Camp Gagnon - Authorized Account Of How FBI Undercover Agents Actually Work

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Charlie Spillers, former Marine, federal prosecutor, and deep-cover FBI agent, joins us to talk about the Bureau’s wildest undercover cases. Charlie shares wild tricks cops use to stay in character, criminals who escaped Parchman Prison, how Charlie Lindsay saved a little boy in a shootout, a viral video of an officer getting shot, a drug bust on a shrimp boat, how a hamburger receipt and staples caught a criminal, and other fascinating stories...WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Sleep-Dust and Morgan & MorganIf you’re ready to revitalize your sleep Use promo code SLEEP for 20% off. when you visit http://www.sleep-dust.com/👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: http://camp-rd.com🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Being Recognized While Undercover5:18 Wild Tricks Cops Use to Stay in Character7:19 Busting Pappa Cools + Drinking Cough Syrup21:23 How Sarah Neil Saved Her Partner Jerry In a Shootout33:17 Where Are Sarah and Jerry Today?36:34 Criminals Escape Parchment Prison + Guardian Angels39:16 How Charlie Lindsay Saved a Little Boy In a Shootout43:23 Chuck Schmidt Survives Being Held at Gunpoint47:57 Viral Video of Officer Getting Shot50:40 First Black Female Police Chief of Jackson Mississippi57:37 Diversity in Undercover Work + Shorty Smooth59:39 Drug Bust on a Shrimp Boat1:08:35 Was Charlie Tempted to Take FBI’s Money1:19:05 Wife & Grandad Hire Hitman to Kill Husband1:23:43 A Hamburger Receipt & Staples Caught a Criminal1:34:57 Charlie’s Encounter w/ Voodoo

From drug busts in the deep south to infiltrating biker gangs while still wearing the same bloody clothes from the night before. Those same bloody clothes that she moved. Charlie Spillers has lived through it all. Hands in the air, guns drawn, partner shot, wires nearly found. Hands up, police, hands up, hands up. You're under arrest. From a mafia-style hitman to kill the husband of a woman having an affair to leaving a restaurant because his detective partner was denied service because of her race. To straight up drinking cough syrup with a drug kingpin to prove that he wasn't an undercover,

Charlie Spiller's life is absolutely fascinating. Truly, his life is taken out of a movie. It could be a season of True Detective. I can feel that. You can hear it in my voice, and they know I do because I live it. And today he's going to give us a raw, unfiltered look into the world of a man who walked the very fine line between the law and the lawless. So, without further ado, enjoy my conversation with Charlie Spillers. Sit back, relax, and welcome to Canada.

Charlie, welcome back. Thank you. Good to be here, Mark. Thanks for having me back. Of course, of course. Just to kind of pick up where we left off, what was the moment in your undercover career that you were the closest to losing your cover

or maybe a moment where you did lose your cover? Well, let me, if you read my book, you'll find the title is, confessions of an undercover agent, Adventures Close Calls, and the toll of a double life. I went back through the book, and I typed up a list

of the close calls. And until I wrote the book, I never had any idea of how many close calls I had until I started remembering and writing about them. And when I made that list, it was a long list. And it was things like I walked into the room to do a drug

deal, and the supplier turned around from the window where he was looking at, And as he turned around, I recognized him. I'd arrested him a year before. And then the next one is, I'm in an all-night grill with an informant. We're waiting for a guy and his supplier to show up and meet us. And the informant says, you know, there they are coming in the door. And I look around and say, man, he knows.

He knows me. I busted this guy before. You know, they got two guys coming in. And we're in a booth. And as they're there and they're almost there. And they're suddenly standing beside the booth. I'm saying, we've got to get out of here. And I'm doing, oh, man, and the guy had busted before slides in next to me.

And I'm like this. Oh, man, I got a headache. Oh, man, I need to get out of this light. Oh, I got a headache. And the whole time I'm doing this thing like this. So we edge out of the booth and we go to the parking lot. And I make sure as we're going out, I'm the last one, you know, and hoping that the guy doesn't turn around.

We get out and we get in the parking lot and I'm still, you know, it's still lit parking lot. lot, but there's some dim areas. And we get to the car to do the deal, and we would get in the car, I go in the back seat and make sure I sit directly behind him, and I'm still rubbing my head. Oh, man. So, you know, that's just a couple of those. I've had maybe about a dozen of those are walking a place in this apartment full of people. And I go to the back to do a deal, and this woman up front recognizes me. I don't realize it, but she came and called one of the guy, hey, can I see you about an album or something and I boy bells are going off something's wrong and then I'm worried

you know something's happening and then next thing I know I'm talking with the guy about drugs and this and that he's a pharmacist with large quantities of drugs he's putting on the streets and we're talking and next thing I know all of a sudden behind me I'm using the name I forget what name I was using maybe Glenn John whatever and the guy behind me the guy comes up behind me and says, Charlie, you know, my real name. And I don't blink an eye, just keep talking and talking. Yeah, man, you said, you had such and such. And then the guy comes around and says, hey, man, is your name Charlie? Your name Charlie? I said, no, man, what are you asking that, man? I'm just sitting, you know, anyway, you know, you can imagine how I was feeling them right then.

these two guys suspicious. A lot of people between me and the door to get out of there. I don't have a gun on me. I don't have surveillance, nothing like that. So anyway, I calmed down. No, man, never heard of that. What about you, you know, and they can calm down. Then a little bit later, you know, I'll make it a point to stay there for a while,

to kind of keep things calm after the deal. A little bit later, the guy says, hey, man, you remember when I asked you of your name was Charlie? And I said, yeah. He said, well, this woman, one of the girls. up front told me that you were Charlie Spillers, you were a narcotics agent. I said, what? He said, yeah, yeah.

He said, that was my test. And I said, man, you are so smart. Now, when I left that place, just like when I left other close calls, when I left that place, I went and got my car, I took a deep breath, and I cranked up the car, and as I drove away, I said what I usually say after close calls, damn, damn, damn, damn. I mean, oh, man, just damn. So you go home and you get home, unless you're deep undercover and you have an undercover place.

You go home and it's two or three o'clock in the morning. You go inside. You start writing, handwriting some reports, you know, while it's still fresh in your mind. And then you try to watch a little TV would turn down while your wife and child are sleeping. And you're trying to decompress. You're not watching TV.

You're trying to just decompress. And finally go to sleep. And then after a little bit of sleep, something to eat the next morning and some coffee, you're back out, you know, again, doing the same thing again. So, yeah, if you read my book, gosh, there must have been maybe a dozen close calls like that. The problem was when I was in Baton Rouge, I was undercover in the same city for six years. And so I started running more and more into people who knew me. And, I mean, really, really close calls like that.

Now, you had mentioned before that you have to be creative to operate within the bounds of the law. Yeah. So were there any specific instances where someone, you know, had cocaine, they had marijuana, they were like, oh, yeah, try some. Yeah. Or someone gave you a gun and said, hey, go handle this. Yeah, well, yeah, you always have to be prepared for that and you always have to have an excuse for that. And so how did you deal with it?

Yeah, and I would deal with like, at first, it was difficult because at first, people that were involved in dealing drugs were all. a lot of them were drug users. Some of them were heavy drug users. Later on, though, more people were treating it as a business. So later on, it was much easier. In fact, on the high level, if I'm dealing with somebody and we're dealing with 40, 50, 60, $80,000 worth of drugs, it's easy.

Man, I don't do that shit. Are you crazy? I just sell it. Yeah, anybody does that? I mean, you can't do this as a hobby and make money. And if you do that, you're going to get busted. In fact, I don't even like dealing with people who use drugs, man. And you know, that sort of thing.

And you put it on them. And yeah, and then other times you have things like, oh, no, man, I can't do it right now because, you know, if you're on a lower level, man, my P.O., my probation officer, he caught me hot one time. He said, if I test hot again, he's going to revoke me and send me back. So, you know, I'm trying to stay away from it right now because I don't want to get sent back. And I don't know when he's going to test me. Or, man, I'm applying for a job. They're going to do a drug test. I can't do that.

Or, man, I can't. I've been drinking a lot of whiskey at night. I don't want to mix it with, you know, heroin or whatever, you know, that sort of thing. So you've got to have some excuses. But if shove comes to shove and the only way to save your life would be to actually take some drugs in front of someone, I guess you would save your life. But I never was, thankfully in that situation. Never was.

Or you just break your cover and arrest them, you know, bust them right there. Have you ever had to do that, break your cover immediately and actually just arrest them? No, I haven't, but I'm smiling because I'm thinking of one time when I arrested Papa Koole. Papa Koo had this jukeye joint down in Mississippi. I forget what this place was called. It might have been called Papa Koo's. And anyway, I was dealing with Papa Kool, and I was going to buy like 50 pounds of marijuana from him, something like that. So I'm dealing with him for several days trying to work up the deal.

