Locked In with Ian Bick - I Worked Undercover as a State Trooper & ATF Agent | Jennifer Eskew

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Jennifer Eskew shares her journey from starting her career as a Virginia State Trooper to going deep undercover on major drug and gun cases before joining the ATF. She breaks down what undercover work was really like, including investigations involving outlaw bikers and murder-for-hire plots, and how those years on the street shaped her as an agent. Jennifer also opens up about transitioning into the ATF’s arson and explosives division, responding to some of the most significant crime scenes in U.S. history — including the Olympic bombing and 9/11 at the Pentagon. The conversation explores the long-term trauma that comes with the job, the personal toll of high-risk investigations, and her cancer diagnosis linked to 9/11 exposure, offering a powerful look at the hidden cost of a life spent in law enforcement. _____________________________________________ #Undercover #TrueCrime #LawEnforcement #ATFAgent #PoliceStories #CrimeDocumentary #RealStories #youtubepodcast _____________________________________________ Thank you to PRIZEPICKS for sponsoring this episode: Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/IANBICK and use code IANBICK and get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! _____________________________________________ Connect with Jennifer Eskew: https://www.jenniferclarkeeskew.com/ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Shop Locked In Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 From State Trooper to ATF Agent: Jennifer Eskew’s Career 01:23 Background, Motivation, and Writing Her New Book 02:56 Early Work in Healthcare and Rehabilitation 04:52 Choosing Law Enforcement and Family Support 09:09 Becoming a Female State Trooper 15:09 First Days on the Job and Learning the Reality 18:58 Rookie Mistakes, Hard Lessons, and Earning Respect 22:58 The Danger of Patrol Work and Daily Risk 35:35 Moving Undercover: Entering a Double Life 41:47 Undercover Operations: Drug and Gun Cases 54:00 Risks, Tactics, and Living Undercover 01:07:40 Undercover Stories That Still Stand Out 01:20:15 From State Police to Federal Agent 01:33:55 Joining the ATF and Federal Training 01:37:06 Biker Stings and High-Stakes Federal Cases 01:49:20 Inside a Murder-for-Hire Investigation 01:55:15 ATF Operations Beyond Undercover Work 02:03:51 National Response Team: Arson, Fires, and Bombings 02:14:17 Responding to 9/11 at the Pentagon 02:27:00 Aftermath of 9/11: Trauma, Debris, and Health Impact 02:36:31 Life After Law Enforcement, Reflection, and Legacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and live your life normally separate it from the job? You know, go home, have dinner, brush your teeth, just doing things that we don't think twice about. He's like, look, got an informant, got some folks, they're tied to outlaw motorcycle club. Was it more suspicious or less suspicious because you were a female?

About that time you get another phone call and pages and stuff and they're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going. So out the door we went and that's what we were there for was to respond, we went, we went to the Centennial Park and we got there, I mean, chaos is still ongoing. Can you tell us the murder for hire story? I'm not inside if I'd tell you this or not,

but I guess it will, it's been long enough, it's been 25 years, right? In this episode, you're going to hear what it's really like living undercover for years, chasing violent criminals and responding to some of the darkest moments in American history. Jennifer Askew started her career as a Virginia state trooper before going undercover on major drug and gun cases, bringing down bikers and murder for higher plots as an ATF agent. She also worked in the arson and explosive division, responding to the Olympic bombing and 9-11 at the Pentagon. Jennifer opens up about the trauma that comes with the job.

the long-term health impact, a 9-11 exposure, and the personal cost of dedicating a life to law enforcement. Jennifer, welcome to Lockton. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Jeff Pike for making the introduction, even though we just found out you're already following me. So he doesn't get all the credit. But I was telling you the crowd loved Jeff Pike. They want them to come back. All the comments were like that, so they get you for the part two, which is super cool. And yeah, thanks so much for coming out here today.

and I want you to also tell the audience about the book that you just released as well. It might be the first book we get Letitia to read too. Okay, there you go. Ian, thank you very much. My book is called Becoming Fire, Chasing the Passion to Protect Serve and Love. It's a true crime memoir. It's based on my first five years in law enforcement. I did 32 years total in law enforcement,

but that's based around the time when I got into the Virginia State Police Academy. There weren't a lot of females with the Virginia State Police Academy. state police at the time. Like really not a lot back then. And at that point, I just wanted to begin that. It goes into maybe being a rookie trooper, making some mistakes, learning from them. I tell people all the time, I try to learn everything all at once from mistakes. And it goes into making some high-stakes decisions, things that you had to make in a split second. Then I became Virginia State Police is a very first full-time female undercover, and I did that for a year. And so it's through that process, those five years.

That's awesome. Did you grow up in Virginia? Yes, I did. From Southern Virginia, a little town called Cambridge, and that's where I lived my whole life. I mean, so I went off to college to Old Dominion after that, and that was, you know, that was great. I loved being in the Norfolk, Virginia Beach area. I got a job right out of college. I came to Connecticut.

I lived in Southbury, and I worked in Waterbury. I was working at a, at the time, it was a nursing home, and it became a rehabilitation center as well. And so I was working there, and it was a great job with my degree out of college, and I was able to work with people and have fun and help them do activities because they needed to stay busy. You don't want to just sit and watch TV all day. can do that. That's a horrible way to be. And so I had them doing activities. I was telling you earlier,

I had the rehab unit. Well, my rehab unit ended up being a lot of young men who had gotten hurt seriously during things that they probably shouldn't have been doing, trying to outrun the law in bad car crashes. They ended up as paraplegics or quadriplegics, breaking into buildings, falling, and again, spinal cord injuries. A couple of, the people had been in shootings or one had been knifed. All of these people had different kind of spinal cord injuries. So they had very little mobility. And what they did have, they were learning to do from that level.

So I started doing things with them. At first they were all really sort of, we're not going to get to do anything. This is going to be terrible. We're just stuck in here with a bunch of old people. And, you know, I want to do something. something else and it's like well give me a chance let me try you know that's 22 at the dive and I was like come on let's go do some things and what we're going to get to do I said what do you want to do and they're like I want to go to a comedy club you know all right I want to go mud wrestling

I think I can make that happen I'm not sure where these mud wrestling things are but yeah we'll figure it out and they're like well what if I want to drink a beer you're over 21 right or over 18 whatever it was at the time, and they were like, yeah. And so that's what we did. I got them out to things. We did a Twisted Sister concert. It might have been with Def Leopard. I know it was good. It was loud. We took them to Hartford. The facility had a van. I got a couple of the CNAs to volunteer their time to go with us so that we would have some medical people with us. And we took them there. And let's see, we went to comedy clubs a couple of times. Everybody always told me the nurse was always like one beer one beer they can only have one beer and I said two beers

I understand two beers like it's one beer I said I know too and so we did all sort of activities and they liked it they liked it a lot because they weren't being just in a nursing home their part of it was rehab and they wanted to be able to do things like everybody else get out and go we went to a club dancing I have no idea what the name of it was or where it was but we went and just something for them to do. It was fun. And you thought this would be your career forever? I thought when I was going through college that that topic and those subjects that I was studying were easy and I could make really good grades and still have a good time while I was at college. And that's kind of where I was at. And I liked helping people. I like being around and doing all the activities type thing.

You know, I took people camping. I took the people from the nursing home on a camping trip. It really did. And we went fishing and all of those things. You're like, you're going to have old people falling out of boats. And I was like, no, I won't. I'll put a life jacket on them. They'll be all right. They had a blast.

They totally had a blast. There was a facility that was based in Connecticut that we could go to. So we did. I just wanted people to be active to do things because I wanted to be active. I wanted to be doing. And just inside of me, I kept thinking I wanted to go in law enforcement. It was there.

It had popped up when I was about 18. I had never seen a female in law enforcement. I'd never seen a female in uniform anywhere. I'd never met one. I didn't know how many could get hired or wear. I thought it was all TV. And I wasn't sure I'd ever have a chance at something like that. After doing that year at the rehab center, I knew.

I knew that that's something I wanted to do. In fact, halfway through it, I went home to visit my parents. I was hanging out with my dad. I grew up hunting and fishing out in rural country's life. So my dad and I were out hunting, and I thought, this is the person I go to for everything. So I asked my dad.

I said, I'm thinking about putting in for law enforcement. I'm thinking about applying to the city of Richmond and the city of Norfolk police departments. And he's really quiet. He doesn't say anything. I was just sort of walking along and it's like the longest two minutes ever and it was two minutes of just nothing

and he goes you need to do the state police that was his answer I was like what? I said they don't hire women yes they do I said I've never seen a female state trooper of you he's like

no but that doesn't mean you can't be one he goes if you're going to do this go to the state police You need to go to the state police headquarters down in Richmond. You need to get the paperwork. You need to find out what the qualifications are. You need to be asking questions. If you're going to do this, then do it serious.

That was it. I was like, all right. And I went to Richmond. I picked up all of the paperwork. I asked a couple of questions. I was still kind of timid about do I ask, do I not ask, you know, well, they're going to answer me. and it was just like, all right, here we are.

I'm on a roll. I got applications for Norfolk, applications for Richmond, and I sort of rolled the dice there. I never got around to taking the test for Norfolk. Richmond, I never actually sent the application in. My dad had said, go be a state trooper, and I was like, okay, go be a state trooper. So I waited. We got the call from the state police to come and do the testing.

We did the testing. It was a written test. There was some kind of psychological on that written test. I don't know what. It was built into the questions, I guess. And then it was a physical that day. And it was easy. I thought it was easy.

I thought the whole thing was easy. I was like, this is so cool. I was loving every minute of it. I mean, the fun thing was we got to go outside to the car and sit in a state police car and the driver's side. And then you were supposed to open the door and get out and then run front in front of the car like to grab somebody. So it was like really how fast you could do that.

I guess it was to make sure you were coordinated. I have no idea what the purpose of it was. But I was like sitting in the driver's seat. I was like, yeah, this is where I belong. This is what I want to do. I'm here. And the next thing you know, I'm going through the background investigation. I'm getting the calls.

They're talking to me. They're like, hey, you need to report to headquarters. you know, dressed up kind of a nice thing. It's right after Christmas. And I get there, and there's five guys there. They're close to me in age. They're in business suits. I'm in a nice little business outfit.

And we're doing the thing, and they're going, y'all have to go to the department doctor and get over there and get your medicals done. So off we all went. The six of us, we're sitting over there. Nobody knows each other. You're all quiet. Go in, we do the whole thing.

I get on scales, and on these doctor scales, I'm overweight according to the state police standards. And he's just like a couple of pounds. And I'm thinking, this isn't anything because I was solid as a rock. I mean, I was tiny back then. Like, no way. And I remember I get back over and the old lieutenant, he is not too pleased. I don't think with dealing with young people, new hires anyway. But then he's got me, the female.

And he gets the five guys. He tells him what they're going to do. He's telling all of us. And he tells me, he goes, you, you're too fat. I said, stay in there. I look like a deer in headlights, I'm sure, at that moment. And he said, you need to go over and see Nurse Lynn. She's over at the State Police Academy.

And take your paperwork over there. And sort of still, I think I was frozen in the hallway when he was telling me this. And he goes, well, get going. And he'd given me this basic directions of how to get there. I don't know where I'm at on the state police camp on their campus, on the grounds there. I know the headquarters building. This is someplace further back. I drive over and I get to this building and I go down.

It's on the west wing, far into the hallway. At the very end, there's this little office, probably about the size of your studio. And this lady is so nice to me. Nurse Lynn is what her name. That's what everybody called her. And she's like, come on in. I don't like that. She says, you can put on the paper thing if you want to.

It's just the two of us. We'll lock the door. And, you know, I'm just going to put you on my scales here. She said, you're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. And I'm like, okay, because I'm scared of death. I mean, how do you lose weight in a two-minute ride? I get there, strip down stuff.

All of a sudden, I'm not overweight. These scales, I'm a different weight. She goes, I want to do the caliper test on you, too. And she does that. And she says, you're solid muscle. You can gain 25 pounds. You're fine. She goes, you got to go back over and see him.

So when I get back over to see the old lieutenant, it's just me. The guys are all gone. So he's going to meet with me. And he's explaining to me all these rules. And he's not really explaining. He's just telling me. He's making it very direct. And he tells me, your hair's too long.

Well, females back then had to have short hair. About the length of yours in. So he was like, your hair's too long. And my hair was long. I hadn't cut it for them. It was about this length it is now. So I was like, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir. And then he gives me a date, reporting date, January 16th, 1986.

And I was like, wow, I think I'm hired. I'm not fully sure, but it feels like I'm hired. It feels this moment. And it was really good. I was like, I don't think I made that lieutenant's day, but, you know, him. I was going out of the door and I heard him say, I don't have time for, I don't have time for these people today. Then he was just mumbling to himself. I was like, whew, I got the job. You said this place was steps from the water.

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UN. Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. I got the job. So were they not, it wasn't that they were not against women joining. It's just that no women were joining because it seems like the process was pretty straightforward for you. Yeah. Well, 1972 Title IX passed. Everybody's always talking about Title IX. Title IX passed. and that gave women the opportunity to go in to law enforcement as actual enforcement. Now, there were plenty of cities. You know, Los Angeles have been hired female since like 1948.

And if you go back through history, there's actually been women working in law enforcement in the United States for at least 150 years, if not longer. It just depended on where you were and who got hired and how it was. But for the main part, they weren't being hired. That took place in 1972. That just took it right off the table. It's like, yeah, you have to offer them the same opportunity. They have to meet the qualifications and the requirements,

all the standards that you have, but you have to offer that. And so in 1976, Virginia finally fell into the program of what had been passed through the federal Title IX and realized they had to hire females. Well, they hired their very first females. She went through a class of about 72, 71 men and her. I don't know if she was the only applicant, but she was the only one that was accepted. She was on the agency for a few years. They started hiring a few.

