I ended up getting really I
got the only life sentence.
Out of the whole there was 20,28 people finally got arrested
in my case.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
This was a CCE case Continuing Criminal.
Enterprise when it just cameinto effect.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Right, it was fairly new yeah, 1987.
And that was when the new lawcame into effect had a good
lawyer and we fought.
They offered me a deal, if Iwould plead guilty and testify
against my friends andeverything, that they would give
(25:42):
me a life sentence.
And you know, first off, Iwasn't going to testify against
my friends and secondly, a lifesentence isn't a very good deal.
And so I had to go to trial.
I was, you know, I.
I, I was the cce, that was akingpin statute.
Uh, you got acquitted of, hesaid.
(26:23):
So you know, at least you'renot facing life.
Well, they use acquitted conduct.
The judge uses of what's calledacquitted conduct.
They've been using it for 30some years and what acquitted is
is they go by a standard that'sa lot lower than the beyond
(26:43):
reasonable doubt.
The standard that they go by isthe preponderance of evidence
standard.
And so at my sentencing, eventhough I was acquitted of being
the leader, even though I wasacquitted of being the leader,
the judge enhanced me saying bythe preponderance of the
evidence and by everybodytalking in court saying this and
that about me, because theywere trained to say that.
(27:17):
He felt that I about 26 years,so I go and I'm automatically a
36.
And now I've got four morepoints, which puts me at a 40.
Then I get two points forcarrying a firearm, which I
didn't carry a firearm, and thejudge by the preponderance of
evidence, because one of thecooperating individuals said
(27:42):
that I had a Uzi in the trunkwhile I was in a suburban.
There's not a trunk in asuburban, so I mean it was just
something to better histestimony and make him look
better, and so I got two pointsfor that.
And then I got two points forobstruction of justice because I
(28:05):
was hiding assets when in factI gave all of our.
My ex-wife was indicted becauseI wouldn't cooperate.
So they indicted her with,charged her with money
laundering.
So as part of her pleaagreement we gave them all the
assets that they had taken, andso I'm now a level 44.
Well, the highest the levelgoes in the guidelines is 43.
That's a life sentence.
And so I got life on sevencounts.
(28:29):
And you know to say that thesentencing is draconian is an
understatement, because if youget a 10-year sentence, after
five years your life has changedquite dramatically.
Your wife's gone, your kids arecalling somebody else daddy and
(28:50):
your money's gone.
The lawyers have got your moneyand then you do another five
years on top of that.
So those 10 years would bepretty hard on you.
But then when you give somebodya life sentence where you have
no hope of ever getting outbecause the life sentences that
are today they're not an old lawsentence where a 30-year
(29:14):
sentence was a life sentencebefore.
Under old law you were eligiblefor parole in 10 years and the
most you had to do was 30.
But nowadays you have to die inprison.
If you get a life sentence it'slife without parole, and so the
sentencing that they do today isjust, I mean it's so unjust and
(29:36):
so unfair.
It doesn't fit the crime.
I know, if there's a heinouscrime, I understand why you
would want to give somebody lifeto keep them off the street.
But in my case, and a lot ofpeople that I know that are
friends of mine, we never hurtanybody in our life.
We didn't shoot people up, wedidn't kill people.
(29:57):
I mean I had murderers that Iwas in prison with, that got out
before I got out, you know, andthey killed people inside the
institution also, you know, andI was around that type of
individual most of my sentence.
But you know you give somebody10 years, it's enough time to
(30:19):
make you change your life.
You give them 20 years, it'slike what's the extra 10 for?
And then you give them 30,what's the extra?
You know, it's just like itmakes no sense to keep somebody
in prison, especially if they'rerehabbing.
But there's not really a wholelot of rehab in the federal
system because there's nothingthere.
They don't have any type oftechnical schools to help you
(30:42):
when you get out.
I saw so many people in the 31years that I was incarcerated.
I saw so many people come andgo.
Come and go because they wouldget out.