I'm trying to look like I'm legit. And he's, you know, I've got to come up with, I forget how much money, maybe $40,000, $30,000, but I'm making it look legit. And I'm saying, hey, man, yeah, look, I'm working on my money. Look, I've got $28,600 now, and I'm pulling in drug debts, you know, people out front of drugs, too. So I'm collecting some drug debts, and I'd call him back the next day. Yeah, I got $33,000 now. You know, I'm working it up and, you know, making it seem believable.

So we get ready, as we get closer to the drug deal, I go by his place one night. And, boy, the parking lot gravel, parking lot gets full, clapboard juke joint out in the middle of nowhere, and it's really going and jive. And Papa Koo comes out and gets in a car with me. And I said, man, let me show you something. I just collected this, you know, from some of the people hold me money, and I show him about 15,000 in cash. It's a flash roll.

And I show him the money. I say, see, I just got this. You know, I'm adding this to what I already have, and I'm going up to get some more. I should have your money in the next day or two. He said, man, I got some money for you. What name was I using? Maybe, Mike. He said, look, I got something for you, Mike.

I said, what? He said, cough syrup. I said, what? He said, call syrup. He said, man, we get it out of Baton Rouge. He said, man, this stuff is dynamite. You take this? He said, it's like electricity to shoot down to your balls, man.

I said, man, I don't want to cause. syrup. He said, no, no, try it. And he takes something out. It's still, you know, got the sealed label on it and he opens it up. And it's not prescription. It's just regular, some kind of regular cough. He said, come on, try it. I said, no, man, I don't want any cough syrup. Oh, cry,

no, you got to try it. Man, it's good. You're going to like it. Come on. Yeah, your electricity, shoot down your borrow. So, I finally take it. And I go to act like I'm swallowing some. Instead, I'm putting my tongue in the, you know, to stop it. I'm acting like I'm taking something.

No, man, take it, take it, take it. And he's right in my face. Take it, take it. So I go ahead and I take several big swallows. You know what I'm thinking? Okay, just regular cough syrup. Okay. So I take the swallows and give it back. So I say, okay, man, we're all set to do the deal tomorrow.

I'll have the money by then. He says, yeah. So I go to a motel about an hour and a half, two hours away. And I get a room. And I call the agents and say, okay, deal's on for tomorrow. I need agents for surveillance. by bus when he delivers the 50 pounds y'all rush in bust him i'll wear a wire well so we're gonna rush over the next day meet with him and then do the deal so that night it must have been about two in the

morning or so or three all of a sudden i woke up and my face is flushed oh gosh in my skin oh man i mean something's happened something's at my i'm flushed all over my heart's beating real fast and and all of a sudden I feel lightning, shooting down to my balls. Oh, no, oh, no. When I go, I'm throwing water on my face. Oh, no, oh, no. And I'm thinking, gosh, I need to go to a hospital. Maybe they spiked it, you know, with acid or PCP.

May it spiked it with something. Man, I need to go to the emergency room. And then I thought, and then I called another agent. I said, hey, who lived outside town. Man, can you come get me, drive me to the hospital? I didn't want to drive myself because I thought, well, if this was something that was spiked, I might be dangerous to myself or other people if I was out driving a car, so I didn't want to drive myself.

And she said, yeah, I'll be right there. So while I'm waiting for him, I look at my gun. And it's that, it's that 38. Let me see if I got that. Yeah. See, the cover of my book, that 38 caliber, it's my 38 that I usually carry. And I look at it and it's laying down on the nightstand. and I'm thinking, ah, I might be dangerous to myself with a loaded gun.

So I go and get the 38, open it up, take the five shells out, and I walk to the door, open the door, and I throw the shells out into the brass so that my gun's empty. And I don't have extra ammo. I always thought undercover. If I did take a gun in, I'm not going to have time to reload. It's going to all be over in the first couple shots one way or another. So I throw the bullets away. So my gun's empty.

Well, I go to the emergency room, and they wind up giving me a shot. And it was just too much effettering or something like that, effedering in the stimulant that's in the cough syrup. And by taking big gulps of it, I took too much of the cough syrup. So I'm having, you know, it's like having too much coffee just about, except for the light and shooting to your balls. I say, man, what kind of caffeine is that? And so the next morning, the next morning, I'm running behind on rushing over to meet Papakou to do the deal. The agents from different parts of state are heading over that way. And I'm getting in the car, I'm heading over that way.

And as I'm heading over that way, I'm heading over that way with an empty gun. And I don't have extra ammo. I didn't carry extra ammo even in the trunk or anywhere. So one thing is under cover car, and I didn't want anybody. if they ever searched it to find anything, make them suspicious. So I have that empty gun. I rush over there, and as I'm rushing over, Papa Cool and said, look, I'm going to be on the side of such and such highway park,

and you just come and meet me right there. And I rush over, and I'm running late. I don't have time to meet other agents to try to get ammo. And I rush and I park behind him, and he gets out and he says, hey, man, follow me. So he takes off. And I go following him. I don't know where he's going.

agents who had gone to the area, they're trying to follow us. Papa Koo turns off, this is over around Vicksburg, below Vicksburg, Mississippi, and he's going around these hills on the little-bitty country road, almost like a single lane, and it's twisting, going around hills, and when he pops over one hill, all of a sudden it turns and he goes into this track, into the woods. I turn right behind him. Of course, the agents don't see me. I mean, they have no idea.

So Papa Koo winds through this track and branches are brushing against the car. And then he gets to this circle clear area in the woods, dead's woods. He stops. He's got his girlfriend in the car with him and her. He stops. I pull up behind him. Of course, the agents have no idea where I am. There's no surveillance, and I've got my empty gun.

So Papa Koo gets out of his car and I said, hey, man, you got it? He said, yes, in the trunk. He opens up the truck. There's this big cardboard box that's got 50 pounds of weed in it. I said, well, here, I've got the money. And I went to my car, and I came back. And I had this manila envelope. We'd cut up newspaper in it.

No for the money. And I handed it to him, and I say, well, here's the, you know, whatever thousand. So Papa Koo took that. And as he took it, he started to open it. And I thought, I've got to do this now. So I reached back and I pulled out my gun and said, MBN, hands up, police, hands up, hands up. You're under arrest. Babakou drops it, hands up.

And so I'm there pointing the gun at him. And as I'm pointing the gun at him, I'm thinking, you know, the empty cylinders. If he looks, he can see the cylinders are empty. And so to keep him from being able to see that clearly, I point the gun toward his feet. And when I point the gun toward his feet, he hopped up like I was going to shoot him in, to shoot his feet. I said, no man, get down. Get down on your stomach.

So I got him down on his stomach. And I yelled to his girlfriend, get out of the car. Come on back here. She hesitated. Finally, she came on back. I got her down. I went back to my car, and I pulled out her two-way radio, and I started calling and calling and calling.

Finally, after about 10 minutes, I reached somebody. And about 20 minutes later, they finally found me and came in. And I thought, whew, I'm glad everything, they made it. When I went to Papa Kuh's car, though, I looked and on the floorboard of the passenger seat, where the girlfriend was, was this big, huge revolver that was loaded. And I thought, oh, man, I thought, man. A little bit later, the agents who had followed me

had also followed Papa Koo just before that, and they saw where he got his drugs. They went and raided at that place, got about another 200 pounds, got a bunch of guns and some other guys, and got in this wild chase and shootout with some guys. A few hours after that, I'm over at the sheriff's office, and I'm booking Papa Koo, and I'm fingerprinting him. And guys are coming by, and they're saying things to me, like, good jobs, and man, you didn't even have a loaded good, you know, things like that, the agents. And Papa Koo was sitting there, and he looks up at me, he said, man, said, your gun wasn't loaded? I said, no.

Well, why wasn't your gun loaded? I said, well, Papa Koo, I like you, and I don't want to take a chance on hurting you. Mother. You know what he was thinking. You know what? You know what he was thinking? Gosh, he could have blown me away. So, anyway, I got a forward.

I got off on or change it. Emergency broadcast. Guys, we have a brand new channel dropping. It is Mark Gagnon Comedy, and we're going to be putting all my stand-up right there, as well as a new show we call You Ask for This. We pass out no cards to the audience, and they submit suggestions that then get put into a bucket, and then me and a friend, we will draw them out and riff on them, whether it's a current event, or maybe a personal story that happened to someone in the audience.