First off, it's not a career that a lot of women apply for. It's not for, not every woman wants to go in law enforcement or to do that kind of work. But for the ones who do want to do it, you know, they shouldn't be kept out of it just because they're female. Females have been proving over and over and over, they can do the job. You know, they've been doing the job, they can do the job. And when I got there, there were 20-some females in the state of Virginia's police department, or in the state police. There were 1,200 men. I didn't really worry about all those things.

I just knew what I wanted to do. I had this spark that was inside of me. I wanted to chase after that. I wanted to get that spark going, and that's what I felt burning inside that I wanted to do. and that's why I named the book Becoming Fire. That's how it gets the title, because I really felt that need to go out and do it. And there's always going to be somebody that wants to put your flames out.

You can bet on that. You've run into people, you know, they're going to throw water on your ideas and on your thoughts, on your plans. You can do it to yourself. You can cut back on what you're doing with, no, maybe I can't do that. Maybe I'm not good enough. having that self-esteem that drive you have to overcome those things you've got to get that self-confidence

going and say yeah i can do this this is what i want to do whatever whatever it is you know you've got the podcast going right how do your mom feel about you becoming a state trooper my mom was one of those people that she would support you on whatever you wanted to do and she was with you 100% on it. That's just how she was. And she would do everything she could. In fact, my mom was a beautician. My daddy worked for the railroad,

and then we lived on a tobacco farm. And everybody was always working. You're always busy doing something. Plus, we had gardens and all the other things, and we had pets outside, and we had chickens and stuff. So my mom was one of those people. She just took on projects,

and she just did them. So she was energetic like that. She was never a TV watching person. She was more into doing something all the time. She was sewing. She was crocheting. She was working five days a week. She was doing stuff for the church.

She was doing stuff with my Girl Scout troops. She was doing stuff for my sister and myself. She was always doing something for somebody. She was taking people who needed cancer treatment. Well, we lived in a rural community. The only place you could get cancer treatment was in Richmond at the time. So she spent the late 60s, the 70s, the 80s, even the 90s, driving people down for their cancer treatment.

She would take time off work just so she could do that for them. That's just who she was. So as far as supporting me, if her girl wanted to do that, then go do it, go be the best. And she was 100%. So she gave me my first really good haircut. And then I got to the State Police Academy, and they said my hair had to be shorter.

And they'd already took it off up here, you know, on my shoulders. And I was like, okay. I got home and my mom cut my hair shorter and stuff. And I was like, wow, I don't believe this, you know. And sure enough, every time I turn around, you need a haircut, you need a haircut. But they had written standards and I kept getting my mom to cut my hair. She always did.

What were those first few weeks on the job like after the academy? Was it what you expected? Oh, no. Let's see. After the academy, let's see, day one, I was assigned to, my field training officer. I ended up, eight of us from my academy class ended up in the same office. We were in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, which they called Division

5 Area 32. We ended up there. Just by chance, I ended up assigned to a female field training officer, and the seven guys got assigned to seven men. I mean, probably not coincidence. There was a thought back in the day I had no idea of this, I didn't know, I had to learn this, that if you put female trainees in with male troopers,

that somehow I know that there would be a homewrecker in that situation and it was going to be the cause of divorce and complaints and issues and it's like, where do you get this from? But there was a thinking in that line back. the day that that was that that's what would happen it's happened once it'll happen again and again and again and it was like i really didn't show up for that i i've i you know everything but my field feigning officer was excellent she was great she'd been on a job five years so you know she came on was even fewer females in the job and uh she was great at it so day one um i screwed up

that's in the book i screwed up royally let's just say that my gun uncleared its holster that day. Not a good thing. Not good. What do you mean by it cleared like it went off? Oh no. I drew my weapon on somebody that day. Yeah. That's a bad thing. When you clear leather, that's just so not good. It had everybody in a little bit of a nervous panic and stuff. Now, I was able to articulate why I did what I did. Everybody took a nice deep breath. Everybody listened to what I had to say and they were like, all right. But then, you know, now I've definitely If there was a target on me before, now there's really one going, watch this one. You know, it's everything.

And so I had that going on. First few weeks, it's everything. So I get through my very first, the field training office time, which is four weeks. You're writing tickets. You're working a lot of traffic accidents. You're learning where the courthouses are. You're learning just the procedures, where the magistrate offices are. just a lot of little stuff, you know, getting the paperwork in correctly.

Because you've learned the paperwork in the academy, but now you're getting it submitted on time and getting it there. Got all of those steps down, and I got my very first day. I'm on my own. It's just me. And my state police, call them blue and grays because of the color scheme that the state police have on the marked cars. And I had the big blue bubble up on top back in the day.

We didn't have all the flashed. blue lights like now. And I pull over in my first person riding my ticket. There's actually people, because we're in this big traffic, it's like four lanes of traffic. And this guy drives past me in this brown Porsche, and he's on the shoulder. And he's just driving past everybody. I'm in the traffic. Everybody else is in the traffic, and you can see people are mad.

You know, this is how road rage starts. Like, there's this guy on the shoulder driving by. So I pull over on the shoulder, get up behind him and stop him. I remember writing the ticket to him, but what I really remember is seeing two or three people that were going by, clapping and waving at me and giving me the thumbs up because I guess they had seen him, and they were like, you know, really? We're all in this traffic jam. Why aren't you?

And I don't know. That felt kind of good. Doing all the stuff was supposed to be doing. go catch what they call the meal break, which was supper that night, because it was like a, it was a Friday night. And I get a call on the radio later that evening before we're off shift. And one of the troopers, he is at a really bad accident scene and he's going to need help. When we get down there, it's a double fatality. Now, I've never experienced anything like that.

I've never seen anything. In the academy, we had like 1970s, V. or beta tapes, you know, made that they'd created and were showing to us here in the 80s, you know, and but we hadn't really seen. I went to an autopsy. An autopsy is different. To see someone who has just freshly been killed in an accident was, there's a lot going on. And things need to be done.

You can't just stand there frozen. You've got to help. There's work to be done. And at this scene, there's two. One has been ejected out of the car and is laying in the interstate And the other is in the car and the car is completely crushed And this trooper is working the scene But he's going to need our help with things

And I remember being out there with the tape measures and stuff And getting next to the body And I'm trying not to step in blood Because you don't want to mess up the scene And, you know, he's tape measure things and he's talking to me, but I'm smelling alcohol. And before I can even ask him the question, he said, this is an alcohol-related accident. He said, you're smelling the alcohol, aren't you?

And I said, yeah. I said, but how? Because I'm assuming, you know, people breathe it out, and this person's obviously not. And he said, it's coming off the blood. And that I didn't know. It just didn't occur to me that that was the science of it at that moment, but that was what was happening. And so as we're there, he said, I need you to do something for me. He said, I'm going to send you, and he named off the other trooper.

He goes, I'm going to send the two of you to do the death notification on the mail, the front seat passenger, the mail that's been killed. And I was like, okay. And he had an address, had a place for us to go. And he said, this Virginia Beach Police Department will send their chaplain to meet y'all at the house. and because I need you to give the notification. Like, okay, I can do that. I never done that.

So we drove out to the house, and of course you go to the door. And so many opens the door of their house and there's two troopers standing on the front porch and their loved one is not standing there. They know. They know it's bad. their brain is telling them it's bad. And they're looking, they're always looking to see, you know, where their loved one's at.

This lady was so pleasant, and she invited us in. And I could see in her face that she knew the news was bad. And she had two teenagers in the house, young teenagers, a boy and a girl. And we gave her the news. And, of course, the daughter took a picture of her dad and ran upstairs with it. And the son was just sitting on the porch, or sitting on those carpeted steps, and he was sitting there crying. And the chaplain was there with us and all, and we're talking.

And trying to give her just the basic information. And that's when she asked me, she goes, was there anyone else that was hurt or killed in the accident? And I wasn't allowed to provide that information at that time. And I told her as much. And she leans in really close to me. She's got a hold to both my hands. And she's holding my hands, and she leans up to me. And she's looking at me straight in the eye.

I mean, she's right there. And she goes, was there someone else I need to know? And she's asking. And I figured it out right down. I said, this woman knows. She knows that her husband was killed in this car accident, and that there's a female that's been killed, and that she's got to deal with this.

and that this female person, you know, obviously there's something that's been going on, and she knows he's been fooling around, and she's got two teenagers. But she also knows this is going to be on the news the next day. This is going to be in newspapers about a fatality accident involving two. It's going to name a female who's 24 and a male who's 45, and it's going to be, you know, his sports car that's been wrecked. It's going to come out. How are you going to keep these kids from knowing it?

This is before social media, but it's still going to be out there. And so all of this has gone through my mind in the night, and as she says this to me, I told her yes. And I just said, you know, there was a female that was killed in the accident as well. And she said, well, then I will pray for her too. But I thought that was about as tough as you could get right then. I was like, wow, this lady has the same kind of great. that my mama has. You know, she's, a lot of people would have gone crazy at that moment. She didn't.

She held it together for her kids. And so that was my first experience, a month out of the academy, of giving somebody the worst news they're ever going to get. And then I have to compound that with details that just make that whole situation ugly. And, you know, that was, that was the first months. And you go on from there because things like that happen. And you get, you work a lot of fatalities and the fatality accidents happen. You do a lot of notifications in the job. And it's, it's not pleasant. But it's the last decent thing you can do for the one that lost their life. This episode is brought to you by prize picks, whether you're starting a new routine or making player picks for the first time. trying something new can be hard, but in life and on prize picks, it always feels good to be right.

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Yeah. You got things to do. You got to do the paperwork. You got to get that stuff together. You got to take care of all this documentation. You know, the insurance companies are going to want the copy of the accident report. The accident reports have to be written up. There's going to be a medical examiner's report that's going to come out.

You know, you've got to get a hold of that. You've got to add that into your files. You've got to start taking care of it. The photos that are taken at the scenes are going to come back. You're going to have to get those included in. to the reports back then, you know, actual photographs versus now, everything digital. There's stuff that has to be done. And you might end up at a fatality the next day.

You can't put off what you've got to do on this day because tomorrow is something else. And every day is something new, something different. There's expectations. It's what you took the job for. You're supposed to take care of these things. And let's try not to let it get in your head. Going to the gym sometimes helps. I am not going to say that I didn't have a drink every once in a while after something like that,

especially as I got older. But you got to do your job. It's the job you took, and it's part of the job. It's part of the requirements. And I think it's what people expect. You know, you don't want me to be unprofessional on my end of things when I'm dealing with something like that for you or your family. And I don't think anybody wants that.

They want you to be as professional. as you possibly can. And you just find a way. Did you have second thoughts about the job at all in those first few months? Never, never. Even when I was screwing up, even when I was making mistakes,

I kept thinking, I can do this. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I'm going to get better. And I got lucky. One of the troopers, he'd been on the job about 10 years. He had survived a couple of different tours of Vietnam. He was a great guy.

He didn't let little simple complaints and little things like that were him. He could give a damn about those things. He always had one of the Zippo lighters and a Marlborough. This was the Marlborough man. And he's in the book in a chapter that I put for him. He's one of those guys that gave me permission to do what I had learned at the academy, to do my job. Because I was always nervous.

I was like on pins and needles, you know, walking on the other. eggshells kind of thing. I was always worried I was going to make another mistake. I was going to screw up again. You know, I'm sorry to kind of keep looking at me. I'm going to keep getting written up. I'm going to lose my job before I'm even here a whole year. I'm going to be, you know, like everything I did is going to be for nothing. And I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. And finally here's this guy and he has this really cool way of telling you things. and he worked with me one evening, just two of us, and he's like, you know what to do, you know how to do it.

He said, you're not afraid. He said, you're not afraid at all. And he said, go do your job. Quit worrying about all those things. Quit worrying about what other people think. Go do your job. Be safe. Take care of yourself.

Go do it. Like he gave me permission. It was like somebody finally gave me permission to just do and it clicked, it worked for me, and I appreciate him. I thought years later when I was working under cover, I thought, yeah, thank goodness for the Marlboro man, Lynch, goodness for him, I said, because some of the stuff he told me just in that one evening, just in that one evening, it stuck, and I applied it across the board to everything, and it mixed in really well with everything that filled training officers

they told me because they had done their best, but they only get like a few weeks with you, and they have a million things that they have to teach you. And as someone else told me, you can't learn everything in the academy, and you can't learn everything from a field training officer. Every day is a new learning experience. Every day something else is going to come up, and you just have to learn. You just have to take it in and then reapply it. But every day is a learning experience.

And I think my whole career pretty much was that way. You were always learning something new. Was being a state trooper back then just as dangerous as we see on the news now? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. When I was telling you about starting in the book, I got hired January 16th, 1986. So I had been up there with them doing your fat thing. That was in the late December right after Christmas. January 3rd, Trooper Ricky McCoy was shot and killed while doing the job.

They executed him. They didn't just shoot him. When he was crawling back to his car, they got out and shot him to make sure he didn't get back to his car. That came from a traffic stop. The reason for the traffic stop, as I recall, was that truck drivers were on the CB radio, and they were reporting that some people were driving with their bright headlights on. And it was blinding people. I mean, it was just really rough.

And so he had this complaint. He'd been hearing this complaint from several different people on that. And he had no way of knowing that they had already just committed a homicide. That, you know, when he was pulling them over, what was about to happen, no knowledge of these two. when he got up to talk to him, I mean, he's going to talk to him about their bright lights. I mean, you know, get the driver's license and registration talk to him this night. He didn't get a chance to do those things.