They didn't have any people outthere because their sentences
were long to begin with but theyburned all the bridges out
there because they were addictedto drugs or whatever they were
(31:03):
doing and they would come backto prison and it would be like,
hey, how you doing, I'm back andthen next thing you know
they're leaving again.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
The other thing that's interesting is and I've
talked to Evelyn Bazan-Poppaabout that is you would actually
see correctional officers gointo and watch them retire.
They were rookies.
Then they retire in 25 yearsyou know which is amazing.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I saw that Yep.
I saw a lot of them retire.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Now, when you were convicted, where did you go
let's talk about that after yourtrial, where did you do your
time at and what happened whenyou were incarcerated?
I know you've had escapes andthat, but just talking about
that, and if you could let thepeople, the people know what
(31:59):
what prison life is like I'veseen the inside of marion and uh
, been there and dealt with thegangs inside and when I was a
marshal doing intelligencereports and things like that.
So if you could shed whathappened after that and uh, then
we'll talk.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
We'll go back to talking about your sentencing,
what you're trying an FCI, whichis a medium security prison and
(32:39):
that was where I was designated, and there were quite a few
guys there that had lifesentences, and I got sentenced
on December 15th of 1989.
And my mother passed away onJanuary 5th of of 90.
And uh, I started.
(33:02):
I started plotting to escape,because, you know, when a man
gets down to nothing, he's gotnothing to lose.
And I really had nothing tolose.
And uh, so I started plottingto escape and I saw a produce
truck came in and I was workingin the kitchen.
They had had a riot rightbefore I got there.
(33:24):
The Cubans had rioted and so Igot a job in the facilities as a
welder, and I'd never welded,but they were going to teach me.
And so they wanted me to goover to the Cuban unit and weld
these plates over the windows,because the Cubans had been
breaking the windows out.
And I refused to do that, youknow, because it's a security
(33:49):
job and it's something that theyshould have to do, not inmates.
So they wrote me an incidentreport for refusing to work and
they locked me up and I was inthe.
I was in the hole about a weekand my unit team came in and
they said well, we're going tolet you out, but we're going to
put you in the kitchen.
And I said I don't care, youcan put me anywhere you want to
(34:11):
put me.
So they put me in the kitchenand I think it was like either
the first or second day I was inthe kitchen, I went out on the
back dock and I was sitting outthere on like having a taking a
little break and here come theproduce truck in there and it
had muffler, was hanging off andit was loud and it came
(34:34):
bubbling in, you know, and Isaid, wow, this is, uh, this is
pretty interesting.
I said, you know, in the keyswe had we had a truck similar,
you know, to what I had in mind,to we used to haul pot out in
and had a false wall built in it.
So I I got together with a.
(34:55):
He was a dirt track racer and Istarted talking to him about who
fabricated his cars and he hada guy that was local there.
He was, he was a local guy, hewas from Georgia and he said he
had a guy that you know wasgreat fabricator.
And I said, well, how about youthink he would work on a truck
for me?
And he's like, yeah, for what?
(35:16):
And I said, well, how about youthink he would work on a truck
for me?
And he's like, yeah, for what?
And I said, well, I want to puta false wall in the truck and
bring some produce in here.
And he was like, well, yeah,can I go with you?
And I'm like, hell, yeah, youcan go with me, you know.
So he started plotting with meand we've got it all set up.
We got the bill from thewarehouse of the produce, which
(35:40):
it was the same produce everyweek, but they had two different
companies that would bid on it.
They had Dixie Produce and theyhad Gladstone Produce, and so
we didn't know which company wasgoing to get the bid for when
we were getting ready to leave,because they came every Tuesday.
So we had magnetic signs madeup with Dixie and we had
(36:00):
magnetic signs made up with theGladstone produce, and so we got
, we found out who got the bidand we went and got our own load
of produce at Atlanta at thefarmer's market.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Where did you get these signs made?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
We had somebody out there, you know, make them.
We had, his father was involvedand his brother was involved
and uh, I had, I had money backthen they hadn't seized all my
money yet, so I had money and Iwas kind of putting the bill on
everything.