Whatever it is, we get to the bottom of it. So, if you're interested in checking out the channel, you can click the link in the description. please subscribe it really really helps everything work especially after the show comes out checking out the episodes and supporting is massive we really appreciate it you can check it out there it is you asked for this is the name of the segment and the channel is mark gaggle comedy we'll see you guys to the new spot thank you so much for always supporting we'll see you next time mark killed it definitely delivered 100% I thought it was great I think he's so funny everyone got their own like being herschabore it was bomb I mean that show was absolutely killer amazing you're not

going to be let down. It's a great time. If you're on the fence, um, jump off. Look, by the way, last night I had a text, and it was from M.B.N. Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. It was their training agent. They're having a basic agent school. They're conducting right now new agents. And they asked me to come down next week and talk to the agents. Like normally, they had me come and talk for about an hour about the legacy and the ethics and the ethos of the bureau. And in thinking about that when I saw his text last night, I thought, well, you know, that's some of the things I'd be talking about with you and your audience. So it might be things that I think may be informative and interesting for your audience and things

that I'm passionate about that really goes to my heart, especially about what I call the profession, the law enforcement profession. And one of these is about my partner, Sarah Neal, when I was an MBN agent. And Sarah and I were in Jackson, Mississippi, working undercover, infiltrating heroin rings. And we were pretending we were a romantic couple in that we lived together. And we did that for about four months. And after the heroin dealers were busted out, we went separate ways. I went to the Gulf Coast. and started driving a taxi cab as a cover to eventually infiltrate heroin rings along the coast. And she went to Brookhaven, Mississippi, and South Mississippi.

Got an apartment, started working that area. While she was there, an agent asked Sarah to go up to Columbus, Mississippi, and meet with him. That's about a four-hour drive back then, meet with him, and go with him on a heroin by bus. He was going to buy so many ounces of heroin bus. $10,000. And when the deal went down, they were going to bust the violator. But he needed Sarah to go along to make him look cool. So Sarah agreed or didn't, I mean, it wasn't a matter of agreeing, you know, anytime somebody called, you're always ready to help out. So Sarah got up early in the morning, drove that four hours to Columbus, met the agent, met the surveillance agents at a motel.

and they were supposed to do the deal like, you know, early afternoon. So Sarah and Jimmy and her partner, Jerry, they get in an undercover car. And the dealer, his name is, I think it was the Ray Brothers. I forget if it was Johnny Ray or Jimmy, but it was Ray Brothers. And he had told Jerry, he said, look, drive outside town on this country road, and you'll see me parked, drive out about 10 or 12 miles.

or see me parked on the side of the road. When you do, stop there. We'll do the deal in the middle of the road. And don't worry about it. No one will see us. People seldom use that road. And you can see about a mile in both directions, just flat road. So if anybody's coming, you know, we can avoid them before they get to us.

And it's like being on the moon. Don't worry about it. So Jerry and Sarah drive to go find a guy. And they've got surveillance, you know, behind them. And the surveillance is kind of staying out of sight. They're trying to listen to them on a wire and stay a little ways completely out of sight. Jerry and Sarah get there. They park.

They see the file in their car. They park on the other side of the little road. Jerry gets out of his car. He meets the bad guy in the center of the road. Jerry shows him to 10,000. and the guy pulls out the heroin. And when he does that, Jerry pulls out his gun and says, M. B.N., you're under arrest.

Sarah Neal, at that time, she's in the passenger siege of the under cover car, the other side of the road. At the time that Jerry says, M.B.N. you're under arrest. In a tree line, about 60 yards away, is the violator's brother. He's got a 30-30 rifle.

He's got his sights on Jerry. He's got his finger on the trigger. And when Jerry said, you're under arrest, he pulled the trigger, bam! And then he kept shooting, bam, bam! And Jerry got hit, staggered in the road. And the guy kept shooting. Sarah Neal is in the undercover car, you know, on the other side of the road.

She's in the passenger seat. She could have gotten out, on the floorboard gotten down out of danger, or she could have gotten out and squatted down behind the motor housing of the car. would have been safe. But instead, Sarah Neal saw that her fellow M.B.N. agent was wounded, staggered in the road. And about that time, he got hit a second time. Staggering in the road, and Sarah Neal jumped out of the car, ran around the front of the car, holding a Model 60, just like I'm holding in that book, holding her gun. She saw the violator with Jerry going for his gun, and she snapped off a shot, bow, and it got the guy in the hand. And Sarah's under fire from

the rifle shooter then. He's shooting at Sarah and Jerry. And as she gets to Jerry, Jerry gets hit a third time. He's down and he staggers back up. She grabs Jerry under fire. She tugs him to her side of the road. And there's an embankment there.

And they tumble down the embankment rolling over and rolling over. When they get down to the bottom, Jerry lays back in blood all over. Sarah gets up, gets in a squat, gets her pistol, And she watches the skyline where the road is for the violators coming at to guard him coming after him.

And she's watching, and she looks at Jerry, and she's got so much blood on him. She's thinking, I've got to get him to a hospital. I've got to get him to a hospital. If I don't get him to a hospital, he'll die. He'll die. So she tugs him up, holding her gun. She tugs him up. He gets up, and then she starts tugging him up the embankment.

and they're going up the embankment, and she's tugging him up that way. Later on, she told me, she said, Charlie, there's no way I would have ever had the strength to get him up that heel on my own. It was like I had supernatural strength. And you've heard of people in crisis. A car falls on somebody, and somebody picks up the car. She says, that must have happened. I was pulling him up there.

She gets to the top. She doesn't see the bad guys anywhere around. She gets him over to the undercover car, and she starts getting him in the back seat to lay down the back seat, and he's getting blood all over her, and she's dirty, and they're both dirty. And about that time, the surveillance agents roll up, and the surveillance agents start fanning out trying to find the bad guys.

Sarah gets on the radio, and she rushes back, races back to Columbus to find the hospital. And she wasn't familiar with it. She got on her portable radio, and he's moaning in the back seat. And she's rushing. She gets directions to the hospital. She rushes up to the hospital room. She gets him out, gets him inside.

Well, back then, hospital emergency rooms, especially in rural areas, weren't equipped like they are now. So she gets him into an emergency room, and all she sees around, I believe, was a nurse or a nurse's aide. And they said, look, we'll put him in this. room right here on this gurney. So Sarah, they get him on the gurney and he's bleeding. And the nurse says, let me go check the hospital and see if a doctor's in the hospital. So the nurse leaves. So Sarah's in there with Jerry and she's holding his hand. He's bleeding and moaning. And a couple minutes pass. Then another minute or two passes. And suddenly, Sarah hears this yelling and screaming, you know, in the emergency room. Sarah steps out of the room and she,

looks. And coming into an emergency room is a guy coming in and holding his hand. Help me. Help me. Somebody help me. Yeah, it was the guy she had shot in the hand. Somebody held me. So Sarah stepped back into the room, got her gun out of her purse. And she stepped out and she arrested the guy right in the middle of the emergency room,

had him get down on his belly. And then she got down behind him to start handcuffing him. And he was yelling, don't put him on too tight. It hurts too much. Don't put him on too tight. Of course, if I was or I'd clamped him on. And while this is going on, Sarah's kneeling over the guy to put the handcuffs and he's yelling.

There's one person in the emergency room of somebody waiting. It's an elderly gentleman. And he's sitting there watching this with big eyes like he's watching a movie. And Sarah puts the cuffs on the guy. He looks at the old man and says, Mr. Would you watch him? And if he moves, would you yell out and let me know I've got to get back to my partner?

Yes, ma'am, yes ma'am. She gets back to Jerry. Well, that happened early afternoon. Of course, agents from all over the state rush to Columbus. They're trying to find the bad guys, and of course, Jerry's been wounded seriously. So they're all rushing to the hospital.

So Sarah's there at the hospital all day. And she's answering questions, she's giving them information. She's looking after Jerry. I mean, the whole day, the rest of the day like that. finally about midnight around midnight uh you know she's about to just fall out from exhaustion and about midnight they convince her well look go get a motel room get a night's sleep see when sarah originally

went up there she was going to make a round trip in that same day so she didn't have a motel room or anything or didn't take anything with her so sarah leaves goes out to her car it's got ice all over the windshield because they'd been sleeting that day. It's not, it's close to Thanksgiving. So she goes to the trunk and she gets out, we used to carry extra undercover tags so we could switch as needed. She gets out one of the undercover tags and she scrapes off the windshield, gets in the car, it's freezing, and she drives into downtown Columbus, Mississippi. It's the weekend before Thanksgiving, and it's like 12, 1 in the morning. Stores are closed. No cars on the street. I mean, the city is just, it's just almost like it's abandoned. She drives,

she gets to the Holiday Inn, checks in, very few cars there at all. They put her in a room in a back block. And when she gets to the room, she makes sure to double lock the doors and check the outside because the shooter, the rifleman, is still loose. She doesn't know where he is. And apparently he must have dropped off the guy she's shot in a hand to the hospital. she goes and takes the shower and when she takes the shower she takes her gun with her puts on the top of the toilet while she takes the shower

and imagine how that might feel if you've been through that in a day that shower just not only cleaning but being refreshing just kind of giving you your spirit back a little bit goes and sits on the bed and she's on the phone for a while you know she has to let them know

which hotel she's in she's on the phone answering a few more question she finally gets in bed turns off the lamp, it's probably about two o'clock or so like that. Well, if that had happened to you, Mark, if that had happened to you, if that hadn't happened to any of you, would you just fall off into a nice, contented sleep after that? Well, no, no.