After that shooting, they then broke into a house not too far off the interstate. They killed the family. They took the woman hostage. They stole the car from that house. They ended up in a shootout later on with the police. They killed her And then they I think they both committed suicide

Rather than Because they were just in the shootout with police But I think that's the way I recall it ending But yeah That was January 3rd I had a lot of family that were Whispering and looking around And talking to my parents of like

Is this what she really wants to do Is she sure? I mean because it's dangerous It is dangerous And you just don't know. You don't know what's going on with the person you're about to encounter in a traffic stop or even at a traffic accident. I went to a traffic accident one time thinking it was an accident because that's the way it was called in. So that's the way that you thought. I get there. It's a road rage incident. This man had been waiting for his wife who had left him.

They had had a lot of domestic things going on. So she had gotten with her Her father was going back and forth with her to work so she felt safe. He waited on the route on the interstate until they came by. And then he started ramming their car and ramming them off into the ditch and just kept ramming the car. I mean, he was trying to kill her. And, you know, I get called to an accident. You know, it's like, no, it's not an accident.

This man, there was no doubt. Look on his face, a look in his eyes. the rage was so much still there. I mean, if he could have gotten away, he would have gone after. Fortunately, in the time between the call getting called out and sent to me, a truck driver had stopped and got out, and he was able to hold on to the guy. And if he had a firearm, there's no telling what would have gone on in that evening. Just throw that.

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Visit Subaru.com slash hybrid to learn more. Maximum range based on EPA estimated combined fuel economy and a full tank of fuel. Actual mileage and range may vary. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them.

But Redfin isn't just built for Enlisting. browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. That particular afternoon. How did you shift into undercover work? Undercover. A couple three times when I was in uniform, they had these little short, little things they needed done and they would send me home to change clothes the first time my sergeant sent me home

he goes, go home and put your college clothes on. I was like, because he still saw me as a college kid, you know, and you know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm talking about there? You know, and he would call me Jenny Lynn, which was not my name. That was your undercover name? No, that's just what he called me.

It was like my first sergeant, Jenny Lynn, and I'm thinking, everybody else is trooper or their last name, which mine was Clark. And he would call me Jenny Lynn. and I'd be like, it's not my name, but okay. So, you know, I don't, no disrespect. Like, hey, you know, call me whatever you want to, as long as I'm not in trouble. So I got to go out and do a couple little short and undercover things.

And they were good because it's kind of good for your ego. Like, okay, you know, I'm not a total screw up. Apparently I can do undercover. And let's see. Different people have been trying to get me some undercover assignments. or something. And life goes on. I'd gone through a really terrible breakup. For me, it was really terrible. I was just doing my job, doing my thing. And one day I get called by the headquarters to come by, my division five. And my sergeant there, he wants to see me for a minute. I was like,

oh, sure, so I'll pop by. He doesn't even see what's going on. Because I know he's not the kind of sergeant that you're ever in trouble with. If it's trouble, it's back at your office, not the division sergeant. And so I'm thinking, yeah, this is good. I haven't done anything wrong here lately, I guess. And come sliding in. He said, this is not a promotion we're offering you. He goes, but would you be interested in working as an undercover trooper for a two-step increase in pay?

That's like $80 more a month. Oh, yeah. Because it would be a full-time undercover, and you'd be an undercover. trooper and he goes and that's the position and he goes it's normally a one-year assignment and then it depends on how you do after that uh is whether you stay in that or come back to uniform he goes but it's not a promotion i understand that i was like yes like yes like sign me up down like when do i leave now like and uh i was asking him where i was going to go he goes i don't know who am i going to be working for i don't know they just wanted to find that if you'd be interested and then yes i have

nothing to lose. Like, yes, let's go do it. And about a month later, we had a meeting. Everything was set up. They sent me to DMV with paperwork. And I had to take the driving test and do under my new name because the people of DMV don't know what I'm undercover. They just know that I'm somebody trying to get a driver's license and get my car registered. And they gave me a car, which was about an 83 Chevy Camaro Z28, stick shift, so that was nice and it was fun. And it had been seized during a drug thing and it was pretty ragged out. But I gave that to me and I was working that for them. And this was 89.

So I caught my new name, which was Lee Baylor. So everybody called me Lee. And I switched names, switch date of birth, switch social security numbers, had a new address. they moved myself and another undercover female she was from a city department she had been in their academy they asked her when she got out of the academy about doing that so instead of putting her on the street they had let her dispatch for a while so that she could just be fresh something like yeah i got jump street 21 they just like okay come on you know you can do this or uh clarissa you know in the um uh shoot the movie there without anthony hopkins you know that yeah you're in the academy you

can do this. So they brought her out and they put the two of us together in a housing project in this particular city. We didn't know people. I was like, yep, y'all was supposed to go out and meet people. And as my one supervisor for that particular work was saying, just get out there and meet the drug dealing people. Just introduce yourself and get them on tape recorder talking about drugs and money. It's like, I don't think this is how this is done. But just go. Just go. meet the drug dealing people. All righty. I don't know about that, boss.

That was his plan. There were a couple others that when they were asked about it, they said, as long as the girls play it safe, they'll be okay. That sounds wonderful, I guess, when you say it out loud. I'm not sure, but it was like, I don't think that you all understand what we're getting ready to go do. All right, here we are. They gave me a top side agent, Charlie.

He was a special agent with the state police, and he was who I reported to. He made sure I had money. He made sure that wherever I was at, he was someplace close by. Made sure that I had body wire all the time so that it worked and that the batteries were fresh. Back then, they recorded onto cassettes because he hadn't have cassettes and had to have all the recording stuff set up for that. We had to have a plan, like who we were going to try to target that day to go out and buy from. Different gangs, street gangs were working, so we were trying to work the different street gangs. The idea was not to just go buy $20 worth of rock or crack or to buy $20 or $50 or $100 worth of cocaine.

The idea was to get to know who you're buying from so you can identify them, get whatever name they're using. if you learn who they really are, that's good, where they're dealing at, who they're dealing for, what street gang they're running with, find out if you can, like, when their resupply comes in, or who they're getting their supply off of would be great, as much entail as you could gather. Look for guns, see if anybody's carrying a gun, know if they're carrying a gun. You know, just kind of keep going that way. So that's sort of what we did. My partner, she started working with an informant with the city.

We were in Stanton, Virginia, and she started working with an informant there. I started working with informants from the state police in Augusta County, and Waynesboro had different informants, so I would get introduced to them, and they would introduce me to people. We started buying drugs that way. So mostly we were buying cocaine, crack, and heroin at the time. I know my partner was able to get like street morphine things of that nature. But pretty much any day, every day, every night, every weekend, we were buying dope.

So I might buy three times a day. I might buy seven times a day. A lot of times people wanted to ride with me in my car. They started talking to me about guns. You know, if I would start buying tech nine millimeters for them, I'd turn that down, but not really. What it was is they wanted to see if I would buy for him. And the guy wanted me to go pretty much right then. And I told him I'd never bought a gun.

I didn't know anything about that. I'd have to think about it. But he wanted to set me up in business. And so we called that gang the Beeper Boys. They were out of New Jersey and they had moved down into Virginia and took over the city. They'd actually been in Richmond. He had because he was a prime suspect and a homicide in Richmond. And right after that, he moved to Stan.

and set up shop. And he had like 11 people in his group that he worked with. And then he had some locals that he kind of brought in to be more lower end of the street dealing. His name was Thomas Tony. So Thomas was approaching me about it. And he was thinking that if I would start buying tech knives for him, he would supply the cash. Then I could ride with him back to New Jersey. And at that point, we would trade that in for.

the Coke. Out of the Coke, he would give me an ounce of crack for me to sell. And that would be from my cut for buying the guns. And I would then be in business for him. And he would teach me how to make my profit off of that. So it was in

his proposal. Because he had two different talks with me about this. And we were reaching out to ATF at the time. Like, hey, look, because I was all four, it's like, okay, let's go do it? And I found out that it was like, do you know what the hell would require logistics-wise to follow? you from here to there to do this, and you're going to go into a known supply house up in Jersey,

and you're to Virginia State Police. So everybody else is like, I don't, they're not, that doesn't work that way. You can't do this. Plus, we can't just let him take firearms and walk with him, which we're like, what? Like, you know, ATF doesn't walk firearms. I'm like, that makes sense, you know. But we did bring the ATF in and talk to him about it and stuff, and they're going, no, this is, you got great intel.

and we do have some of these people's names. We do know that they've been using what we call straw buyers to buy the firearms. I had never heard of that stuff at the time. And I was like, oh, all right. And it's like, yeah, they're not buying them for themselves. They know that they're buying that gun to take back to someone else and that somebody else is actually paying the cash for it. And they're just faking, they're falsifying the paperwork by doing that.

I'm like, oh, that's a straw buyer. I get it. I ain't make sense. And they said, but we can't let them have the firearms, because if the firearms get away from us, then, you know, they're going to end up on the street, they're going to hurt somebody, going to kill somebody. I was like, that all makes sense.

I get it. But that was kind of how all that work went. And we bought from the other gangs. I saw guns all the time. People seem like everybody had a gun. Everybody wanted you to know they had a gun. Or they wanted to keep the gun kind of hidden so you only saw part of the gun.

You know, but that was the early, the first six months of doing the undercover. Was it more suspicious or less suspicious because you were a female? Like how many female gun runners could there have been back then? I have no idea, but I don't think that they ever even thought about me being in law enforcement back then. But never questioned it, never asked. They got to where they were trusting me with everything, taking me here, taking me there, riding with me, going places.

So I was gathering intel left and right, you know, because whenever you're around me, for the most part, you were on body wire on a recording, but not necessarily, because sometimes when I'd stop at McDonald's just to grab something to eat, because it's just lunchtime. And all of a sudden, I'd run into folks, and they'd like, hey, so-and-so wants to talk to you. He's on the other side of the parking lot. Well, I can't go get a bodywire right then, and I don't have, wouldn't have cell phones, so everything was done from a pay phone. I don't have a chance to call my top-side agent and say, hey, Charlie, I just got cornered down here at the McDonald's, so I'm going to have to talk. to so-and-so and see what they want. So it was easier for me to just go on over, talk to them,

see what was up, you know, not blow them off, but actually go talk to them, see what was going on. And then if they were asking me to, like, you know, go commit a crime right then, find a way out of that. Don't, you know, the last thing I want to do is drive them over to an armed robbery or a drive-by. So you just talk to him for a little bit, act like you're not really sure, let me get back to you on it, and then do what you got to do. And then get back to them later, but make sure you're wired up at that time so that you can get more of the conversation on recording. And we just worked it that way. I don't know.

I explained it any different. Was it riskier to have a wire back then because technology wasn't as advanced? Like, it's very bulky like you would see in the movies and whatnot? Or was there still ways to hide it well? The way I hit it was here. I put it underneath my arm underneath the bra strap. it got really really super hot the Keltec would get really hot

and it would burn you and so that sucked and what you had to do was put it inside a I put it inside one of those little shorty mini socks and put it in there and then put it underneath the bra strap and then put some tape across athletic tape to keep it there in place and then they come with a microphone but also with an antenna So I would run the antenna around and up around the bra and then like down back across the bra strap and down my back.

So it was like this weird antenna about maybe 16 inches long or something, 12 inches. And then the microphone, well, like you got this microphone in front of me, it literally just ran underneath my bra and was like right there in my cleavage. So people were talking to me, they're talking to my chest. I got used to that. It was like you're just, you're talking to my chest, you know? And that was where the microphone normally was, and that worked out perfectly fine. And I kept a Colt Mustang Light 380 under this side, and that was there. So I figured if a person wanted to pat me down and search me,

they were going to find the body wire at the same time that they found the gun. Normally that's going to cause somebody a momentary hesitation. If that causes them a momentary hesitation, that's to my mind. my benefit because that gives me a chance to clear some distance from them. And I realize I can get my gun out maybe faster than they can. Now, if they got a bunch of people watching everything is going on, it may be stupid to try to draw down on people who are already holding guns pointed at you. But that was somewhat of the planning.

But I kept it there. And the entire time that I worked undercover for the state police during that time, Only one person tried to search me. And she wasn't searching me because she didn't find the body wire and she didn't find a gun. She was actually sexually feeling me up. And by the time my brain is processing that she's, because I didn't realize she was going to search me until she grabs a hold to me and she's going to search me is what she's saying. But she's actually just groping my boobs and my crotch.

And I'm trying to back up and I'm on a couch trying to get up, move away, get away from her. And I don't know if I'm embarrassed or in shock or what's happening, you know, everything. And she's just giggling, laughing, and just being really weird. And I'm like, okay, you didn't find a gun and you didn't find the body wire. So I guess we're still doing this undercover deal. At the same time, I'm like, I don't really like having somebody grope me. This wasn't fun. This was, I've just been sexually assaulted.

Who was this woman? She dealt prescription drugs. and she also prostituted out, and she prostituted her teenage daughter out and her son. And it was all in the name of prescription pills. So I was there to get delaudits. And the first time I had gone to her place, I didn't encounter anything like that. This was my second trip there to get the delaudits that day. And, you know, all of a sudden she's like, oh, I need to fill you up.

Make sure you don't wear a wire. And by that time, she's already grabbed a hole to me. And it is an awkward moment for sure. And you're like, oh, righty, wasn't really expecting that. But we made the deal. I'm getting back outside. I'm just talking to the guys going, what was that? What was that all about?

Are you kidding me? I was like, I'm not going back in there. But y'all got to do something. Because by the end of that particular deal, there was no doubt in my mind that she was definitely prostituting the kids out, particularly the 16-year-old daughter. That was just gross. It was very gross. I had gotten invited to join her and her daughter.