And so they, they, uh, they gotthe produce, they got the signs
made up and and, uh, tuesdayrolled around like clockwork I
(36:42):
mean it worked out perfect.
And uh, they, that was probablythe worst possible thing that I
could have ever done was escape, because from that, you know, I
was gone.
I was out on the street forfive months and in those five
months, uh, my appeal, I gotcaptured.
(37:02):
I was gone five months and Iescaped on March 27th and I was
captured on August 29th and myappeal was dismissed on August
14th.
So those 15 days that after myappeal was dismissed I got, I
got captured, and so we askedfor reconsideration because I
(37:24):
was now in custody, because thereason they dismissed my appeal
was because I wasn't there to beadjudicated, yeah.
I was a fugitive and theycouldn't adjudicate me.
So they said I had no right toan appeal and it was an old
doctrine from 1896.
And so they dismissed my appealand my two co-defendants I only
(37:44):
had two co-defendants out of 28people there were, five of us
went to trial, two got acquittedand three of us got convicted
out of 28 people.
So my co-defendants, theirappeal was heard about 16 or 18
months after I was captured andit got reversed or remanded due
(38:07):
to prostitorial misconduct.
Now, if I hadn't escaped, I'dhave been right there with them
and I'd have been home many,many years ago, and that you
know.
It's a coulda, shoulda, wouldathing.
But I know now you know I wouldnever have escaped.
But when I was in that situationand everything, every motion
(38:30):
that we filed in court during mytrial, every motion was denied.
There was nothing that wasgranted, nothing and it was just
like it was like, and after,after the escape and my
post-conviction stuff that Ifiled, everything was denied.
It was all procedurally barredbecause of the escape.
So I had nothing coming fromthe court period.
(38:50):
Yeah, it was not good.
The escape was a bad plan.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
So how did you get captured?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I got captured, I had put money away overseas.
Captured, I had put money awayoverseas, and so I contacted my
friend that had helped me putthe money over there.
And it just so happens that hewas in the process of thinking
it was his money and so he toldme I couldn't go near it.
It had been froze, so Icouldn't go and get a job
(39:23):
anywhere and work anywhere and Ididn't have money.
So I started putting together atrip and Pablo Escobar was
still alive.
He didn't get killed until 93.
And so I started puttingtogether a trip and I got hooked
up with a DEA informant and acustoms informant.
And I'm sitting in a restauranthaving lunch with these two
(39:49):
informants and neither of themknew each other was an informant
.
And yeah, yeah, and there was a$50,000 reward on my head.
So I was a prize for this guy,the customs informant.
And the DEA informant was arogue.
He was lying to his handlerthat you know we were bringing
(40:12):
the drugs into El Paso, texasand this, and that they were
going to rob, they were going tosteal the drugs.
It was just completely a mix,bad mix.
I went out of my domain and Igot with the wrong people, and I
ended up getting captured overit.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Okay, and what happened after that, after you
were captured?
Speaker 2 (40:35):
After that, yeah, then I went to.
Since I left an FCI on theescape, my security was jacked
up.
So I went to a penitentiary nowand I went to Terre Haute and,
uh, when I got to Terre Haute,indiana, I started plotting
(40:56):
again because I wasn't, I wasnot giving up, I was trying to
get away, because that was theonly hope I had, I you know.
So I started plotting again andI got my sister involved and I
got with a guy that I thoughtwas a good guy and of course, my
, my character judgment was hada had a big flaw in it with this
guy too, and he was tellingthem everything that was going
(41:19):
on.
So I mean the, the, the escapewas doomed from the day we
started plotting it and I thinkhe had a 30-year sentence for a
CCE out of Michigan and he endedup getting that squashed by
setting the escape up andgetting me busted, getting my
sister busted, getting thisother friend of mine busted, and
(41:40):
so from there, the next stopwas Marion, which is they built
Marion to take the place ofAlcatraz, and so I went to
Marion and I'm in Marion forabout three years and it's
locked down.
You're locked in your cell for23 hours a day.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
You said you were there so you know how it is
Control unit.
I know exactly.