And she didn't either. She tossed in turn, and you know how you can close your eyes, and it's almost like you're fully awake. Well, that's the way she was, and at daylight, the phone rang. and she picked up the phone, and it was an agent at the hospital. He said, Sarah, I've been up all night with Jerry. Can you come relieve me? So Sarah Neal got up out of bed with hardly any sleep,

and she got dressed and went to the hospital. When she got dressed, she had to put on the same clothes she had worn the day before because she had not taken any clothes with it. So she put on jeans that had sponges of blood on it. She put on a blouse with blood on it, and she put on a jacket with blood on it. And she went back to the hospital. She stayed all day at the hospital, all day. And again, sometimes busy with calls and reports, and, you know, this is a crisis-type deal.

Finally, at about 8 o'clock that night, Sarah left and drove back to Brookhaven, Mississippi, to where her apartment is. And again, like I say, back then on those back roads, it's about a four-hour trip. And that whole way, she fought to stay awake, those four hours, wearing those same bloody clothes, same bloody clothes that she had worn.

I mean, isn't that something? Isn't that? I mean, to me, I love that story. Jerry and Sarah, I love both of them. They're just, Sarah unfortunately passed away about two years ago from, you know, just illness. Jerry doing well down in Jackson. But I love that story because it shows courage, sacrifice, compassion.

And I think it really drives home what people in law enforcement go through at times. I mean, what a beautiful and horrible story all at the same time. I mean, she's a warrior. Oh, she is. She is a warrior. And what happened with Jerry after that? He underwent, I think, four operations. And eventually went back to work, you know, as an agent.

However, for a year, he couldn't carry a gun because you can't carry a gun if you can't qualify on the range. And one of the shots, he was right-handed. One of the rounds had torn away the muscle in his form. arm in his right arm. And because of that, his arm was too weak to him to be able to, you know, qualify. But he kept trying and trying and trying. And finally, after about a year, he was able to qualify. Wow.

And later on, he retired from the bureau from NBN at a high rank. I forget what it was, but just a remarkable guy. And a warrior himself, when he got shot, when he got shot, he fired toward the tree line. he emptied his gun. He got hit again. He reached and got his backup gun, and he was firing that. I mean, he was a real warrior. And what happened with the bad guys?

They got caught. So obviously the one got caught in the hospital. Yeah. The other got caught too. They went to trial. They were convicted. They were sent to the state pen at Parchman, Mississippi. In about a year later, they escaped.

And it was a crisis again for MBN because they had. had both sworn they were going to get out and kill Jerry and Sarah. And so we put extra security and restrictions on Jerry and Sarah, you know, during that time. Well, one of them was recaptured soon after. The other was recaptured about a month later in, I forget, it might have been the state of Washington or Oregon and brought back. They were just killers, bad guys, bad guys. You got captured in Washington. Yeah, yeah. By a local PD over there?

I don't know the details. He was doing something stupid and criminal and got jammed up. I have no idea. Wow. I have no idea. But anyway, isn't that a remarkable story? By the way, I was telling this story, and I tell it often because you can see why I tell it, because isn't this remarkable?

I mean, isn't it remarkable? Yeah. I tell it when I have an opportunity, I tell it often because it says so much. One time I was talking with the, I think it's called St. James Church in Jackson, Episcical Church, I believe it is. And there were about 150 people there. And I was telling certain undercover stories, including this. And when I got to that part, and I told people that Sarah told me after that, that I don't know how I got Jerry up that. embankment, you know, I didn't have the normal strength. I don't know how I got him up. A lady at one of

the tables said, I know, I know. I said, yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I think oftentimes we had guardian angels looking after all of us at various times, whether we knew it or not. And as I tell people, I probably wore out several shifts of guardian angels. When I was doing that work, They had to call up their backup, say, hey, can you relieve me? I got to watch Charlie over here. Yeah. Well, when I talk with the NBN agents next week, I'll be telling them about that. And most of the agents won't be familiar with that story.

Tell them about what it means to be an agent, what it means to be in law enforcement. To me, it's not just about the Bureau. To me, this exemplifies law enforcement, the dedication, the sacrifice, the courage, the things that you're called upon to do. and their loyalty to support each other. Another thing I'll be telling agents about is an agent named Charlie Lindsay who went to make an arrest outside Jackson. And when they got to the apartment, they opened the apartment door, and the violent area inside started shooting at them with a rifle from inside through the doorway.

Was this a drug dealer? He was shooting at them with a rifle. They jumped back on the outside of the door of the apartment with their guns. He was shooting through it, and the agent, Charlie Lindsay, suddenly saw some motion right below him, right in the middle of the doorstep movement. And he looked down. It was a small child.

And the child had come out of that apartment, standing in the doorway, looking up at Lindsay. And the little child said, Mr. Are you going to shoot me? And Lindsay, shots coming through the door? Lindsay, without hesitation, reached over exposing himself, his upper body, no body armor, which wouldn't have helped anyway, exposing himself to gunfire, picked up that child, pulled the child back out of danger, and he said, no, baby, nobody's going to hurt you. Nobody's going to hurt you. The violator and his girlfriend jumped out of a back window and they were captured soon after that. No one got her.

heard. I wrote about that. Now, of course, I wrote about Sarah 2 in the book, Confessions of an Undercover agent. And I tell Charlie, I tell people when I mention him, that although I wrote about that, I regret that I didn't point out how courageous that was, you know, just point out how courageous and compassionate it was to be ready to sacrifice his life like that, without hesitation. I think, you know, that says something about the profession. Absolutely. To risk your own life to sacrifice for a child, someone that needed help, but someone you don't know, someone you never met. Right, exactly.

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Or click the link in the description below. And thank you so much to the good folks over at Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring this program and making this show possible with this paid advertisement. Let's get back to the show. Chuck Smith was an agent in North Mississippi, and he was one of my agents when I was the regional commander for North Mississippi. Later on, he became a supervisor himself. After I left the bureau, and while I was a federal prosecutor, Chuck went to help the

deputy U.S. Marshals arrest a man on child pornography charges. He was out in the case. rural county. And they go out to the county and they ask Chuck to station himself in his vehicle on the side of this county road just in case the defendant tried to escape, tried to escape, you know, by that route. So Chuck is sitting in his car and he's got his MBN ray jacket, the badge on it on, sitting there waiting. And all of a sudden while he's sitting there, this pickup truck is driving toward him at a high rate of speed. and it looks like it's going to ram him.

And as the truck is almost to him, Chuck leans over into the seat and braces himself for the impact. Instead, the truck stops right beside him. A man jumps out with a 357, points it at Chuck's head and says, get out, get out, you MF, get out, get out of car. Chuck gets out. It's clear, you know, he's an agent,

he's got the ray jacket on and all that. And the man says, I'm going to kill you, MF. I'm going to kill you pointing the gun right at Chuck. chest. There was a sound in the distance, and the man turned his head briefly just to look, and when he did, Chuck pulled out his good, bow, shine him, the guy goes down. Another man had been with him, and Chuck costing that man to get back, get back. Then Chuck, Chuck called on the radio, you know, for assistant, and then Chuck knelt down.

And Chuck had been a certified EMT before joining the MBN, and he got down. the guy was still alive, and Chuck began saving his life and kept the man alive, helicopter lifting him to the med center in Memphis, and he survived. Wow. Now, think about that. Here is obviously a criminal who is about to shoot a law enforcement officer, and the officer is able to shoot him. and then 20, 30 seconds after the guy was going to kill the officer,

the officer saving the guy's life. Saving the guy's life. Now, to me, to me, that says a lot about law enforcement. To me, that's an example of law enforcement. When I served in Iraq as the Justice Atashay, and before that, when I served as the DOJ attorney advisor to the Iraqi High Tribunal, you know, they tried Saddam. and others. One day, an official with the Iraqi High Tribunal said to me in wonder,

he said, you know, you Americans believe everybody's, every person's life is important. And the reason they were saying that is we always insisted that they treat their prisoners humanely. You know, they have food, you know, even though it was, it was people like chemical Mali, Terrick disease, and others who were mass murderers, waiting trial. While they're incarcerated, we, you know, we insisted that they give them food, access to attorneys. They follow the rules of criminal, their criminal procedure, and they, you know, get access to attorneys.

And they wanted to just kill and torture. And so this official said, you know, you Americans, you believe every person's life is important. about one month after that, another Iraqi official said almost exactly the same thing to me. You Americans believe every person's life is important. And to me, the fact that both of them said it and it was over a period of time meant they had talked among themselves about this. And if nothing else, maybe things that we tried to do in Iraq never worked out. But if nothing else, I think it established that principle that Americans do care about every person's life.

Every person's life is important. Even the worst person's life is important and should be treated humanely, that sort of thing. So that was Chuck Smith a few years ago. It might have been 2018. I was the keynote speaker for the Louisiana Narcotics Officers Association annual conference. And on the third night, they have an awards banquet.

And I was the keynote speaker for that. And after the talk, one of the people who came up to me was the president of the Tennessee Narcotics Officers Association, who had been there as one of the guests. And he said, hey, by the way, while we talked, He said, have you seen that video that came out, a dash camera video of, you know, police car? I forget if this is Nashville or Nashville or Knoxville.