It's what people do. It bothers you that people would do something like that with their children, with anybody. Because she had all kind of people coming there to buy pills off of her. And she traveled to different doctors. They call it doctor shopping or hitting up pill mills and pill shops. And that's what she was doing. She was making money off of the prescription drugs that she was selling, but also making money off of her daughter. And it's sick.

I don't, if you ever wanted to choke somebody, she would have been it, you know. Now, if your cover were to get blown, what's a response time for help or are you completely alone? Because technology was lacking. You were mentioning no cell phone and things of that nature. Seconds to minutes, if they even know where you really are. Because when I was with Charlie, Charlie would try to stay close, but a lot of times he was two blocks, four blocks, six blocks out, depending on where we were.

And he also had Detective Klein, Scott Klein, when we were work in Waynesboro and that region with him. So I had two people, so just the one, because it used to be just Charlie, just me. And then it was Charlie and Scott and me. And they would try, you know, to be there in time. And we had, you know, trying to pay attention to everything that went on the radio. So, you know, they couldn't be sitting there listening to an AM FM.

They had to be listening to me. Then they had to be paying attention to what they could hear. And if gunshots are fired when they come across on a body wire, they have a peeing noise. It sounds like ping, ping, and it's really high-pitched. So it doesn't sound like a gunshot like you hear on TV. The recording is different. So they've got to be paying attention to that. And what's being said and understanding what's being said.

And it depends on what kind of building you're in as to what the reception and things are like. Because you guys have been in places with your cell phone and you realize you suddenly all your bars dropped. And you're thinking, wait a minute, I got 5G. How do I have like one little bar and LT showing up here? And it's that sort of thing with body wires too. So with them, you know, I just assumed they'd be there. And I always felt like Charlie knew exactly where I was, and he could get there pretty quick. You don't really want to think about it like, you know, how long it's going to take them, you know.

But it wasn't going to be a tack team. There wasn't going to be people jumping out of a van. It wasn't going to be a bunch of SWAT units. That's much later. You know, you got to be able to protect yourself up until that point. when I started working Portsmouth, Virginia, after that first six months, when I went into Portsmouth doing things, the guys that were in the van were all 40-plus-year-old white males, and I was in an all-black neighborhood. So they couldn't just park on the street. And, I mean, first off, the van would get shot up.

So they couldn't park there. They were normally six blocks out, and I am positive. did not know exactly which unit I was in when I would go into one of the housing places because there's these really old rundown housing projects at the time. They've all been wiped out now and destroyed. But back in the day, those places were rough. Not much lighting. The street lights have been shot out. People didn't have lights. The yards were pretty much just dirt. Stuff was thrown outside. They weren't. The city wasn't keeping it up nice, so they weren't making sure that they got, like, junk out of the yards.

You know, so I'd go in there, like, crack houses there. I knew. I knew my team wasn't close by, you know, and you just be sitting there going, okay, got my fingers crossed. The best thing that they did for me there was there were two black detectives that worked for the city of Portsmouth at the time, and they got them to work with us. That was not their assigned unit at the time, but they got them to work. with us so that those guys could go out and just kind of walk and patrol together, but not patrol. They were just dressed up like they lived there and just walking through. And they had an earpiece that was hooked into regular police radio, walkie-talkie-type radio,

and they would have that underneath their coat, and they would have that earpiece, and they were just listening to see if they heard anything go wrong. And they would try to stay within like a block or so of me and just be walking, doing, And that was helpful because at least you knew they were out there. And I had an agreement with the two of them. They told me if things went bad that I was to basically get small, get low, to get to the ground. And wherever I was at, just basically dropped to the ground. And they'd be there.

So I was like, okay, so if the shooting starts. Because the problem we had then, it wasn't just something going wrong during the deal. there was always somebody trying to take off somebody else's dope you know so they may try to carjack me while I'm just trying to go out to my car to leave after I'm doing the duck bill and so you have to keep that in mind

or maybe they just want my money so they're going to rob me of my money or my dope because I'm obviously you know white female showed up out here to buy dope she must have money right and I was like yeah I came here for $20 worth of rock you know she's either going to get $20 bill from me or you're going to get the rock I just bought

So you could get shot or stabbed during that process if somebody was too nervous and, you know, then maybe push you to the ground and leave you alone. And then there's just the rivalries between some of the dope people. And you don't know who's going to try to rip off somebody else or, you know, who's going to hit that house that night because they got a vengeance kind of thing going on between gangs. And so you're like, try not to get caught up in somebody's crossfire. I just want to go in here by the dope and leave. You know, kind of like you'd like to run in and buy a Diet Coke.

I just need to run in here and get this. I'll be right back. And that's kind of the way I looked at it. Pool day is called for cookouts and lots of laundry. This Memorial Day at Lowe's. Save $80 on a charbroil performance series four burner gas grill. Now just $199. Plus, get up to 45% off select major appliances to keep dishes, clothes, and food fresh.

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What's one undercover story that really sticks out to you the most during that stint with the state troopers undercover department? Oh, shoot. Buying drugs from the Minonites. down at the farmhouse. I got asked by the drug diversion unit, and they were the ones who dealt with the prescription drugs and things like that. They had had a complaint about the Mennonites were selling drugs, and they wanted me to pretend that I was going to go over and pick up medicine for my daddy, from my father.

So I stopped by, and I'm visiting with Agent Lamb. and his boss was there, Mr. Kemmler. And so I stopped by C. Lamb and Kemmler, and they're going, yeah, we have a lady that does the house cleaning here at our offices. And she bought this supplemental stuff from the Mennonites, and she was giving it to her husband as they were told her to give it. And unfortunately, he got super, super sick from it. but then she threw it away.

She threw it in the fireplace and burn it up, and so we don't have any of it. But it's called black pearls. And she said it comes in a plastic bottle, like an advertised, like a substance, like a herb or mineral, and that that's what the Mennonites tell her to call it, and that it's herbs and minerals supplement.

And so we want you to go down and buy it for us, and we're going to take it to the lab and find out what it is. Okay. So you're her dog. We're going to make a phone call. So they make a phone call, and she tells them that her daughter is home right now, and she's going to come by and pick it up for them. Like, not a problem.

I said, well, how is this going to go? And they said, because you just can't drive out across all those Mennonite farms. I said, they're going to see y'all. Two guys sitting in a car on the farm, that's not going to go. They're going to see you. And then they said, yep, we're going to stay bottom. mile back. Does the bodywire work a mile away? I said, I'm not afraid. It's a minute nights. It's down on the farm. I said, maybe they'll have a horse or something I can see,

you know. Because I like farm. I grew up on a farm. So I drive down and sure enough, this is dirt roads. I see the Minnanite kids out there on their little bicycles, you know, at their schoolhouse and go all the way down the farmhouse. I pull up and they've got a black buggy there and they got a big barn. I don't see any animals. I was hoping they had a horse. And there's the old farmhouse and it's looking great. Everything is in good shape. And I'm still telling myself, I can't believe I'm buying from Mennonites. It must not be anything. This is nothing. And I go up to the house and not sure enough, you know, for every gangbanger I have dealt with. I am now talking to a lady who is wearing this nice handmade long blue dress and she's got her hair

and a crocheted bun in the back. A little thing, Ed, she's wearing glasses and the whole bit, invites me into her home. She's got a little AM radio playing, a religious program, guys talking and preaching, and I'm in this little kitchen. It smells like buttermilk.

This is just not the drug world I've been in. I am in these ragged out jeans. They've got more holes than they've got gene material. I'm wearing like this neon spandexam. underneath them. I got a t-shirt. I'm sure it said something about going to hell, you know, on the front of it, maybe highway to hell or something. And I get there and she sells me this bottle, and it's a supplement bottle. It looks right like it came off the shelf at a pharmacy someplace or at, you know, GNC sports. And so I get the bottle, I take it back, and it's

sealed. You know, it's like, I'm thinking, I don't think we bought anything. He said, Would you drive it down to the lab force and get tested tonight? We'll know what it is in the morning. They call me back the next day and they said, well, it's diazepam, which is Valium. And they said, and they're recommending it at 60 milligrams a day. They said, the strongest you can buy or get that from a doctor is 10 milligram. He said, 60 milligrams explains why people are having such a bad reaction to it because this stuff will knock you down.

And I said, yeah, 60 milligrams of Valium would put. probably slow you down a little bit. And so they're like, okay. So then I went back and bought again. And that time, I get there and her kids are home from school. They're not in school. And I walk in the door. And of all the things that you think are going to happen to you,

you know, you're going to get shot, you're going to get beat up in a fight, you're going to get robbed. You might get sexually assaulted or raped. I mean, you don't know what might happen to you in one of these incidents. I go in this incident, and I'm now exposed to you. the measles. These two kids are home from school because they have the measles. I was like, huh, I didn't really think this out. I would have thought. She couldn't have warned me that, hey, the kids have got the measles. You may not want to come by the house. But I stopped by like I was

supposed to and got this stuff. When she opened up the pantry, if there wasn't one bottle, there had to been 500 on the shelves in this pantry. And I was like, wow, they're really in the business of this. turns out that there was a clandestine lab that was set up in a barn in Ohio and they were producing this stuff and selling it all over the place and this was a money-making business for the Mennonites at that time and the way law enforcement looked at it at least in Virginia and I say law enforcement. The way prosecutors looked at it in Virginia was

let's go down and have a little knock and talk and tell them they can't be selling that stuff anymore and that it's illegal and that they need to quit and stop doing that. And that was the end of it. They just stopped. So they don't get arrested or anything? No, they didn't get arrested. I didn't agree, but I didn't have any say because I thought drug dealing is drug dealing.

I didn't believe in the thing of they used to say that originally that, of course, it got so out of control that they quit saying this. when we had doctors that were dealing and pharmacist and people like that and they were selling script drugs and doing and trading sexual favors for prescription drugs, they said that they were misguided professionals. No, they're a damn drug dealer. Don't lie to me, that's a drug dealer. Well, the same thing. You know, the Mennonites had this place set up.

They're producing this stuff. They're making it on a large scale, large enough for the DEA, to raid that barn in Ohio back in, like 1990, all of those things that took place, they're dealing drugs. They produced diazepam. It's no different than producing Molly, you know. I mean, you're producing something. You're putting it out there.

You're selling it. You're profiting off of it. People are getting sick from it. Somebody could die from it. They're a drug dealer. But, you know, the system treats people differently and they shouldn't. It should have been all the way across the board. Because when I saw the doctors that were doing that stuff early on,

and I heard that whole excuse about the misguided professionals, they're not. They're just greedy. I said, they're getting something that they want for the pills, for the medicines, for whatever it is they're selling. And, you know, a lot of them are getting money. Some of them are getting sex. Some of them are just into some weird stuff.

I mean, you know, and so we saw a lot of that too. And eventually, they started, you started seeing the, them get prosecuted and getting prosecuted heavily. But that took a long time because you didn't see very much of it in like the late 80s or all through the 90s. It really took Purdue Pharma and the oxycotton to make that a make a difference. Why did you decide to leave the troopers? I'd have loved to have stayed. I loved that career. I love that organization. But I wanted to be a special agent. and I didn't know that early on. I knew I wanted to be in law enforcement, and I pursued it.

When I got to the academy, all of a sudden, we are coming up on autopsy day. An autopsy day, I am not looking forward to that because I really don't want to see, like, this dead body thing. It's like, not for me, really. And I'm like, please, please, please don't let me get sick. don't let me get grossed out. And turns out I wanted to stand right at the front of the table. I thought I had a stick. I'd have probably been poking and going, what's this?

What's this? You know, like, let me, wow, can I ask you about this? What about that? Can we turn them over? Can we look at this? I was just, the science of it just amazed me. The whole crime scene forensics, I was just so into that. I loved learning about that in the academy.

I, okay, locked in. I locked in. I was very much into it. I was thinking, this is cool. This is better than when I watched Quincy M.D. back in the 70s. This is fascinating stuff. And it was like a whole new door opened up. And I was like, how do you get to be a person to work crime scenes and do crime scene work?

And they were like, well, you have to become a special agent. But you're a trooper. You need to learn to be a trooper now. You can be a special agent later. but what do I got to do to get to be a special agent? You know, they're like, learn to be a good trooper. I know that. But what else?

And one of the things that they had said when people would actually answer my question was, well, if you work undercover, that might be a good way to get the door open, but you're going to have to pass a test, and you're going to have to pass a panel interview, and your evaluations are going to have to be really high, you know, because evaluations count. And I was like, okay, so it's not that hard then, right? And I would tell myself, all right, one of these days I'm going to get a good evaluation and I'm going to study and I'm going to do the best I can on the testing and I'm going to do all these things.

And if they ever offer me undercover, I'm going to take it because I'm going to do everything it takes to get to be a special agent, be a criminal investigator. And a good friend and someone I cared a whole lot about was telling me it's not going to happen with the state. I said, what do you mean? He goes, the state police, it's about 10 years to get to be a special agent. And that's not because you're female. It's just the way it works. It's going to take about 10 years. He said, but at the rate you're going on your evaluations, it may take longer. And I was like, oh, okay. And I was like, so how do I get to be a special agent? Why don't you look at the feds? I just don't want me. I don't.

I don't have a college degree in anything that the feds want. I'm not like that. Yes, you do. You have a college degree. I said, no. He goes, you're female. I said, they got females. They got all that stuff.

He goes, no, not like you. He goes, you have law enforcement experience. He said, that's rare. And he goes, you have something. He goes, you know this job and you want to do this job, put in for the feds. And he was like, they're never going to hire. me. I said, I'll never get through their background. I said, I'm not smart enough for their academy. So I put in for the feds. I put in for several different federal law enforcement agencies.