And that was that was the topof the line back in the day and
you had 23 and a half hours inthe half hour exercise.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, yeah, your exercise is in a little dog
kennel area yeah.
It was a very, very nasty place, and you're around a bunch of
very dangerous people too youknow, um, it's probably the most
safe, uh, safest, uh place asfar as the guards go, because
(42:36):
they're you know they're,they're when they're when you're
out of your cell, you're inhandcuffs if you're around an
officer, there's, and there's,always two of them.
But even at that they still hadtwo guards murdered there in
1983.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Yes, in 1983.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
And from there.
When they opened up ADX inColorado, I was transferred
there and basically they justmoved everybody out of Marion to
ADX.
So I was moved to ADX.
I I did about three more yearsthere at and before they
transferred me out, and thenthey sent me to Atlanta and from
(43:14):
Atlanta they trumped up somekind of an escape plot that I
had.
I didn't do anything in Atlanta.
If I, if I did, I would tellyou now because I'm an open book
, I have nothing to hide.
But in Atlanta I really did notdo anything.
It was just some guy was tryingto get him better himself and
he got, came up to me rightafter they opened the doors at
(43:37):
count time and shook my hand andI said, well, he, you just got
here and I walked him around theyard and introduced him to
people and the whole time he wastrying to set me up on an
escape and there was two orthree people that were involved
with me that I didn't even knowthem.
But they locked me up and sentme back to ADX for this escape
(43:58):
and so then I left ADX.
That time I ended up doing like10 years total in ADX and
Marion.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Tell our viewers what ADX is.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
ADX is it's ADMAX, it's the prison that's in
Florence, colorado.
It's probably the most secureprison in the country or in the
world.
I mean it's got.
That's where they keep theterrorists, that's where they
have the trade know the, thetrade center bombers.
They have Eric Rudolph, theyhave you know a lot of the high
(44:35):
profile gang members are thereand it just cuts your
communications with your theoutside world off completely.
You are, there is nothing.
You get one phone call a monthand I mean it's, it's not, it's
not a good place to be.
And so I left there and wentfrom there across to the
(44:56):
penitentiary and I left thepenitentiary and went to Coleman
Florida and I was in ColemanFlorida and that's where I ended
up.
I ended up going, coming homefrom Coleman, okay On a
compassionate basis.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yes, Can we?
Can we?
We're going to talk about that.
And, and you had, you had thesupport of the DEA agents
involved in your case, and Ithink that's important too.
We talked about that.
Um, and if you could go intowhen you went to Coleman and
what led up to your, yourrelease.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
The um.
I had filed a couple of times,uh, I had filed a pro se motion,
uh, for compassion release andit had been denied.
And then the professor her nameis Katie Tinto, she's the law
professor at UC Irvine inCalifornia and she saw she read
(45:56):
about I had a lot of supportfrom the Keys.
Like I said at the beginning ofthis, you know the Keys are,
it's a small place, we live onan island and back in the day I
I don't know if you'd say I wasa bank, but I gave a lot of
people money.
I, anybody that came to meneeding anything a car, a house,
(46:20):
a lot, whatever.
They needed money for thismoney.
For that I gave people money.
I wasn't, you know, I wasn'trobbing and like Robin Hood, I
wasn't doing the Robin Hoodthing, but I was.
I had money and so I didn't.
I was, I gave it away freelyand I mean I tipped the
waitresses and the barmaids andeverybody very well and I took
(46:42):
care of everybody and peoplethat weren't really even my
friends I'd lend money to.
I just was good.
I was good with people and I.
So I had a lot of people thatcared about me and and and love
me and they were, you know, theywere all advocating for my
freedom and the Miami Herald haddone an article.
(47:03):
The little paper down here, thelittle free press, had done an
article about me coming home andthey had a parade where they
were had some flags and stuffwith my you know, banners on
there with my names and stuffbring me home.
And so when, when Katie readthis in the paper, she wrote me
(47:23):
a letter and she said you know,she explained who she was and
she said I've read your case,I've read everything about your
compassion release, she said andyou know, now that the first
step act has come into play, shesaid the criteria has changed.