Police car that showed a man being stopped on a traffic violation. It shows him walking back to the officer's car. Then you hear five shots and the officer screaming. Then the man gets in the car and drives off. and I just had I happened to have seen that I don't look for things like that but happened to have seen that it was just chilling

and I said yeah I saw that he said well that was my partner I said what he said yeah he said when I was in uniform he and I were partners and of course you know I was in narcotics but that was my partner and when that happened

I heard it on the radio and I rushed to the scene and when he got to the scene the ambulance was there, they were getting ready to load his partner up in the ambulance. And the partner had been shot five times. They didn't expect him to live. And they loaded him up into amlets. And as they were loading him up in the amlets, the Tennessee president started to climb into amelets.

They said, no, you can't do that. Yeah, other people can't go into amelts with us. And he said, well, I'm going. He climbed into amlets. He said the reason I did was because I didn't want him to die alone. Is that powerful?

What? Well, there's a good ending to the story of the man survived. Of course, I don't think he was ever able to return to duty, but he survived. But everyone thought he was going to die. He just didn't want him to die alone in front of strangers. Wow.

Is that powerful or what? I mean, that's remarkable. Yeah. So you see why there are some of these stories, experiences that I think are important and important for people to know. One, they're informative. Two, they should be interesting. And three, they should be giving people insights that maybe they didn't have before. One other thing, I was, when I was the regional commander, I would talk with my lieutenants. I had four lieutenants in the districts they each had like

eight or nine counties and agents. Now, I talked to my lieutenants every day in person or by phone. And I was talking with Dennis McAnally. He was the lieutenant-in-chorged in the Greenwood office, Greenwood, Mississippi. And as we're about to hang up, he said, yeah, we're going to go over and go get something to eat now. We're going to such and such a place. And, you know, I was having an office meeting,

so we're all going over and eat now. And Charlene's here. She told us what she wants. So we're going to bring back one for her. Well, the reason Charlene wasn't going, was because that restaurant that was the most popular restaurant in town where the workmen, the judges, the lawyers, law enforcement,

everybody went. That assigned it said members only. And if you walked in the door and you were white, you're automatically a member. Charlene Anderson was black, a black female. And she couldn't go because of that. But she liked the food from there, so they were going to bring her back, you know, her order.

And Mack told me, I said, yeah, we're going to bring Shirleyne back. She gave, told us what she wants. I said, Mac, do you realize what you just told me? He said, what? You just told me, you and your agents are going to a place that a fellow agent can't go to. There was silence. He said, holy cow, Charlie.

I never even thought of it that way. Holy cow, they never went back. and never went back because Charlene couldn't go. Now, later on, I recommended Charlene when there was an opening and she became the head of that office. And she dealt with a lot of sheriffs

and some of these you might call redneck sheriffs and they were good people, but they weren't used to working with females because back then there were very few females in law enforcement. They certainly weren't used to working with black females. bills. But when I talk with the sheriffs, they would uniformly praise Charlene. She was smart. She was tough. And she was just good. They would pray. I mean, they became her fans. I mean, that was some story. Later on, Charlene, I think maybe that year, the next year,

she might have been an agent of the year. She had saved another agent, Albert Craig, when Albert was doing a deal in one of the small towns there in the Delta. and he got burnt. And while he was burnt, he was doing the deal in this community. It was just him and an informant. And Charlene and another agent were on surveillance. And Elbert was wearing a wire, and he was going to do a deal. But then they burned him, and I forget exactly how that came about.

But I think they went and looked in his car and they found his badge or something. Anyway, they pulled a – the informant had left, and they pulled a gun on Craig. and they took him to the bathroom and they put him on his hands and knees and they had the gun at his head and the two people were discussing whether they were going to kill him right there or take him out to the woods back behind the house

and kill him in the woods. There was no doubt they were going to do it. The only question was right there or in the woods. The wire, they had found the wire on Craig and they had thrown it to the side and Charlene was only picking up a little bit about what was going on. So she didn't know what was happening, but she figured out that something's wrong, something's wrong. And she told the other agent, we're going in. And they went busting in. The bad guys ran out the back. They

saved Elbert. The bad guys got caught. But that was Shirlene. I mean, had she not, her instinct, had she not listened to her instinct, and had she not had the courage to do what she did, Albert Craig would have been murdered. That's some story, isn't it? Wow. He later, after retiring from NBN, became a pastor. Charlene retired, I think, as a colonel or lieutenant colonel from NBN,

and later became the first black female police chief of Jackson, Mississippi. Wow. Isn't that some story? I mean, that must be, that must be difficult for her specifically in that time. Oh, yeah. Right? Like, as a black woman trying to climb the ranks within. You can imagine.

You can imagine. But here's the thing about NBN. Back then, you're talking about the 70s and the 80s, well, later on, too. There were a lot of agencies, law enforcement agencies under court orders. And they were under court orders because of discrimination in hiring and in promotion. And those court orders oftentimes were required. I know when my son joined MBN back in the 90s, they were using the state written test. And the test scores were different for minorities, the lower qualifying for minorities than they were for non-minorities.

And for promotion and hiring, that's the way things wind up. working with a lot of agencies because of court orders. MBN, though, was never under that kind of court order. And it was never under that kind of court order because the director who formed MBN, Kenneferrely, was a true visionary. And he tried to form it along the lines of FBI, although not to investigate things like FBI.

But with the same type of policies, principles, ethics and protocols, and it was colorblind and hiring and promotion. So, you know, back when I was a M.B. and commander, I would go to black colleges and actively try to recruit agents, just as part of the recruitment process. Charlene, but that didn't make it easy for Charlene. She was a female when in the south there were few females in law enforcement. She was a black female when there were very few black females in law enforcement. And she was a black female supervisor and then a manager when there were very, very few. And then as I say, became the first black female police chief of Jackson,

Mississippi. Isn't that that some story. Right. I mean, it seems like undercover work and deep undercover work is one of those industries where you actually need diversity. Oh, you do. You need many different types of people. You do. You do. Like I can imagine in your work, you know, like depending on on what the cases, you show up as some white guy and they're going to say... Oh, look, I've had that numerous times. I was dealing with Shorty Smooth. One time in West Point, Mississippi, and we're in a car and we're... And Shorty Smooth is saying, I think I was using name, Glenn, Glenn said, you know, yeah,

you look, you said you want kilos, look, the people I'm dealing with, you know, over in Atlanta, they got kilos. I said, good and good. Huck me up with them. I buy from, you know, I buy from... Glenn, they ain't going to deal with you. I said, what? They ain't going to deal with you, Glenn.

I said, why not? I mean, you trust me, we're short. We're okay, smooth. He said, man, I just tell you, they ain't going to deal with you because you're white. I said, what? He said, yeah, you white. I said, no, uh-uh, uh-uh.

Shorty, I'm black. He said, what? I said, I'm black. He said, what? I said, I got blacking me. And so he said, what? And he does this. We're in the car.

He does this. Oh, yeah. And we see, I mean, he's looking at my face and finally sees him my face. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's so funny. But apparently I wasn't black enough for the dealers in Atlanta because I never did get hooked up with him. But yeah, shortly, later on, Shorty disappeared. I remember he disappeared.

He was kind of notorious from West Point. Somebody said he was out in California. And when he showed back up, the chief, you know, I worked together, Bill Laude worked together. He said, yeah, he showed back up, and he showed back up in a stolen car. And I said, well, how did you know it was stolen? He said, Shorty's move. show back up in a purple Lincoln. And he said that was back when the Lincoln's

were about 30 feet long. And here's a little shorty smooth driving a Lincoln with California tags. Uh-uh, that ain't right. Are there, is there one more story that you tell the new agents and people that you're speaking to at these events? I want to ask you about Iraq

and your time there as a justice ad-tash. But I'm curious if there's one more that you think. Yeah, well, yeah, I'll be telling agents too about the director, Ken Fairley, with NBN. He's legendary, it's the first director, just a legend. He's passed away, but we would still refer to him as Mr. Fairley. Smugglers brought in a shrimp boat with 20,000 pounds of marijuana on it into a little inlet on the Gulf Coast. They brought it in like about two in the morning or something.

and we had some advanced knowledge about it, and we were working with DEA, with DEA, try to intercept the load. Me and Fred McDonnell, another NBN agent, and Ken Smith, a Jefferson Parish narcotics officer, were in a empty warehouse near a canal and the inlet, and we were trying to be on the look out for a darkened boat. You know, all this place was vacant and isolated, darkened boat going. And at some point, some point,

we heard a boat rumbling. And what had happened, the boat had slipped in up the inlet. It had beached at a little sandy beach and had ramps coming off. And a tractor-trailer truck had wound down a sandy track through the woods down to where that inlet was. And they had offloaded 20,000 pounds in the tractor trailer truck.