A lot of them were great on the first interviews. They love meeting me. They were really, really pleasant to me. They were very anxious to talk to me about getting on with them. And then I started hearing things about, well, we don't really have a budget. We don't have this. We don't have that. I was like, All right. I'll keep trying. And some of them didn't call back after a while. Some of them called back and said, look, we're hiring next year. Next year.

It was always next year. And meanwhile, I kept plugging with the state police going sooner or later, sooner or later, because I want to be a special agent with the state police. And while I was undercover with the state, like I told you, we had the ATF come out because of the guns and the gangs and things. and I was talking to the guy out by his car one night. And I said, he was asking me about something. And I said, do you have any ammo for a 380? And he goes, yeah, I think I got a box in the car.

Because I'd heard they gave away ammo if they had any. I was out there trying to get a free box of ammo. So I get this free box of ammo from a guy named Tom. He's a great guy, Tom wearing. And he's really pleasant. And we had had pizza that night talking about all the stuff that was going on with the gangs and the drugs. And he was so nice.

And he was, I said, I figured I'd shoot my shot, right? And I said, I put in for ATF because you did. And I said, yeah. And he goes, do you want to, you're still interested? And I said, yeah, yeah, I think I am, yeah. And he goes, well, let me get your number or how somebody can get in touch with you. I mean, I don't know how to get in touch with you. I guess I don't think anybody knew you existed.

And all of a sudden you're like here tonight. I said, yeah. So I gave him a name and the number of where I was going to be sleeping on a friend's couch. And I said, they can call me there. And sure enough, this guy calls me up. And I think it's just another agent that's going to shine me on. Because I'd talked to feds. I'd interviewed.

I'd done all these things. And I'm talking to this guy on the phone. And he goes, and he tells me, you know, I'm thinking, all right. What did you say your name was again? He goes, it's David, David Troy. I'm the special agent in charge of the Washington Field Division. I haven't been like the politest person on the phone, and I've not been, yes, sir, no, sir.

I've been sort of sounding like a druggie. I'm thinking, oh, no, this is like the man who can make the decision. This is the guy who could hire me. So I apologize right away. I apologize for not being really polite and not being attentive enough to get his name. He's like, oh, no worry about it, no problem. He said, I understand you've been to quite a bit

with the undercover stuff and all and with the shooting and everything the other night. And I was like, yeah, it's been a lot, but I should have been better than that. I am better than that. And he goes, well, I enjoy talking to you. He said, I'm going to get back with you tomorrow. He said, I want to look over your package.

I want to look over your stuff. He goes, I haven't had a chance yet, but I'll call you. And I said, okay. So I went out, hanging out with a friend and just trying to blow off some steam from the undercover stuff. And I get back home. really late. My friend's like, where have you been? Why haven't she answered your pageer? And I said,

batteries died. I just didn't put him back in. I got a couple of days to myself. She goes, that guy called back. He wants to talk to you. He's going to call in the morning. You're going to get up and you're going to be ready for him. You're going to talk to him on the phone. You can be polite this time. And I went, okay. Sure enough, he called the next morning. And he said, what would you think of a GS-7 with ATF as a special agent starting in Bristol, Virginia? I was like, sounds all right to me, sir. And poof, I was hired. I was hired. I mean, we had to go through background and drug testing, and that call was in like February, and I started with them in June, but they made the final, I guess, official offer in May.

It was like, you either take it or don't. And I said, yeah, I'll take it. June will be fine. So that was it. Was it hard to adjust from going from undercover to just being a regular agent, or did they throw you right into undercover in the ETF? No, it was a weird adjustment. I kept thinking that whole first year, I want to go back. I want to go back to State Police because they wouldn't let me do anything.

You had to go to the academies. You couldn't do anything until you went to their schools. And I was like, I want to do something. And I don't get to do anything. I have to be like second string here. This isn't any fun. And I got to do a little bit. And the guy's really nice to me.

The office was really good to me. And it was just like, nope, you can't work any undercover. you just took away all my adrenaline. I mean, you took away my fix. I, that kept me going, and I don't, I need something to keep me busy. I'm kind of ADHD or something, you know, I've got to have something to do. Sitting in a desk is not working for me. And every once in a while I get to do something.

And so it was fun, the little stuff we went out on. But I always felt like I was kind of holding the, holding the horses instead of actually being out there in a gunfight kind of thing. And they're like, all right, you got to get through these schools. So the schools were broken up back in the day, and they were short. They were broken up. And I get to the first school, and it's like eight and a half weeks long. It's the federal law enforcement training center in Georgia, went there, and it was for the criminal investigative school.

So, or training program, CITP. So I go to that. And back at the time, it's like eight and a half weeks. And I get there, and I realize. that this is more like college. You can do what you wanted. You've got to go to class during the day. You have to go to classes.

But when you're not in class and you're off, you can go do what you want to. So I went to the bar. We drank. That's what we did. You know, because, you know, and plus they were teaching me basics, and I already knew the basics.

And I kept thinking it was going to be more advanced. And there was nothing advanced. It was the basics because that's what they teach. because not everybody coming in there has been to the basics of, you know, everything from how to document a crime scene, which I had worked a couple of hundred accidents a year. I kind of understood how to draw and do a document. How to take pictures. I took pictures at car accidents, you know, so I knew how to do that.

You know, I understood the laws. So, you know, those classes, laws of arrest, I understood that. All of these things was like, I have eight and a half weeks of, you know, I understood. Come on, let's get on with the real stuff. Let's do the real thing. So that first eight to half weeks was like, all right, okay, we got that out of the way. Still can't work undercover. He can't do anything until you finish the second school.

That's the ATF National Academy. That's where you'll learn what ATF does. You'll understand the laws that they enforce, and all of your practical exercises and your training there will be based around those things. And you will learn how we do undercover and how we are working. things and it was a much more intensive school, much better. And I enjoyed the heck out of it. I mean, because at least when I was in that school,

I really felt like I was learning things, you know, really learning things. And I saw a couple of things that I liked there, kind of like when I went to the State Police Academy. I saw some stuff that I liked at the ATF Academy. I was like, this looks like a pretty good way to do a future. I could do these things. But we did the undercover there. What was funny is my first time of doing a practical exercise in an undercover scenario where we're doing. And it was me and a partner. We're doing the undercover.

And they have role players who actually do a great job working there doing the role playing. I do the thing. The guy calls me out. He says, you know, let me go, I get where you're going and how you're trying to do this. He said, but the role players are stuck.

They can't go in that direction. He said, that's not part of what they do. he goes, you know what you're doing. He said, you've done undercover before in your real world, right? I said, yeah. And he goes, they can't go down that path with you on what you're trying to do. He said, so what are you going to do in this situation? I said, well, I've already seen the sawed off shotgun.

I don't need to buy it. And he goes, but the goal of this is to try and buy it. And I said, yeah, but they didn't want to sell it to me. He goes, because you're not asking the question they need to get in order to sell it to you. And I said, oh, okay. And he said, you see, you're trying to take him down a different path. And he said, what are you going to do? I said, we're going to take it.

We're going to kick the door here. We're into a search form. We're going to get the gun one way or the other. And he goes, yeah, okay. So I don't do great in this. You know, I don't, I mean, I'm not the fantastic undercover. You know, I just went with it in my way, and it wasn't the way that was set up with the role playing. I understood.

And so the coolest thing about it, though, I graduate the ATF Academy. I get out, and it's two weeks later, and we get a call. And one of the local guys that we work with, Ross, he's like, look, got an informant. Got some folks. They're tied to Outlaw Motorcycle Club, and they're looking for weed. They're looking for numerous pounds. And so we can come up with 12 pounds right now that they're wanting to buy. So you want to do the undercover with me?

Hell yeah. Let's do this. It was like somebody turned me back on. I was like, yes. So we set this thing up at the Cherokee Motel. We're in room number four. Now, there are eight rooms at the Cherokee Motel. Eight.

All of them have a big old number on the door. You can't miss that four right there. Room number four. We're in, you know, we got a cover team outside. First time of my life, I've got armed tactical unit outside in a van. Everything is set up. I got a biker that's going to show up. He shows up.

And I am sitting in a chair much like the one you've got me in in this motel room, except it's not fancy because this is the Cherokee Motel. And so this is a chair that people have been sitting in for 30 years. It's looking pretty rough. And there's a bed. and it's a little bathroom and we have got 12 pounds of

weed that they're wanting to buy from us and they're bringing us cash and so this guy comes to do the deal his name was Mike Calandros and so Mike comes to the door my partner is Ross and as soon as a guy kind of comes in the room

kind of talks us for a second and he goes, hey I need y'all to pull your shirts up and make sure you're not wearing a wire and he kind of goes to pull his shirt up a little bit. When my partner Ross is standing there and he pulls his shirt up, you know, so you can see his belly and stuff like that, I look at this guy and I said, I ain't pulling my shirt up for no damn body. And he kind of looks me like, like whatever. And then he looks at Ross and he goes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ask you that, whatever and all. And I said, and I said,

did you bring a gun? And he kind of looks at me. He goes, well, yeah. You got to in things like this. I was like, you brought a gun to this? I cannot believe that. I'm having a conversation with him. He's kind of looking, he's answering my questions. He's telling us stuff. But he's exactly what we were told that he was going to come armed. He's brought a gun. I've now got that on the body wire and on the recording. Everybody in the van, all the tactical guys know, this guy has come armed, and Jen just called him out on it, and he's admitted that he's carrying a gun. So Ross, he just kind of eases over by the bed and he pulls out his 9mm and he said man I don't blame me he said I carry one too this guy pulls out just 38 that he's carrying and stuff and he's showing it to him you know

and stuff he tucks the gun back in Ross tucks his gun back in his bed you know we're sitting there talking and I said you boys and your toys I can't believe this he said I can't believe you brought a good y'all you boys y'all yeah those toys scare me and so the problem I've got in sitting in this chair is that the body wire that the ATF gave me. It's this same thing, the Kiltek. It's wired in the same way. But the guys wanted to do a reel-to-reel. It's called a Nagra.

It was made over in Europe someplace. Used to be the big deal back in the day. Stereo dual recording. They want me to put this on. That thing was bigger than the book that I wrote. It's thick. It's big. It's huge.

It's a reel-to-reel tapes. It's got the recording devices are up on my shoulders in this shirt that I'm wearing. And I have got body wrap on to hold this thing in place. I can't pull my shirt up. I'm going to look like I'm wearing

some kind of girdle fixture thing like I've been in surgery someplace. I mean, it's going to look awful. You know, obviously we're not going to do a deal with me looking like that. So that was my only response was that, well, you know, it was, all of these things, we're doing the deal, it's fine.

He signals his person to come. I forgot how he did it. It was something because we didn't have cell phones. It may have used the motel room phone or whatever to just hit her on a pager. But to bring the money and stuff. So we're sitting there. Everybody's just shooting the shit. And the other person comes.

She drives up in a jaguar, pulls up. She comes in. this is his wife. He's just married her like three days before, Donna. And so Donna comes in. Donna was known in the biker world, and a lot of people knew her as the Black Widow, because two of her previous husbands had gotten killed. They were outlaw motorcycle club members, and they'd gotten into some really bad drug deals, and they both ended up dead. So a lot of people calling her the Black Widow back in the day. So then she is with the brand-new husband. And, you know, she's bringing their money.

She's brought it all. So we've got the money. They're paying for the dope. Everything is happening. Well, we give the signal. It was up to Ross. He gave the signal. And for the team to get the door, you know, come in.

They go, and the four of us are in this room, and all of a sudden you hear this loud commotion. I mean, you hear this door coming off the hinges. Everything, and it's, please get down, get down, get down. We're just like standing there looking at each other, like, they're in room number three. They kicked the wrong door. It's like, everybody's there, you know.

And it's like, what the hell? And about that time, two of the guys kicked the door, came into our room because our door was, it was like, in. But it was just the seconds that went by, and it was just so loud. And everybody's looking at each other like they've crossed one another. And it's like, okay, okay. we all get arrested, we all get taken down, you know, we're accusing them across

us, they're accusing us acrossing them, you know, whatever, but at the same time, it's just like, that's that long pause, very long pause. And it's like, okay, this, this could have went really, really bad, but it worked out. And nobody gets hurt, everything works out. They, she was armed as well. She came, she brought a gun. Everybody came to an armed drug deal. So back then, it's Title 18, 924.

C, which is, you know, the dug in, we always call it the gun and dope. And that's what makes the violation. So you end up with a mandatory five. And that's where they were. For a buy like that, how are you altering your appearance? Are you putting on tattoos at all or changing your hair or nothing? I didn't even wear a T-shirt like you'd imagine at night, like a, like a biker t-shirt or anything like that. I wasn't trying to be a biker.

I have a picture of me someplace and I am in this like white and black kind of floral-looking shirt, that jeans. But you don't look like a cop? Because you know how some undercovers look like a cop? Oh, no. Or some feds. No, no, no. None of that.

I didn't need to be some badass that I wasn't. You know, I'm a 20-some-year-old girl with this long-haired bearded dude. He doesn't have a tattoo on him. You know, as far as I know, Ross don't have any tattoos. I think he ever did. You know, he's got a little heavyset, got a little bit of a gut on him, you know? And he did a good old country boy when he talked to him. He sounds just like old Jeff Pike.

So anyhow, Ross got big beard, you know, and got kind of longish hair down on his shoulders. He's just a good old country boy just talking to you, and he comes up with the weed, and he's got all of what they're looking for. And while we were there, we're negotiating, making, you know, weekly training. How much can you move a week?