And she said and the judge inyour case, I think that he
(47:43):
really went by the old criteriaand not the new criteria.
Well, the new criteria is thatyou have to show extraordinary,
compelling reasons why youdeserve a compassion release and
you have to have done 10 yearsof your sentence.
Well, I had done 10 years of mysentence, I'd done 31.
And I had some issues with myheart.
(48:05):
My, my medical was not good andso I had stents in my heart and
some kidney problems, and youdon't get very good medical care
in the prison.
I mean, it's anything that you,anything that you have wrong.
It takes a very long time andmost of the time you have to go,
you have to.
(48:26):
It's like the administrativeremedy process is like filing a
lawsuit against the prison, butit's in-house.
So you have to go through thesesteps, which they call it.
There's a BP-8, there's a BP-9,bp-10, bp-11, and they go all
the way up the chain of commandto Washington.
(48:46):
You go from the.
The first person you ask isyour counselor and he's that's
an informal resolution which isis a BP 8 and he denies whatever
you're requesting.
And then you go to the wardenon a BP 9 and he denies it and
it goes to the.
Then you go to the regionaldirector and they deny it.
They all just say we go, we'regoing to go with what the warden
(49:09):
said, we're going to go withwhat the regional director says.
And this process takes a yearor two, sometimes two years, and
sometimes, when it gets to thelast phase of it, you won't even
hear from them.
They won't even answer you back.
So then you have, once you'veexhausted these remedies, then
you can go into court with alawsuit, a civil suit, and say
(49:30):
that you're not getting medicalcare, and the Supreme Court says
that you're, you're supposed tobe, you're supposed to have
exactly the same medical careyou would have on the street.
But it's not like that in thefederal system.
So I, you know, I had, I had alot of medical issues.
And so Katie said she wanted toput three of her students on my
(49:53):
case.
And I was like how much youknow?
She's no, no, no, we're free,we're a nonprofit.
And I'm like, come on down,cause I had spent so much money
with lawyers over the years.
I'm like this is amazing,you're going to do my work, this
work, for free.
And so they filed the petition,and, and when they filed the
(50:13):
petition, I, the government, hadto respond to it.
And of course, they came withexactly the same thing that
they'd always, you know.
Oh, I had escaped.
I'm this, I'm that, I'm violent, I'm no, oh, I had escaped.
I'm this, I'm that, I'm violent, I'm no, you know, it just was
(50:34):
25 pages of the same rhetoricthat I had read so many
different times, and I justthrew it on the locker and I
said I don't have anythingcoming, you know.
And a few days later the dooropened up.
The officer was standing thereand he asked me for my name and
my ID card and I gave it to him.
He asked me my number.
(50:56):
He's looking at my card andyour card has your number and
your picture on it.
I said it's on the card.
He said no, I want to hear itfrom you.
I told him my number and hesays well, come with me.
And I said, all right, let meget my shoes.
And he goes no, you don't needthem.
And we were locked down becauseof COVID and so I said no, I'm
getting my shoes.
So I sat on my bed and I tied,laced my tennis shoes up and I'm
(51:18):
going down the stairs.
And as we're going down, ofcourse we had to wear a mask.
And he, he had a mask on and hesays uh, he asked me if I
believed in God and I saidabsolutely.
And he said, uh, okay.
I said what's this about?
He goes, he goes yo, you'regoing to find out.
And I'm like is it my lawyer?
Or who is this?
(51:39):
Where am I?
You know?
He says you're, you're, you'regoing to find out.
So I went in his office and hedialed the phone and he's got a
folder in his hand and I said isthis, what is this my lawyer?
And he's like he says, justhang on, you're going to find
out.
And so he said, I got him righthere and he hands me the phone
and it's Katie on the other endscreaming that my compassion
(52:00):
release had been granted.
And so I started crying.
She was crying and I lookedover and he was crying yeah, it
was something else, you know.
And then I had to go back up thestairs because, like I said, it
was locked down so nobody wasout of their cells.