And then the tractor trailer truck left. And while all that was going on, me and Ken and Fred thought, gosh, we can't see anything. Don't know what's going on. Let's make our way to where we're hearing the noise. So Ken and I start working our way on foot through the swamp. And Fred goes and gets another agent, they get in a car, and they wind up going down that sandy track with their lights off while we're working our way through the swamps. And Ken and the other agent got there just before we did. The tractor-trailer truck was already gone, but the shrimp boat was still there roaming.

And Fred got out and attacked the shrimp boat and captured it single-handly. He was firing his 44 Magnum and Bam, and the captain and his... crew hands were jumping over the back and they were swimming across alligators to get to the other side of the place and escape. And meanwhile, other agents stationed, you know, a couple miles away, had started following the tractor trailer truck. And they followed it deep into another county, way into the woods. And in the woods, there was a warehouse that built in the woods, was a holding place for tons

of marijuana. and that's where they took it to. And the agents rushed in and raided that place. And the people who had jumped off the shrimp boat were later arrested on the interstate while they were trying to hitchhike and get away. Later that afternoon, I was at where that warehouse was, and they had already taken all the marijuana away. There was a little guard, there was a little hut there that was used apparently by the people who looked after the dope. I think it had a dirt floor, maybe a cot or two. It may not have even had electricity.

And, you know, all the evidence had been taken away, all the agents were leaving. And the head of DEA from New Orleans was there, the director barely was there, sheriff's office, dozens of federal state and local agents. You know, everybody, a lot of people, everybody was walking toward their cars to leave and, you know, head back. Farrely was walking back toward his car. And next to him was an agent looking through a magazine, old torn magazine. And Farley said, what's you got there? He said, oh, Mr. Farley, it's a, look, guns and ammo magazine.

Where did you get that? Oh, it's on the floor back there, you know, in the place. And Farrell said, you like your job? You like your job. Oh, oh, he goes back and he leaves the old torn magazine. It was an old torn guns and ammo magazine. No one lived in that hut. That magazine didn't have any value to anyone.

But the key thing about it was, one, it wasn't contraband. You know you can seize contraband, sought off shotgun, drugs, things like that, pornography. You can seize that. You can seize evidence, things that are evidence, maybe telephone records that somebody had that. That's going to be evidence toward the conspiracy. But old guns in ammo magazine, that's not evidence. That's not lawfully seizable. It's not worth 10 cents.

But Fairley was basically telling the agent, you take something like that, you're going to lose your job. Wow. You can imagine how that went around the Bureau. Principled. Yeah. That's the way the Bureau was. That's the way the Bureau was.

And we, I mean, give you another example. When I was on the Gulf Coast, I was working, you know, that taxi cab drove the taxi cab. And I started making a few drug deals. And I started laying down a story that, hey, I'm going to come into a lot of money because I was in an accident. My lawyer tells me I'm going to get all this money, boy, and I'd start cussing the lawyer for his take. And then finally I tell everybody, oh, man, I'm getting the pay off from the settlement. Then I start driving this big in Lincoln. And, you know, I've got all kind of money, and I'm making, you know, making all these deals.

And I think I was undercover for about maybe nine months doing that. And at the end of that, we had arrest warrants for about 180 people from New Orleans to Mobile and all along the Gulf Coast. And nearly every single one were on heroin dealers. When they got arrested, when they got arrested, there were several of the heroin dealers. that told the same story. They said, and there was an informant who had introduced me, and they said, look, that informant gave me the drugs I sold that agent. The informant said that he owed the agent money,

which we didn't know was an agent, and that if they sold it, you know, they could keep part of it. And the informant had supposedly done that on about four or five people. And the four or five people were heroin dealers, but that's obviously not permitted and illegal. So because we were suspicious that, wait, there's enough that might have happened. I took the informant up to Jackson, and he was polygraphed. He was polygraphed about that.

You know, on the polygraph, he admitted he had done that. We, of course, had those cases dismissed. He admitted he had done that. And he said, later he said to me, and they confirmed, this he said to me he said you know what that man asked me you know doing the paragraph and said know what he asked me said was agent spilers involved did agent spillers know about that was he involved and the informant said what said that's the most honest man I ever met my life now I like that because maybe I wasn't the most

honest man he ever met in his life but he thought that He thought that. As I tell agents, as I tell agents in law and foreign, I also have done training in the academies, I tell agents and officers, that's what you want people to say about you. You want them to say that's the most honest man I've ever met. That's what you want them in always conduct yourself that way, even when you don't think anybody's ever looking. Because, you know, you're out working undercover and you're working with informing making cases, you can always give a wink or a nod,

yeah, let's do this or do that. But instead, you always insist that there's only one way to do it the right way, and if we can't do it that way, we don't do it. And as I tell officers and agents, I say, look, as bad as you want to put a criminal in jail out here, somebody you know is a criminal?

Is there any criminal out here worth your badge? Worth your badge? Any criminal out here worth your career. Is there any criminal out here worth your career? Is there any criminal out here worth going to prison for? There's not. There's not.

So anyway, that's the kinds of things I tell people in the academies and the basic agents go out. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you need better sleep. I mean, if you're like me, you'll probably wake up feeling exhausted. You miss your workout. You're drinking too much coffee. You feel wired the whole day because you're just shock in your nervous system.

And the problem is that sometimes you don't sleep great. and the sleep supplements that you do take are probably packed with melatonin, oftentimes 10 times the melatonin that your body actually produces. So as a result, you end up feeling more groggy and worse than you did before because this melatonin is knocking you out and you're not able to wake up easily. It's a big problem. And that's why sleep dust came into the market because they saw this issue. And instead of knocking you out with massive doses of melatonin,

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You know, to me, to me, there are two kinds of law enforcement. There are the type of law enforcement that we want there to be. And the kind of law enforcement below that, that a lot of people think really exist. It's not that way. It's not as good. And unfortunately, there are bad people in law enforcement as there are in every profession. But they're the minorities. And when I prosecute it.

As a prosecutor, I prosecuted law enforcement officers who were corrupt, who were taking kickbacks from drug dealers. And thankfully, there weren't very many of those. But when we find out about them, they become a high priority case. Yeah, there's no blue silence. If somebody's a bad cop, he's not a cop. he's a criminal pretending to be a cop. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

Yeah. You sound like a great trainer for these guys. Well, I imagine they have a lot of respect for it. Yeah, I don't know about that. And what I find too is, I think sometimes in the academies, people are just looking for a role model. If you're talking to them, if I'm talking to them, and if I become a role model, then that helps them. When I was training in one of the academies where they have people from all the apartments come for 12 weeks of training.

There was a guy that was in the class, most of the classes kind of sitting back and kind of just like it wasn't paying much attention and bowing his arms. And I asked the instructors in the academy, the people run the academy, I said, what's the story on him? You know, in the two days I was there.

They said, well, he comes from this small department. They told me where it was. They only have a few officers. And we've heard a lot of bad stories about that department. And we're worried about him whenever he gets out of the academy goes back because that's what he's going back to. So at the end of the second day of training, we were finished up, and I was finished up. And I said, okay, any last questions?

And during the training, I would sometimes tell them undercover stories because that keeps them interested when I'm teaching search and seizure law and all that. So this one guy, that guy I'm talking about, raised his hand. And he says, were you ever tempted? I said, tempted. What do you mean tempted? He said, well, you remember you told us sometimes you were handling $20,000, $120,000, $500,000, $80,000. And at the same time, you were saying how when you were in law enforcement, it was to make it from payday to payday.

And one time when you were in Baton Rouge, you even went and hawked a 22 caliber rifle that your father-in-law had given y'all so you'd have enough money for, you know, feeding the baby till payday. You said, were you ever tempted to take money? And several others sat up and said, yeah, were you ever tempted? And I said, I was stunned. I'd never had that question.

And I said, well, wait a minute, let me think. about this. Was I ever attempted? Let me think. Give me a moment. Let me think. So they all sat up, listening, waiting, and I didn't know the answer. I paced back and forth between them thinking about it. Was I ever attempted? Finally, after about a long minute or short two minutes, I said, okay, I've got the answer. Was I ever attempted, even when times were bad? I said, this is the answer. No, never. not one time. Not one time was I tempted because I was a cop.

I was a cop. Why would a cop ever be tempted? I mean, it's kind of like if you're a cop, you can't be a human being like other people. You have to follow a certain principle. So I was a cop. So that's the answer. After that, they all started cleaning up.

They were cleaning up the classroom. Then we were going to symbol outside and then do their runs. and the other stuff they do and more PT after that. But while they were cleaning up the classroom, different ones would come up. Thank you. I appreciate the instruction of all this.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. He came up to me and said, can I talk to you? I said, yeah. So I stepped aside. He said, you know what you said about not being tempted? So yeah, that was important. I mean, when you have an impact, I mean, to me, that means something.

I can feel that. I mean, you can hear it in my voice. I feel that kind of thing. And they know I feel it because I live it. What happened to him? Do you know? I don't know. I have no idea.