We can do 10 pounds a week easy. We're like, that's good, let him and Ross talk to business. I've already done exactly what I needed to do. don't let anybody realize you're wired up from one end of the other. And at the same time, you just identified guns so that everybody outside knows that there's guns in this room that don't belong to the law enforcement end. And that's what we were there for.

In fact, years later, I would use what Mike Kalandros asked me to do about, pull your shirt up so I can see you're not wearing a wire. I was doing deals with some crack dealers out of North Carolina for ATF. And they had sent me to go meet some of some of the United. at a gas station, but like out in the far end of the parking lot. And so I go out there. And a little skinny black guy about 30 years old. He came up out of North Carolina to bring me a cookie or crack.

You know, it's a good size amount of crack. And so I'm sitting down in his car on the passenger side, and I said, please shirt up. Let me make sure you ain't wearing a wire. And he does. He pulls it straight up. He pulls it over his head. And it's like, what are you doing?

Me, I take the opportunity to check his console out and to check his glove box out. And he goes, what are you doing? I said, I just want to see where you got your piece. And he goes, oh, I don't carry a gun no more. I almost got out at the car because I'm ATF. I'm here about guns and dope. I just dope deals. That's what do you mean you don't carry a gun?

He goes, no, that'll get you a lot of fed time. He said, so I don't carry a gun anymore. I said, yep. I said, well, you never can't be. too careful. I said, I just want to make sure you weren't wearing a wire on me. He goes, oh, I wouldn't do you like that. He never asked me, I'm the one wearing the body wire, and I'm the one carrying the gun. He really wasn't carried a gun. He was just up there to do a just regular crack deal. And it was like, okay. But every once why you've got to do something that

you learn on the job. Can you tell us the murder-for-hire story? Murder for hire. Let's see. That was like 1993. I had a really good informant, Gary. And Gary was like the kind of informant. He had been in law enforcement. He had done three tours in Vietnam. We had all kind of awards and stuff and everything. Of course, he also had the effects of the agent Orange.

He had a lot of other stuff on him. And he was raising three teenage daughters. I think a couple of them had already moved on, but one was still at the house. I like Gary. Gary's a little different, but Gary's good. And Gary had done law enforcement for a long time, and he'd gotten out of law enforcement. And he would just run across people and be just doing, and he'd bingle with everybody, everybody.

And he didn't really care if we paid him or not. But his information was great, you know. And if he gave him 50 bucks, he'd be like, okay, I'll put that on gas. He just didn't worry about it. So Gary gives me a call. It's on a weekend on a Saturday. pages me, but he puts, like, the 911 or whatever, in the back end of it, like 99 or something, and all. And so I know it's important. Like, this is real. He's not messing with me, because you know

it's better than to do that. So I'm at the horse barn where I kept my horse, a friend of mine's house, and he had a phone there, so I go over and I call back, and I get Gary, Gary's on to pay phone. And he starts talking to me and he's like, hey, I'm here with Ralph and everything. He's looking for a job to be done for him. He's got somebody he wants to take

care of. And I said, what are you talking about? He's, well, he's looking to do a hit. I said, whoa, ho, ho. I said, not on the phone, man. You know, because I didn't realize exactly what he said. I'm going to, this needs to be recorded. I got to get a boss involved in this. And at the same

time, I got to find out who this guy is. win, I mean, because we can't have somebody getting killed out here. We got to get this immediately. So he's talking to him, and I said, well, Gary, tell him, I'll talk to him, but no business on the phone. None. But put this guy on the phone, and let me just get his voice, and he can get mine. And I said, and then we'll just do. I said, you know what you got to do on your end, right?

He's, yeah. I said, okay. So I talked to this guy for just a few seconds on the phone, so I could hear his. voice and so I'd know it later. And then I made sure, again, that he didn't talk business. After that, I got in touch with my supervisor. Well, there's only three of us in my office at the time, and one of the guys was the acting supervisor, Wayne and stuff.

So I'm reaching out to Wayne, and I'm going, yeah, Gary's got this guy that wants a hit done, and Gary has told him that he knows a female that will do it. Yeah, he goes, I know this gal will do it. you know she's done some stuff some friends of ours up near Chicago before you know it's either her or a brother and you don't want to mess with her so you'd probably be better off to mess with her

and he's like he's interested and he goes well what's the other details I said I don't know I said we didn't do any of that on the phone I want to get it recorded so we're working at this we identify who he is his name was Ralph Calvert

and Ralph had in the middle of 80s, there had been a plane that crashed in the North Carolina mountains that was full of cocaine. Forget how many keys. But they ended up recovering 38 kilos off of it. And the FBI had had the sheriff's department in that county put that lock it up in a jail cell.

They didn't have any other place to put it at the time. So, like, put it there. And I think they had someone that they eventually caught that was flying the jet, flying a plane. And with that, Ralph paid attention to all the proceedings that were going on at the courthouse about what to do with the cocaine. And he was aware that they were trying to get ready to move it out of there. They were going to take it out and it was going to be taken someplace else by the FBI and, I guess, burned or used for evidence or something. Anyway, Ralph came up with a scheme back at that time that if he could get a hold to a corrupt jailer or a corrupt FBI person,

they could help him steal it cocaine from the sheriff's office. So in his plan, and he put some money into it, he actually paid people and got involved with a couple of folks, he came up with a scheme to steal the 38 kilos. And then the night that they went to the jail to actually take the 38 kilos is the night that Ralph got himself. arrested because he had completed the plan. Everything was done. He paid money. Everything was going on. I think he'd spent like $20,000 trying to make this thing happen. And he got arrested. He went to federal prison. So Ralph does his time in federal prison. He eventually is going to get out early for something. I don't know exactly why. He gets out of prison. He's been out about five months.

So, of course, he's typical. He's supposed to be on supervised release and he's supposed to be reporting and doing. And Ralph is, because Ralph's not a drug user. He was looking at that as a money-making scheme. So Ralph has got that going on in his life, and Ralph is looking for a way to make money again. Ralph's newest scheme that he came up with while he was in prison is he had a teacher from way back in the day when he was in school, and she was older, and she now had Alzheimer's. He wanted to marry her because she had a lot of property that was very valuable in North Carolina that was worth over a million dollars. And he figured if she had Alzheimer's, then he could marry her, and then she could somehow another move on or be moved on quickly. And he would have all that land in her home and everything else.

And once again, he'd be worth a million dollars or more because he would, you know, another good scheme, another good plan to make money. So when Ralph got out, he started going by and visiting her. What he found out was she was married, something he had never bothered to check into. And that her husband was doing a fine job of looking after her, and he didn't need anybody else's help. And he didn't, you know, she didn't need anybody else's help. So he needed a guy named Virgil Adams gone.

Virgil Adams needed to die. And this was Ralph's plan. So the best thing he could do was hire somebody to help. him get rid of Virgil so that he could then marry Miss Adams and suddenly be a millionaire. That's where I come in. He had reached out to Gary thinking that Gary would do it for him. Gary explained to him, I got my teenagers. I got to look after my gals. I can't really get into something like that because that could go wrong for me. But I know someone. He goes, it's a gal. you know and everything he goes now I can talk to her I can talk to her brother which one would you want

now the brother would have been my brother Ross so he said I want to talk to her he said nobody will ever think that a woman did something he said they won't even suspect that that'll work out great so he was all for it and that was what was going to be so we had a couple of recorded phone calls he was calling from pay phones. That's interstate when you start using the pay phones. And, of course, he was traveling back from North Carolina down to us in Virginia, which we were on the North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia border, where we worked there in the southern Appalachia.

So a lot of interstate commerce going back and forth in us between using the phones, traveling interstate for solicitation for murder for hire. and he wanted to meet me in person. I said, all right, I'll meet you. I said, we'll meet someplace public. And he said, well, can we go someplace to eat? Sure. I'll meet you at a restaurant.

I said, well, we're not going to talk business inside. So, like I said, my office was three of us at that particular time. The other two guys get to sit in the van outside, in the cold in February, and listen to us eat seafood. We went to a seafood restaurant Here I am with my I had I think my popcorn shrimp And my deviled crab Nush puppies

Do you know how loud dose crunch When you got on a microphone I'm having the best time With this thing I make sure we don't talk business on the inside Gary came along So there's the three of us And we end up

Now they portrayed it on TV As we met in a part of the A part of the restaurant that was empty What we did was we actually went out to his car, Ralph's car. And with Ralph's car, I get into the front passenger seat, and Gary stands with the door open. And Ralph is in. And he starts telling me exactly what he wants done,

how he wants it done. And he has a magazine that he's brought. And it's a Time magazine for Valentine's Day, and it's got like the heart and all this stuff on it. And he's telling me that the reason that he needs this done is because of love. This is all about love. I'm looking what?

No, because this woman, he loves her, and he's going to marry her, but he's got to get rid of her husband first. And he doesn't want to tell me about the lady having Alzheimer's, you know, that comes out later. And he's just in love with her,

and he wants to take care of her, and he's going to look after her place for. Well, I come up with a price. I told him it's going to take, it's 5,000. He agreed to it. He said he could do that. And he gives me the person.

All he would tell me is the last name was Adams. He wouldn't tell me anything else. And he's drawn me a hand-drawn map on how to get to the guy's house. Now, he must have gotten every color magic marker you could find because this thing has got colors all over. It's white thing. But he's got everything marked out for me on it.

It's the perfect map. And he tucks it into the magazine. I'll ask him, can I have the magazine? Because I saw that his name and address was on the back of this. This confirms this is really Ralph Calvert, whatever. I mean, he's getting a subscription to this time magazine thing. It's like, this is great, you know. And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I need some money up front. I mean, my time is valuable. So it gives me a couple of hundred. just for my night. You know, he's bought my, he's bought my seafood dinner, and now he's giving me $200 cash down on my $5,000 I'm going to need for this eventual, you know, on this murder for hire. But during this process,

that's when he starts bringing up the different ways. Now, I'm asking questions about this guy, and he's explaining, and he drives a van. He does this guy. I said, well, would he pick up a hitchhiker? Would he pick me up? I mean, does he stop at bars? Could I meet him in a bar?

I mean, is there some way I can just meet this guy? and casual. I mean, if I can meet him as a hitchhiker, then nobody would see me around. And I said, then I can take care of it. He thought that was a pretty good plan. He goes, oh, you might could go to the house. And that's when I find out, you know,

she's got Alzheimer's, so she's not going to remember seeing me. I said, well, I don't want to leave any trace evidence around. I said, this DNA stuff kind of scares me a little bit. You know, I have to be careful of that. And we go back and forth, but what he's asking is, he asked me at one point would I consider piano wire which

I was so far left field it stopped me I was like no I'm not strong enough for that I no that's a mess

I can't even know he goes okay well he goes what about poison poison maybe like a hypodermic or something poison and my excuses were I said well people throw up poison and I don't even know

where to get something. That's, that's risky. I don't know. Do you even know that that would work? I said, that's, no. I said, if you want to get me a piece or I can get one. I said, that's up to you. But if you want to get me something, I said, I'm thinking about just doing a robbery that goes wrong. You know, that way when the police look at it, you know, he's done picked up a hitchhiker or somebody. He's met somebody and, you know, they, they, it's a robbery that went bad and he got shot. And he goes, yep, I'll go with that plan. So he liked that. Then he wanted to supply the gun to me. And I said, all right. I said, well, it's up to you if you want to silence it or not. If you don't, if you don't, if you want to put a muffler on it, that's great. If you don't, I don't care.

You know, just got to let me know. He's like, well, I'll think about that. I'll think about that. I said, well, make it easy for me. I said, but if not, I'm okay with that too. And so he finally agreed he was going to bring me a firearm, that that's what he was going to do. And all of this is taking place in 1993 in February. The events that happened, like, the very next weekend, that kind of changed how things are in the world. First, you had the World Trade Center one bombing. So of the two guys, the other two guys in my office,

one of them was on the ATF National Response Team. So he had to leave and go to New York. And so that left just one guy in my office. so we had to get guys from the Roanoke ATF office to come and help out to be around assist. And at the same time, Waco takes place with the incident with ATF there. And so we have four dead agents in that, and we had 20 some that were injured. So all of the events are taking place. And so everybody's just really confused.

A lot of things are going on. it's a lot of, it's very overwhelming emotionally. And at the same time, I have this deal that's going on. I have a man who wants another person dead. That is serious. What if he changes his mind about getting the gun from me and he just does it himself? Or he finds somebody else that they'll do it cheaper, you know,

and if he finds somebody, they'll do it for $500 in a bar someplace, you know. We can't risk that. All of these things are happening. The next thing that we're finding out, because we're trying to keep enough detail information on Ralph as to who he is and what's been going on, is Ralph had a neighbor with a young teenage daughter, very young, and he would invite the teenage daughter over,

and what he was actually doing is, as she'd, that's the way to put this, sexually, assaulting her. But he was trading her small amounts of drugs, a little bit of money, things of that nature for these particular events. And he was just trying to keep them secret. And she was very young. I want to say 13, maybe 14. So the locals were already starting to investigate him for that. And everything was happening. And it was like, look, we have enough evidence now to take him to I mean, the moment that he handed me the map, gave me the guy's name into $200, that's it. We don't need anything more.

I don't need the gun. Your attorney's agreed. You don't need the gun. I mean, it would be nice to add that to it, but we don't need that. So that's what we did. We set it up. And on March 2nd, we did the take down. He wanted to come and meet me.

He was supposed to bring me a gun that day. We talked on the phone. He was coming down. I told him I'd meet him. He wanted to go eat again. I said, that would be great. We picked a vacant parking lot at a vacant restaurant. He didn't want to meet there.