And I had to go back up andeverybody's in the window
(52:21):
looking what's going on, youknow.
And I had to go by my buddy'scell and tell him hey, I was
granted compassion release and Ihad 14 days before I was
released.
So you can imagine 14 days ofjust waiting and shredding
papers all my legal, all mystacks of transcripts and all
(52:42):
the motions I'd filed over theyears.
I was just shredding him up andputting him in garbage bags
every day, every day.
Yeah, it was pretty special.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
So tell me about your release.
They took you to R&D and yourfamily came out.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
My God, not only my family, everybody came.
I mean, I went to R and d andthe officer I knew him, of
course, you know I, because I, Iwith the officers, I, I have
officers to this day, okay, thatwere guards guarding me, that
are friends of mine, that comedown here and go out on the boat
(53:21):
with me.
You know they're, they're, theywere good guys and and I I
always treated them with respectand they treated me with
respect.
And and the ones that would,the ones like that you, you know
they're just like, they're justlike us, they're just, they're
good people.
You know there were, there weresome that were that tried to be,
they tried to be hard,hard-nosed with you and be
(53:42):
assholes to you Excuse my French, but they tried to be bad to
you.
And those guys, I don't careabout having a beer with them or
taking them out in a boat, butthe guys that gave me respect, I
care for them.
They're good people.
They weren't there, they werejust there to do their eight
hours and go home, that's it,yeah, and that's you know.
(54:05):
You give respect, you getrespect 100.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
So what have you been doing since you've been
released and what do you see inthe future?
I know that you've givenlectures and Smuggling the Keys,
which I watched.
It was very interesting, andwhat are you planning to do?
You know you obviously havegrandchildren, which are
(54:35):
wonderful.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Yeah, I have five and one on the way and they're all
great kids and you know I'd liketo take them out, you know, go
fishing with them.
And I've been doing a lot offishing.
I've been doing, you know, andI've done a lot of odd, you know
, odd jobs, handyman jobs andstuff like that around town here
(54:57):
, and it's I've just been.
I've been blessed to be whereI'm at right now.
I've got a beautiful girl andwe have a great life together.
She's got three grandkids ofher own and we spend a lot of
time with her family and we havea great time.
(55:21):
We're blessed to have eachother a great time.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
We're blessed to have each other.
What message?
Because you've had seven lifesentences and that's probably
the most sentenced prisoner I'veever or inmate I've ever heard
of getting seven.
I mean even the guys that, likeyou said before, that were part
of committed homicides inprison.
They got life.
(55:52):
And they got, you know, anotherconsecutive conspiracy to
commit murder.
They got two lives, you know.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
You got seven.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
That's how the times were back then, and not what
would you give as advice to afirst-time inmate in the future
Just based on, I mean, yourstory.
The book, everything gives abig picture.
But what would be the biggestadvice you would give and I
(56:24):
appreciate the candor what wouldbe the biggest advice you would
give?
And I appreciate the candor,you know, like you said, you
were making $4 an hour andsomebody hands you a bag of
$35,000 in the 70s.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
I mean, that's like amazing, Exactly yeah.
But what advice would you giveto somebody?
You know, as far as givingsomebody advice, uh, you know, I
, like my son, I, you know if,if, if something sounds too good
to be true, it it, it is toogood to be true, it's, it's
(56:58):
usually it, and it's like tothis day and age, it's.
You get all these things onyour phone, these people trying
to scam you online and stuff,and I, you know, if it sounds
too good to be true, you stepaway from it.
You know, and as far as thedrugs go, I, you know I never
really saw the the addict sideof the drugs until I got into
(57:21):
the Mobile County jail.
I, you know there were a lot ofheroin users that were in there
and in the prison system too.
I mean, there's a lot of drugaddicts and you know we call
them dope fiends and they were,literally they would do anything
(57:41):
to get drugs and I guess theywere the same on the street,
that's, you know, robbing,stealing, doing whatever you
know, carjacking, doing whateverthey had to do.