No idea. Do you still feel that compulsion today, even though you're retired? And once you were out of law enforcement, do you still feel that higher duty? Oh, well, even more so. Even more so because of the fact that, you know, I then eventually became, became a federal prosecutor, an assistant U.S. attorney, part of the Department of Justice, and the values in the Department of Justice were the same. You know, I mean, if you're in a trial or you're in arguments, you're making arguments to a judge

and the defense attorneys making arguments, and you know of a case that helps him that the court should know about, and you have a duty and you tell the court, well, your honor, tell them about something that helps the opponent. I mean, it's your duty to make sure people get a fair trial, and you have a great responsibility about that. And I've been fortunate because in my career, I've been part of several organizations that were all extraordinary, and they were all extraordinary when I was in them

because of the people and the principals, in each organization. And one was in the Marines, in the Marines. The other was Baton Rouge PD narcotics. When I was in Baton Rouge PD narcotics, that was really a great unit. And we tried to follow the same procedures. You know, when I started, it was on the job

and intelligence then it bombed into narcotics. Well, we had DEA to come up. It was B&D at the time come up. and I'd take them around to make bias with me, and then they'd write it up as their case, you know, with us doing it together, and we would use their reporting procedures and their techniques, so I learned that way. And when I was in Baton Rouge,

Baton Rouge sent me to the DEA school for 10 weeks in D.C. The 10-week DEA school for state and local agents that they would do about four times a year, people from all over the U.S. And later on, of course, I was in the NBN Academy. But Department of Justice is a great organization, just a tremendous organization. Without getting into politics, I just have to say I just hate to see it being destroyed now and the rule of law being destroyed is just like seeing your best friend having a terminal illness.

It just really hurts to see that because of what DOJ states. stood for. And I remember I prosecuted a well-known black attorney in the Delta who was laundering money for a drug organization, and we made the case on him. And after we made the case on him, but before his trial, there were several protests over in the Delta, and some that went on television in different towns where they were protesting that you know that I was trying to prosecute him because he was a black community leader,

that sort of thing. And then some organizations wrote letters to Janet Reno protesting it. And Janet Reno at the time was the Attorney General. I believe that was under Clinton. And of course she was considered

a very liberal attorney general. very liberal attorney general. So they sent the letters, and I heard from Janet Reno, and she sent me a handwritten notes saying, you're doing a good job, keep it up. The Department of Justice is a principal organization, the integrity and the rule of law of paramount, or at least they were.

I just hopefully somehow DOJ will survive somehow. Yeah. I'm curious, what are some of the cases that stick out to you is the most memorable that you had to prosecute? Lord, I don't know. Of course, one that sticks out, it's not one of those big cases

that took a long time and that took a lot of thinking and, you know, technique and whatever. One of the stands out was a hitman. Well, I think I might have mentioned to you there. There's a grandfather, a woman, and a grandfather, that wanted to hire a hitman to kill the woman's husband.

And the grandfather and the woman had secretly taken out life insurance policies on the husband without him knowing it. And the woman had had two children by the grandfather. They had that romantic relationship. And when the woman married her current, her present husband, they'd only been married a year or two. He knew about the romantic relationship, but he went ahead and married her anyway. and he was a pretty passive type of guy. So the girl had a relationship? Yeah, she had had two children by her grandfather.

With her grandfather. By her grandfather, yeah. And her husband knew about the relationship, but the woman I swore, no, that's over. I don't have sex with my grandfather anymore. Well, the three of them, though, and the kids all live together. And the woman and the grandfather plotted to kill him

and took out the life insurance. policies. And one time, one time they convinced him that the electricity, it might have been in a trailer, a house trailer, needed to be fixed. So he goes under and they, you know, switches are off. And he goes under to try to work on electricity and they throw it on inside. And he starts yelling, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off. So it didn't kill him, but it burned his hands bad. and they had to take him to the nearest hospital about 30 minutes away and be treated. And later they complained to the informant, an informant who pretended that he would do the hit. Later they told the informant said,

damn, yeah, we just burned his hands. We had to take him the hospital and then they had the bill over there. I mean, they were fussing about that. Well, they kept trying to find a hitman, and so they approached this guy about it. He told someone. And so we got in touch and he began cooperating with the FBI. The FBI wired him. And the woman and the grandfather met with the hitman.

And they laid the plan. And here's the plan. They said, all right, tomorrow hunting season opens. And she said, I will take him to a certain area of the woods. And we'll go in there. And then I'll leave him around a certain tree. then I'll go over ways and you be there waiting. And then when you see him,

you shoot him with your rifle and we'll make it look like a hunting accident. And while they were talking with the informant, this all was recorded on tape. While they were talking with the informant, one of them said, be sure to hit him in the head or the heart. And others said, yeah, we don't want no cripple on our hands.

So, yeah, I remember that case. In fact, I think after we convicted those people, they played guilty. I think before they went off of their sentences, one, I think the woman might have gone on the Sally Jassy Raphael show and talked about all this. I remember my secretary telling me she watched the show. I never did. You know, I didn't keep up with things like that. But anyway, and the judge wound up in Newsweek magazine. Because back then in Newsweek at the first few pages, they'd have.

maybe three or four quotes that seemed newsworthy during the week. And the quote was by the judge, Neil Biggers, who had sentenced them, said, this is absolutely the worst case I've ever had in my life. And then, you know, the Newsweek went on to explain what the case was about. But I remember that just because it was so bizarre. Yeah, bizarre. Yeah, who it was. That is strange.

At the same time, you have to pity those kids. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, you have to. an awful situation. Yeah, we have to pity those kids. So, yeah, I remember that. I remember some other bigger cases that, but we may not have time to talk about any of us.

About what time is it getting to be? Oh, okay, we have time to talk about one. Okay. All right. This was a drug organization in San Antonio, Texas. They sent kilos of crack cocaine to Florida, North Carolina, I'm trying to remember different states. And we, by chance, by chance,

local department happened to have busted four of the people from Florida who were being supplied by the San Antonio Organization. They bust them in Mississippi. They called them with like a kilo of cocaine and a bunch of guns. So we were making a federal case on them, and they agreed to cooperate. But they're in custody, and they can't help, but they agreed to tell what they'd know. Or at least one or two of them did. So they tell us about a guy they call R.G.

Reginald Green. He's in San Antonio. He owns two liquor stores, and he has a business, he has a music promotion company. And he's like about 50 years old. He's the businessman. Well, he's the cocaine supplier, the one sending the coke all over. The RG.'s brother, who's involved, too, these guys in custody, they can make calls, if we want them to, record a call. But R.G. won't talk to him.

He's too suspicious. You know, they've been busted. RG.'s' brother will talk to him a little bit. And one call, RG's brother says, they say, hey, man, what's happening? RG's brother said, hmm, been trouble on the road. Trouble on the road. Oh, yeah. Yeah, RG had to look into himself, trouble on the road.

That's all they said, trouble on the road. We figured what that what that meant was that a load in a car, he'd normally send five to ten kilos at time by vehicle. That a load got taken off somewhere between. San Antonio and Florida, maybe. So we checked, I check with Texas DPS, Louisiana State Police, Alabama Bureau of Investigation, the Highway Patrol, Florida, Florida, FDLA, to see if anybody had taken off a load of cocaine on the interstate during the last week or so.

And we found out that in Covington, Louisiana, at the interstate, the sheriff's office, had interdicted. I forget it was a kilo or maybe it was one kilo of cocaine that was hidden in the housing toward where the motor was. And so we figured, well, that came from

R.G probably. Well, who did you arrest with it? Oh, it was a guy from Jacksonville, Florida. Well, that Jacksonville was the group we knew. Yeah, well, okay, what's his name? Such a stealing custody? Yeah. So me and a DEA agent rushed down there. And we

interviewed the guy in jail. He doesn't ask for an attorney or anything. We interviewed him and say, well, look, man, what about this cocaine? Where did that come from? Oh, I went to Baton Rouge, and I followed a guy named Bill around. And when Bill hit his drugs, I dug him up, and this is that kilo I dug up. And, of course, we figured that's BS. BS, you know, he's covering for going to RG.

And you ask him questions, it's, you know, it's a silly story. But he wouldn't say anything else. So we left there, and when we left, I told the agent, I said, look, before we leave, make copies of everything that was in this guy's wallet, make copies of everything that was in his pockets, front and back, everything that was in the car. So we get back to Oxford, and when I'm looking through the copies, I see a hamburger receipt. And the hamburger receipt is about this big, and it's from, I think, Waterburger, something like that. And it was, the date and time was like about 12 hours before the guy in Covenning got busted, about 12 hours before. It's like store number 854, the date and time.