I said, hey, that's where I'll meet you. I'm going to leave my car. I'm going to ride with you. Well, that made him happy. I don't know. Just want to ride with me. Or me ride with him. And so I go, and I have my surveillance team and my takedown team.

They're all there. And they're staged out in different places. And I've got the body wire on. I get out, I go up, I pretend I've just come from the horse barn. So I had an undercover corvette that was really ragged out, really old. It looked like a piece of trash. It was so messed up. And I've got it parked.

I see him park right in my little parking lot. I get out. I've got on coveralls where I've been at the barn and stuff. What I've got is I've got my ballistic vest on underneath it. You know, I'm clearly marked his ATF underneath. I've got the body wire, got all this. I go walking up, hop up into his little car. around. This guy has got every sharp instrument ever made. He has got like a sickle. He's got a

bowie knife. Nothing's in a sheet. They're just all out. He's got a spear. He's got an axe or a little hatchet is what it was. It was a Boy Scout hatchet looking thing. They're everywhere. The whole car is just full of this stuff. And we're in this little small car and he's sitting right, I'm on the passenger side. He's sitting right there. And there's stuff between me and him. I think a vest and sharp objects don't go together because they'll go right straight through a vest. You know, there's knives, there's things. It was just crazy.

There's an ice pick in the car. Who drives around with an ice pick? And so we're talking and everything. He doesn't have the gun yet, you know, but he does want to have lunch with me. But I still be interested. I said, yeah, we'll have lunch, want to have lunch. And so like that, he goes, I'll pay, I'll pay.

I said, don't worry about that. I said, let me go get my coveralls off. Now, I've never shut the door when I'm in this car with him on this day. I kept the door open. I've got my foot, one foot on the ground on the outside. Because if I need to get out, I need to get out now. And I don't need to be trying to fiddle with a door. None of those things.

And with the sharp stuff, I'm already thinking I need to slide over someplace because this is, he's sitting too close for this. And he's perfectly fine with me getting out and walking back down to my car. And I said, let me get rid of the coveralls. I said, then we can go. And so that's the cue. That is the sign for everybody. As I'm walking back and I'm opening up the door to my car,

I just going to squat down behind the car. And they come in on the van, they go up. They try to get him to open the door. He won't open the door to which they have a solution for that. It's called a baseball bat. They break out the window right behind him and the passenger side, reach in, snatch him, pull him out and stuff. This guy pisses his pants.

Like, I mean, he's just soaking wet, and he's wearing khakis. So it's like everybody can see, dude, you pissed your pants. And from there, Ralph Calvert is in custody. I'm getting calls from North Carolina from the Sheriff's Department because they're going, boy, we sure hope y'all can get him locked up because we've gotten a lot of information today from this girl up here, you know, and it's just terrible.

I said, well, that's good. I'm glad that that's working out for y'all. And he stayed in custody. We eventually went to trial. let's see it was several months later and we actually went to trial he wanted to go and uh i spent three hours on the witness stand and uh he was convicted on everything he got convicted on all of it he got like 10 years on the on the murder for higher solicitation and the interstate trafficking the whole bit so that worked out north carolina decided um that the that the young girl that she did not

want to testify so they were like hey he's going to be locked up a long time this is good. We're like, okay. Meanwhile, I'm just like, all right. It was far. Expedia and visit Scotland. Invite you to come experience the beauty that awaits in Scotland. The sweep of wild coastlines, quiet locks and untamed landscapes. Fresh cuisine that feels rooted in the land. Come experience the kind of stillness that stays with you long after you leave. Plan your Scottish Escape today at Expedia.com slash visit Scotland. This episode is brought to you by Palm Olive.

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So you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. They say everything happens for a reason, but I suspect everything happens for a Reese's. Like this commercial break, did you need 15 seconds away from music or 15 seconds to eat or Reese's? Perhaps it's true. Everything happens for a Rees. For hire, I guess I check that off my bucket list of undercover things to do, right? That's incredible.

A little different. Now, do you stay with doing undercover work with ATF for your whole career? Do you switch into a different area of ATF? With ATF, I didn't do anything, what I call long term, like I had done with the state police. I didn't go live someplace six months or a year or whatever. Instead, I just did what I call quick hits. I might have to go out and do two or three or four meets to get the whole thing done, but they were only for a few hours or a day or half a day or something.

And so I kept doing it through several years, but off and on as need be. The other thing is I stuck to doing it with my field office. If my field division had needed me, I was available, but mostly my field office in my area, not traveling across the country, not going all over the place. You know, that was an option. It was a possibility. But I was wanting to do something different. So I wanted to find something else to focus on.

and I mentioned when I was at the academy, I saw something. Arson and explosives were the two areas where ATF does a part of their mission. And I really, really enjoyed that kind of work when we were in the academy and learning about it. I found it was something new, something exciting, certainly a different kind of crime scene. Because once it's all burn up, I mean, where's your evidence? It's going to be hard to find. Once it's all blown up, once again, it's scattered, you know, how. in high water. It's everywhere. So I thought, I'm going to, I want to do that. I want to be a part of

this thing called the ATF National Response Team or the NRT. I want to be a member of that and they have what they call part-time members because they get called out to these major events all over the country. They even have an international response team. They get, they get occasionally called to go overseas to help out. And they'll go to any kind of major fire or major explosion to help out the state and locals and any other agency that might need assistance to investigate what took place, finding the origin and the cause of that incident. And if it was criminal, then working it from that angle, was it an arson or was it a bombing versus was this accidental?

And being able to make that determination, well, that just, that was just more science, more forensic crime scene. I was like, yes, I want to do that. So in 1994, I put in to be a part-time member of the National Response Team, and I got picked. And it was just like, yes. So you get all this new gear and you get this new training, and they take you to hazmat school and all those things. And in between, I'm working my regular cases. I'm doing some undercover on occasion.

I've got other criminal cases I'm investigating, things that I'm working on. Working up Aaron Wyth County with Sheriff G. Wayne Pike. It's a lot of times. places too and I'm having pretty good time I'm always staying busy and with the NRT you're getting called to some pretty awesome scenes and I just I really like doing that I don't know if you want to know about some of the scenes yeah tell us out about some more the well-known scenes well now the very first scene I get called to it's in the summer of 94 I've been on the team of whopping two months I haven't even

gotten on my gear yet. Everything is just kind of just coming together. I'm thrilled to death, and they want me to go to Wadawi, Waddawe, Alabama. I'm like, where in the hell is Wadawi, Alabama? And they said, well, we've had a high school get burned down down there, and it's, you know, it's a lot going on in Wadowie. Well, sure enough, there was a lot going on. The principal of the school had made some racist statements, very blatant, nasty racist statements. back in the spring in regards to one of the students and his thoughts on biracial and interracial and all those things and people going to the prom and to homecoming and stuff and he did not want couples like that going and when asked and he was just nasty nasty piece of shit so

he created a lot of tension there in the community and there was a lot of threats. Well, there were folks with the KKK that decided that they needed to be more present in that community. And there were people with the Black Panthers who thought they needed to be more present in this little rural community. And they all show up in a small, small town, small area,

and there are a lot of attention or tensions going on. With this tension going on, the Alabama state police believe that they need to send a couple of hundred troopers to the area to kind of keep things calm. Try to keep it, you know, look, we don't need this to explode. Everybody needs to back down, back off, and, you know, they're going to do something with that principal. They're going to get rid of him. He'd been there forever, like 30, 40 years. Everything's being looked into.

Well, certainly, one in the middle of the night, just before the school gets back in the session for that fall, it burns to the ground. And it's like, wow, okay, high school burnt down. Here's all the background. And we get down there and we start investigating and all. And sure enough, what we came up with was the cause of the fire was arson. It was an intentional. It was an incendiary device had been set. It was intentional.

And then it was a matter of investigating. And that's all the people and doing the investigations and all. But the tension when we got down to that little community was just unbelievable. It was crazy. But it was like being there for that week and getting that done and getting that investigation done and getting it so that the rest of the criminal investigation team could then move forward and figure out what happened. That was on them. Ours was to get there and work that crime scene.

And there's this giant school building and we have to figure out, you know, where the fire started and then how it happened. What was the cause? So that was our first big incident. the next time we got some training just before the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. And that was kind of an interesting training and we're getting about a good week. It was neat. I got to work with a lot of the chemists, a lot of our folks. Our bomb techs are best specialty people.

I always love working with our chemist. I love working with our people from our laboratories. ATF had three laboratories, the National Lab near D.C. and Amandale, Maryland is where it's actually at. They have an Atlanta lab, and they also have a lab out in Walnut Creek, which is outside of San Francisco. Laboratory people, you just learn so much. You just realize, wow, if I'd been smarter in school, I could have done, you know, I could have studied biology. I could have studied chemistry.

And so you meet these people who are specialists, and they're so awesome. Well, one of them, the primary. He's not even one of. He is the premier explosive specialist in the world, and he's an explosive chemist. He's a guy named Lloyd Irwin. I know. Just a good old country boy from Georgia,

and he knows more about explosives and the chemicals and the whole chemistry of that. Anybody. I mean, he's been recognized all over the world, and he worked for ATF for 50 years, just a brilliant man. You can still ask him questions. He still knows. sharp and doesn't forget a thing.

Well, 1996 Olympics, he was at the training we went to and everything. So we get down to the Olympics, we're going to be there like seven weeks. They got us in a motel. We've all got different jobs to do while we're there. Everything is going on. We had worked our shift. We'd done everything. I'd gotten off work, gotten something to eat.

Had a couple of drinks with some folks. Went back. I was getting some sleep and get a call. And they go, something's happened. Something's happened to the Olympics. I think we're going to go. And I was like, oh, so what did it? They said, well, turn a TV on.

I'm like, okay, turn a TV on. And they said, I'm trying to say it's something like a transformer. They said, oh, no, no, watch the video, watch the video. And it's like, oh, hell no, that's not a transformer. That's not a transform at all. That's on the ground. He go, yep. And about that time you get another phone call and pages and stuff, and they're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going.

And so out the door we went, and that's what we were there for, was to respond. We went, we went to the Centennial Park. We got there. I mean, the chaos is still ongoing. You have two dead.

One has been killed by a piece from the device. It was a nail that was driven through her brain. Her daughter survived, but she had been hit by nail fragments. And there was a gentleman, I believe he was from India, and he was with the news media from the India or something, and he had had a heart attack, I guess, trying to run across the entire park

to try to get over that way, and probably wasn't the healthiest fellow to be trying that. They had a crowd of 50,000, I think, that night in Centennial Park, and they had gotten that crowd out, tried to secure and lock down everything. We saw the FBI had their tactical teams, had been brought in, along with a lot of other agencies. I drove the ATF's National Response Team truck and found a place to park it. I actually saw an FBI guy I knew, Tim, and I asked him,

I said, if you could just make sure nobody that doesn't look like me gets inside that truck. He gets another problem. And we had an ATF gear on, and we started working that night. We saw our guys. It was an ATF guy, Steve Zellers, and an FBI agent had been together. and they had been right there at the device when it went off.

So they couldn't hear very well when we were talking to them. Their ears had been kind of blown out. And everything was just crazy. They'd taken a lot of people to the hospital with injuries. I think it was like 111 people were injured from that. And we started working the scene. And when the sun comes up, that's where we are. We're there.

We're on the scene. We're starting to do the whole crime scene processing it. finding stuff. And I find myself right next to Lloyd Irwin. And we are on the ground, crawling on our hands and knees, sifting through the grass really close to where the blast seat was, right where the explosive, where the package had gone off. And we're sifting through the grass and through this dirt,

and it's this little one foot by one foot sodding piece of squares that have been put in to build Centennial Park. and we're just sifting through, and I kept finding these little fragments, these little pieces of plastic-looking stuff, just little broken pieces. I don't know what this is. It doesn't mean anything to me at this stage in my career,

but I'm picking them up, and I have about four or five of them in my hand, and so I look to Lloyd, and I said, Lloyd, do you know what these are? Do you know what this would be? And he looks at him, and he puts them in his hand, and he goes, it's a big bin. It's a big bin West Clock.

I was like, what? And he goes, that's the cogs, that's the stuff out of the back of the clock when it blew up. Those are shattered. He said, they're really, really lightweight so they don't go very far. When it blew up, that comes out of the clock. And once again, it's like this light bulb. This guy is teaching me something. And I'm learning.

And I'm like, okay, I kind of understood the theory and the information about it. But he knows exactly what this is. He has seen this enough times in his career and worked enough things that he knows exactly what I'm looking at. So he knows that this is on a timing device. He knows these things. It's already coming together. We process that scene. We're going through it. We do it let's see. It was that night. All of Saturday, all of Sunday. And then we're doing part of Monday because the Olympics must go on.

The Centennial Park must be reopened. Everything must be put back and looking like nothing has happened. Like it's all good. And we've been on rooftops, recovering pieces from the bombs. We're getting everything. We're getting all the information. We're learning all of the details about all of us. And we're doing what we have to do. And then we go back to our normal function of what we're supposed to be doing there

while the rest of the criminal investigative teams are running with it. You know, they've got ATF agents and FBI agents and people that are assigned. They're going to handle these things. Everything else has been sent to the FBI lab where they wanted it to go. Our guys are telling us stuff that we need to know. We're back back to doing this.

Olympics. You know, I go see some Olympic events, get to see a few things, you know, we wait and see. And then I got called back to Atlanta several months later when they had the Sandy Springs Abortion Clinic bombings. Now, it was two bombings. The first bomb went off on a, it was a Thursday, and the abortion clinic was closed, and a bomb went off at the abortion clinic on the outside. So the local ATF folks had responded, along with a lot of other local law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, a lot of people responded to that location. And they had parked back out this way so they wouldn't be close in on that scene. They were at the crime scene.