And it's like I would tell myson, you know, when you stop at
a red light, when he was inTampa going to school, I said,
when you stop at that light atthree o'clock in the morning and
(58:03):
there's nobody around.
I said you know they'll run outand take your car.
And he was like, oh dad, no,they won't do that.
I said, no, I hear storiesabout it every day.
I hear them in here talkingabout it, so I know that they do
that.
And I said and if you don'tgive them your car, they will
shoot you.
And I said so, just, you know,you got to just be careful.
But as far as somebody I gave, Imentored a lot of people when I
(58:26):
was in prison.
I tried to get guys off ofdrugs and I tried to work with
them and stuff.
And we had a group.
When I was in Florence no, Imean, I'm sorry, excuse me when
we were in Coleman, we had agroup and we called it Ste it,
stepping Out, and what we did.
(58:47):
There was a in Colorado Springs.
There was a juvenile detentioncenter and we would write, we
would have these meetings and wewould write letters to these
kids that were in the juveniledetention thing and we all we
all had different kids that wewould write to and we'd write
them and try to tell them.
I mean it wasn't a scaredstraight thing, but we would try
to tell them.
(59:07):
You know what it's like in there.
You know it's like I've alwayssaid that if the judges in the
federal courts were to have tospend two weeks in a
penitentiary, they would thinktwice about giving somebody
these draconian sentences.
(59:27):
You know, because in two weeksyou would see some crazy stuff
go on.
You know and it's.
You know there's predators,there's.
It's not prison.
A penitentiary is not a goodplace and the only thing I could
tell somebody that was comingin is to try to better yourself,
(59:49):
try to take courses, try totake class.
You know, whatever class youcan take, I took the Microsoft
computer, I took everything thatwas offered to me, and
especially when you're in ADX,because you're locked there in
your cell and everything you hadto take, every class you took,
was on the TV you didn't havesomebody instructing you.
But in penitentiaries or inFCIs you have to have people
(01:00:14):
teaching you.
You know other inmates willteach you.
You know a lot of kids come inthere.
They don't have their GEDs andthat's the first thing you would
want to get get your GED.
And so when you do get out ofprison, you have, you have
something to fall back on, youknow, but um, I you know it's uh
, I just think that the the timethat people get for the crimes
(01:00:38):
that they're committing, thatthis day and age is.
It's ridiculous people there.
I mean there's still peopledoing life sentences for
marijuana, and it's legal inwhat?
28 states, and soon to be legal, maybe even in the federal
system.
Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Yeah, the drug that's really poisonous today is
fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Fentanyl yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
And that is something you take and you die, I mean
the population they're losing isof the population of Lake
Lakeland, florida, and day.
I mean, that's just frightening, that's.
That's something that I mean.
Don't get me started.
You know how I feel aboutborder control.
(01:01:20):
I retired from ICE and and youknow the people that are getting
here and coming in a differentmethod let's just say, not the
method that my ancestors camehere from Ireland.
So so I think that needs, thatneeds to be addressed.
(01:01:41):
Plus, the United States has thebiggest supply and demand for
drugs in the world.
Absolutely, you know, yeah, soit's uh something that they hope
to to address, but uh, no, Iwant I I hope you'll come on
again because we're having uhdiscussions on this.
(01:02:02):
I'm'm.
You know, I've had all theeverybody on here is a
practitioner one way or another.
One of the things that I feltwas important in doing this is
to have the whole spectrum.
You know there's plenty ofshows, just law enforcement,
just correctional advocacy andall that, but combine them and
(01:02:24):
most of your people that you seein the media, they're talking
heads.
Let's just call it like it is.
You know, dickie it is.
They were chiefs of police, theyhad political careers.
Other people talk about youknow advocacy for inmates, and
(01:02:46):
the best people to talk aboutthat are people like you that
are out now and moving on withtheir life.
It's just plain and simple.
I mean, we have the experience,we have white hair now and a
little heavier and that, butit's something that, that, uh,
(01:03:08):
that needs to be brought to theattention.
Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
so thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
Please give my best to judy and uh, we'll talk,
thank you I will okay see youbye.
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