So I get in touch with Waterburger headquarters, and I find out store number 854 is in, guess where San Antonio, Texas. Oh, where RG is. Yeah, where RG is. And not only that, it's in the same part of the city where I'm, RG and his businesses are located, where his home and businesses are located. So, to me, that's good conspiracy evidence. One, he's given a false statement, two, there's evidence linking him 12 hours before to RG,

maybe along with other testimony that helped. There's one other thing on this case. When we were debriefing the people who had been dealing with him, I usually ask people a lot of details. And one of them is, well, how did they package the drugs? what were they contained in? And in this case, you know, it's not only the Ziploc bags, but the people said,

RG, would always put that in a brown paper bag. He rolled the top of the brown paper bag, and he'd staple it. I guess he did that because, see, he was doing most of the dealing out of one of his main liquor stores. But he'd staple the top of the bag. So when I got up with the sheriff's office in Covenant, they said they had sent that cocaine to the Louisiana State Police Lab. I contacted them.

What's it packaged in? Ciplock bag and it had been contained in a brown paper bag. How was the bag closed? It had two staples in it. Okay. So you see how that's matching on the testimony. Then I called the FBI Lab. and I said, hey, I want to talk with somebody about staples and staplers.

They said, hold on, so switch me to somebody, and I told them, switch me, and I told them, switch me. Probably about the fifth guy. He said, yeah, what do you want to know about staples and staplers? I explained, I said, look, we've got this case, guy who should put staples in bags, we've got a bag. They set the crime lab. It's got two staples in it. And here's what I'm wondering, if maybe in a few months from now, we run a search warrant at his liquor stores in his house,

and we seize his staplers, and then send the staplers to you, and send that bag that contained a kilo of crack. You know, it still has staples to you. Is there any way of matching up the staples to a stapler to eventually be able to say that these two staples came from this stapler? kind of a gun. That's what I asked him. Yeah, kind of like a fingerprint.

Mm-hmm. And he said, how'd you hear about this? I said, hear about what? He said, that we can do this. And I said, well, I didn't know. I'm just trying to find out if you can. And he said, well, I've never done this in a criminal case. He said, normally, he said, we can do it.

Normally we do it in cases where there's threats against the president and other high officials. and in espionage cases, but I've never done it in a criminal case. Wow. And he said, yeah, if you run the search warrant, yeah, send me the staplers, and send me that bag with the staples in it that contained the crack. And he said, yeah, I'll do a comparison for you. I'll check those.

So later on, we ran search warrants, document search warrants on this house in different places. And we sent those off. Meanwhile, when we ran a search warrant, we arrested, I think, four people, including R.G and his brother, the guy in Louisiana, seemed like there was one another. And while we're waiting for trial, you know, I'd sent all that off, and I'm waiting for it to come back. And then the lab tech gets up with me from FBI lab.

He says, there's no match on the Staples. And meanwhile, I found out that the DEA agents who had executed a search warrant at the liquor store, the main liquor store that we thought he was using, they had neglected to seize the staplers there. And which, of course, I was irate about that, but we were in a position where we couldn't go back with a search warrant. We probably could have worked up a search warrant and gone back, but, you know, who knows, if the staplers would have been there, you know, it had been months. And so, but the lab guy said, wait a minute, when you seize documents at his house and his stores, did you seize any documents that were stapled together?

I said, yeah. He said, send those to me. Don't take the staples out. Send those stapled documents to me. So we sent those. And about a week before trial, he said, check your fax machine. He sent a report. He had matched up the staples in that package.

to some documents that were stapled, and I think that came out of the store. So it's like having this thumbprint on that crack cocaine. I mean, isn't that good? That is remarkable. So two key pieces of evidence in that conspiracy case was a small hamburger receipt and two staples. And, of course, we had about a four-hour hearing in court with defense attorneys trying to keep out that hamburger receipt. you know, trying to suppress that, say, no, they can't use that as evidence. Anyway, so we went to trial and he was convicted and went off to prison, RG, and the rest.

Wow. I mean, building these cases is so interesting. It's really solving a puzzle. It really is, and you have to be innovative, you have to be resourceful. You have to hopefully be ingenious about some things. And sometimes you still run up into a brick wall. But as I tell people, you know, You have to just keep turnover. I'll tell them beat the bushes. You beat the bushes until finally you might find something, but you'll never find it. It's like trying to hit a ball.

You're never going to hit it if you don't even try, you know. Right. Well, look, I board your audience enough. No, not at all. Not at all. And this is a lot to absorb. I just appreciate, Mark, I appreciate you taking the time and getting into this.

And I appreciate you taking the time to allow me to get. into this and your staff and doing such an excellent job. Hopefully for your audience, hopefully some of this has been interesting, informative, and perhaps helping get some insights. Absolutely. Well, Charlie, I truly am so grateful for your time and your expertise and your wisdom. I mean, this is why I do the show. So meet people like you that I respect and that have served our country

and serve their community and help me be a better person. me be a better person. So I really appreciate it. Thank you, Maher. There's one last thing I wanted to ask, and this, I imagine the answer is no, but maybe. Have you seen the show True Detective? Yes. Season one? Yes. Takes place in Louisiana.

Yeah, the one with... Matthew McConaughey. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've seen that, yeah. You have. Yeah. Now, that show, obviously, circles around very fantastical ideas, specifically, like voodoo and Santa Ria, which I know. was perhaps more common in Louisiana than it is in New York City.

Right. Did you ever see anything like that? In one of my drug cases, it was a drug conspiracy case. It was Stanley Knox who lived in Ripley County. He had a house out in the county. And he sold cocaine. And he had a group of guys who, you know, did the sales for him. And they would do the sales at his house.

and sometimes the traffic to his house would be so busy that one of his people would walk down the driveway and up to the highway and direct cars into the driveway and people would come out and serve their cars. And so I had that case we're working on. And we found out this was the way they had operated. And at one point I asked National Guard Special Forces, who were sometimes assisting us with surveillance, you know, at rare times, to go and do a surveillance one night on that house, see what they could see.

So they get dropped off like a couple miles away, make their ways through the woods. Then they're wearing gilly suits. And they get in bushes, you know, not to shoot or do anything, but just to observe. they're getting bushes across the road and they're watching the house and they're seeing all this activity going on. Later, I had them testify at trial, which is rare.

And the reason was because at some time during the night, the drug dealers became suspicious. And they walked across the street in the dark, a couple of them. And using what we think was a 39 millimeter or 45, they fired into the bushes close to where the National Guard special two guys were. You know, that's pretty hairy night, as you can imagine. So you'd see why I had them testify. Later on, when we bust them out and we had the trial, one of our witnesses was scared to testify

because he was afraid they were going to put a curse on him through voodoo. And part of the evidence that we had a trial, We had a, the defense tried to keep this out as impermissible evidence of religion, which is impermissible at trial, voodoo. But we put it in as evidence of his way of controlling the people who work for him, that what he would do is, and the people would get on stand testify, that he'd go sprinkle this white powder around the house, and it told the people who worked for him,

that was a boo-doo powder from this boo-do woman near Clarksdale, Mississippi. And it'd go over and now and then get it, and it would keep the police away and protect them. And so our argument was it wasn't evidence of religion, it was evidence of his way of controlling organization and assuring them that they wouldn't be caught. We had a big hearing over that,

and the judge let it in as evidence of his method of control of this drug organization. So, yeah, that was voodoo. But even when we had to trial, one of the witnesses in the witness room, I had to go in and kind of calm him down. They said he had gotten scared because he was worried about voodoo

getting a hex on him. Wow. Yeah, in fact, with Stanley Knox, I looked up voodoo, and I was wondering, I wonder if there's some kind of counter-budu I can use when I'm in the courtroom, and maybe it's a break. And while Stanley's sitting there with his attorneys,

I can go over and make the voodoo high, to him or some of course there wasn't anything like that later on i think it might have been the same judge who uh tried that case later on that's right he got that judge wasn't connected with stanley that judge wound up getting some kind of white powder along with some hair there was something to do with voodoo where somebody was trying to uh put a curse on the judge using voodoo so that's the only the voodoo I've come around. Wow. So.

I mean, did it work? Did the judge get cursed? I don't remember what. I hope not. No, he survived. He survived. Well, thank goodness. And it seems like Stanley Knox's, uh, his white powder didn't work.

Right. Yeah. In fact, when I had the witness on our stand, I say him, what did Stanley say that it would do? He'd keep the police away to him. I'd sometimes make a quip, well, it didn't work, did it? No, sure did it. Well, Charlie, thank you so much for this. This has been truly wonderful, and I look forward to talking to you again. Thank you, Mark. Thank you.

What's up, people? Quick announcement. If you are a fan of Camp Gagnon or Religion Camp, I have great news because we're dropping History Camp. That's right. This is the channel where we're going to be exploring the most interesting, fascinating, controversial topics from all time throughout all history. Right? You probably know about Benjamin Franklin. I don't know, Thomas Jefferson, Nicola Tesla. Interesting figures from history. And you probably learned about in school and they were pretty boring, but not here. No. As you know, I was raised by a conspiracy theory, so I'm going to be diving deep into all of the interesting, strange, occult, and secretive societal relationships that all of these famous influential men from our shared past have. So if you're interested, please go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. It will be pinned in the description as well as the comments. And if you're on Spotify, this doesn't really apply to you, but these episodes will be dropping as well.

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