One hour later, a second device went off. That second device was planted right where all of the emergency vehicles and people had parked. It was designed with fragments, with nails, and it was designed to go off. one hour after the first one, because that's where the first responders would be coming to and be parking. So I ended up going there working those two bombings. That was weird because we had three days of really cold weather and three days of really hot weather. The weather just swapped out of us in Atlanta. But we were cutting a field that was right next to this parking lot, trying to get it down so we could find all the evidence.

I mean, you're just searching everywhere to pick up every fragment, everything you can get. That was just another event. While I was still in Atlanta, still working and helping out, I was assigned to Lloyd Orwin over at the lab to work with him to help him out, whatever he needed, anything he needed. So he's like, batteries. Go get me this kind of battery. Go buy them from everywhere.

So I went and bought batteries from every place you could possibly buy batteries, that particular kind of battery. And his research he was doing was to try to figure out where those batteries came from and which kind they were. And we ended up sending a person to where batteries are made. And it's kind of wow because the place that makes batteries will make 54 different brands. And I remember Joey Hall, he learned everything you can learn about batteries. But it was just one more thing and learning where the backpacks come from

and learning where all of these different parts came from, tracking it down, where the clock got bought at, all of these. You're tracking down each and every piece of that device. and that's from the original devices and these devices we keep getting or keep going off, all these bombs. And while I'm there, I get a call one night.

I've probably been in bed two hours and they're going, there's been a bombing and there's another bomb. And I'm talking this person on the phone, and I don't guess I'm making any sense because I'm going, no, that's what I'm down here for. There was the double bombing at Sandy Springs. They go, no, no, no, no.

This is at the other side lounge. It just happened tonight. you need to be there. They said you were here, you need to be there. You're part of the National Response Team. They're calling the NRT back in, but you're here already, so come on. I was like, okay. And so we go out to the other side lounge,

and there has been a bomb that has gone off, and then when we get there, the security person who was a Lenticop, he'd been to the briefings and all about making sure there wasn't a second device. because now everybody's really worried about a second device. He found something. It was a suspect package. So they are all working to do that.

Meanwhile, we are trying to go around to all of the different businesses and places in that locality to tell people they need to leave. They need to vacate. You need to get out of the area because they're working on second bomb, and we don't know what else might be around. It was an odd kind of neighborhood. It's one of those places where you can find people, at 3 o'clock in the morning that will model lingerie for you. So a little different.

There was an exotic dance club across the street. Just a lot of things. So you're trying to get people to move. Then some of their cars can't be moved because we've got the pieces of that first bomb that went off inside their cars. And that's evidence now. But we're doing everything. and I get back around and they're like, look, they're going to let Boomer, that was the robot, is going to try to open up that package and stuff. They're going to do a 50-KL water shot.

They're going to try to open the pack, try to open up this backpack that they feel like as a suspect device. And also, we all kind of put our fingers in our ears and squat down and they do the timing, you know, because boomers getting ready to hit it. Well, Boomer makes that shot And the device, not that one, it detonates.

And, I mean, there's shrapnel. There's stuff bouncing. I mean, you're seeing like the sort of flashes of nails and stuff bouncing off the pavement in the parking lot going past you and hitting cars and stuff. And it's like, ooh, really, really glad I squatted down in the car. And I'm kind of glad I had my fingers in my ears because that was loud, super loud. the person had set that second bomb, they wanted it to go off, they wanted it to take us out, and luckily it didn't go off. And so we're working the since now major crime scene. Next day we're processing, we're out, and we've got the FBI, we're working with everybody.

We're showing people what we're finding, what you've got to look for, what to find, what this device is made out of. You know, we're also trying to convince people, no, you don't have to pick up the cigarette butts. There's going to be a million cigarette butts out here that's look where you are. You know, these are dance clubs, drinking clubs. You know, everybody comes out here and smokes and does, you know. But we are going to have to find components, the pieces that came out of this. So working those. So those were really big in my early part of my career.

We got a lot of training because of that, not just hazmat training, but learning things about explosives and on a lot of basis. We started doing a lot more with learning about homemade explosives. That became a big thing and still is. And then things sort of took the major turn, 9-11. So when 9-11 happened, they activated all of us and they wanted us to go. And they knew we couldn't fly. We'd have to drive.

So I was, we were destined for a New York city is where they said to go. And no known time, didn't know how long we'd be gone or when we'd get back, just go to New York City. So we were on our way to New York City. Other members of the team were coming. We had some people out of Knoxville. My guy, me and my guy in Bristol, guys in Roanoke, we were all headed towards New York City. We just got north of Roanoke. and we were hauling ass, I mean, and truck drivers were all moving over for us,

and, you know, people, thumbs up, American flags were coming out of the windows of trucks and things. They were making it so we could go. They had a trooper in front of us. I mean, as fast as he could go, we were trying to keep up. We were trying to let him know that some of us have got, like, these governors on the vehicle. I don't mean, do, like, 100. You know, so we're going to keep up with you as best you can.

You go, go, go. And they were reaching out on the radio and trying to get a hold to us. And what we were learning was New York City just shut down, go to the Pentagon. Just divert. Just go to the Pentagon. No problem. So that's where we went. All told, 63 of the National Response Team members ended up at the Pentagon.

And then there was a decision, how many are staying, how many you need an FBI at first? Oh, we only need 10. No, no, we need 20. okay we're going to need 50 you need 50 of your people because you guys have the training you have the background you have the equipment

you you know you do this we're going to need you and so some of our guys were from Pennsylvania and they wanted to know if they could go to Pennsylvania to Shanksville and so those guys were released to there some of the guys were from New York City

and they were like but they had been in Georgia at a training there week and they were like, I'd really like to go back to New York City if I can, you know, that's my home. And we're like, yeah, you know, so those guys got to go there, you know, because, I mean, they'd already made the drive up from Georgia to the Pentagon, what's a little bit more distance than they really wanted to go. So they went, and the 50 of us worked there. And so we did the Pentagon. We got there on 9-11 that afternoon and started getting the briefings

of what to do, you know, a place is still smoking. It's still nasty. They're wanting us to go look for the black boxes. They're looking at the stability of the building. They've got, you know, the engineers. They've got the USAR Urban Search and Rescue. You know, all these people are trying to stabilize things. And we're like, yeah, we'll go.

And, of course, everybody keeps giving us instructions what a black box looks like. And it's like, well, it's orange, unless it's been burned up into fire, than it's black. Like, we know, we know. Here's what it looks like. And it gave us pictures. You know, it's like, thank you, FBI.

If you just step aside, we're going to, we got this. Just, this is what we do. And we geared up and we go in and you're in, they had an entrance way for us to go into Pentagon. And so we trudged through water. So I remember my boots were about eight inches high or so. on the zip-up boots, and the water's right up to about the top of them, you know, so you're getting your socks wet, and it's like, oh well.

And so we go all the way through to corridor C, and the first assignment is, we need you to clear corridor C, and down here on this wall is called the punch-out. And the reason we're calling it to punch out is because the rear landing gear, the plane came out and left this giant hole in the wall. And I think a hole the size of your room here. It's just a big wall, this hole. And everything in there is burnt and reeks of diesel fuel. And it's just nasty.

And there's just wires hanging down everywhere. And there's rebar and there's stuff still falling. And they said, but in corridor C is just the remains of the plane and the wall and the offices and everything that's just dumped out in it. It's just here. So we're going to go through here. And we're going to pick up everything. And we're going to look at everything.

And we're going to identify if we need to hang on to it or not. and whatever they want. And here's what we've got as a list of things to hold on to. And so at that time, they still wanted any kind of plane parts. Okay, anything plane related goes over here. And anything document related, they didn't care if it was a Britney Spears CD. They didn't care if it was a Chinese menu.

They didn't care if it was the top most classified document in the Pentagon. It goes in the document pile. documents go here plane parts go there now if you find human remains we're going to deal with those on an individual basis if you find anything else

that you think is related we'll deal with that so I was with Agent Slusser and Agent Man and the three of us were standing there and Agent Sluster went to move what looked like a portion of a plane seat

and there was a piece of cloth and Agent Man reached down and picked it up and it was kind of pink because of the blood in the water because it was a white shirt originally I guess and it had the pilot's ID was clipped to it

and you know this was kind of odd to us because this is where the rear end of the plane where the rear landing gear punched out and the seat is real close to that. So they're documenting these things and, you know, he's got the ID. We're turning that over to the FBI.

And the only other thing to collect there was human remains. And that's just hard. At that moment, it was really rough. Because this is the first time we've seen, you know, we're just getting there. We're just getting started. And this is what you're going to deal with.

with the rest of the time we're there because we just started picking up stuff and and we just continued to work we cleaned that entire corridor C it went from looking just

like a horrendous garbage heap and we cleaned it all up and they were asking us and our guys were starting to go inside because they were trying to find the black boxes and they were looking inside and they'd gone into the punch out

and we needed some cutting tools, and so myself and Agent Paul went back out to our vehicles. John Paul and I, we walked out and walked all the way back up to the interstate where our vehicles were because we had some saws. We had reciprocating saws. DeWalt, and they were powered by batteries, and we both had them in our vehicles from the work we do. So we brought them back out there so they could cut through the wire and the rebar and could get to things because it's just such a mass of stuff in that room. And we had the headlamps and lights on our helmets and stuff

so you could see what you were doing. And finally the guys located the black boxes. And then typical of our good buddies at the FBI, he said, oh, by the way, we're getting reports that the building's going to collapse, so we're going to get you guys to all move out of here now and head out. How is that that going to happen right after we found the black boxes?

It's always right after we find what you guys are wanting and stuff. And sure enough, the FBI, you know, of course, they take custody of it right away. Like we were going to, what, steal it? We got it, okay, you got it, you got it. It's all good. All right, you guys can go out. And so we go through our first decon experience. They have this tent on the outside, you know, somewhere between being drenched

and everything we've been through that day and being sweaty and hot and nasty. and walking in this muck and stuff that we've dealt with that whole day. And I don't know how many pair of gloves and stuff we've gone through and everything is happening. We go outside and we're at this tent and they are just going to hose us down. And they do. I mean, you get drenched.

They're hosing you down. And at the end of this tent walk through, there are these wonderful people from the Salvation Army and the Salvation Army, great organization to donate to. They are there with sweatshirt and sweatpants, just the cheapy stuff, and tube socks. I don't know how many pair of tube socks I got during that time period, but it was dry, and it still was good.

My boots weren't dry, but they were dry. And so we had a chance to put on something dry, and then get back out to our vehicles, and figure out we had a hotel, but now they were moving us to a hotel in Arlington so we could be in walking distance of the Pentagon. And so we were making those transitions and moves. And then the next day or so, they said, look,

I think it was like the next day. They said, we're going to work 24-7. And how we're going to do this, we're going to split you up, and we're going to work 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 7.m. You're on one shift or the other. You're the day or night. And you'll do it. So I was on the night shift. and I'm myself and Francis Neely, another agent in front of mine.

On the night shift, we were assigned, of course, to the north parking lot, the sifting of all of the debris and the things that had to come out. So we've recovered what they need from the Pentagon as far as the black boxes and the things there in the corridor sea. and now what they're going to do is start bringing dump trucks in and heavy equipment and they're going to start clearing all this debris and loading it into the dump trucks and bringing it to the north parking lot. A lot of people heard about the killing fields is where they took the stuff to sort from New York,

from the trade centers. We were doing the exact same thing there for the Pentagon. And the sifting operations are going to be 24-7 until it's done. and we'll go through it by hand. Will we use rakes? Will we use little bobcat skid steers? But in the ultimate, you're going to get down to doing it by hand to make sure we find everything that we can.

And, again, we have a list of things to look for. And so our sifting operations were at night, so we had lighting that was brought in, force, and set up. And we had people that watched to make sure, you know, military that we weren't taking anything that was classified. I have a bunch of stuff that's classified. Apparently the window tent at the

Pentagon, it was classified. They go, whatever you do? Don't have like a piece of that stuck to you or in your pocket or something because that, you know, it's classified. And we're like, okay, must be some really good tent. And then anything, computer, anything. Again, Britney Spears on tape,

no big deal. And we saw Britney Spears stuff probably came off the plane or whatever. But it was like, don't. that's classified, as far as they're concerned. It's classified. Anything like that. And there were these giant filing cabinets that were, I don't know,

they looked like they were Fort Knox. I don't think anything could have opened them up, but those were all classified. They picked them up right away and hauled them off. There's just all kinds of things. That's all classified. That goes in a classified pile. So all these military people are over here for that.

If you guys find it, they're here for that. Again, plane stuff went over on the side. We were talking to the folks that do that for the National Transportation Safety Board, and they have these aeronautical engineer people that are. You can't describe how brilliant they are. I can see a piece about the size of a button and tell you what it is and where it goes on the plane. You're like, really? Just blow you away.

And then, of course, we were still looking for IDs for anybody, anything like that. You know, every once in a while you run across like a part of a baby doll or maybe a coloring book or something. You know, you figure that might have been on a plane. We ran across like Navy Academy Rings occasionally. Not a lot, but sometimes. A couple of them were still attached. There were just things.

We found a broken part of a broken part of, handcuffs, just stuff that might have been in the Pentagon, might have been on that jet, you know. And then the human remains had to be picked up. All of that collected. I was trying to decide if I'd tell you this or not, but I guess it will.

It's been long enough. It's been 25 years, right? Coming up. That first night, we were out there and we were working. We collected so much. And at the end of the night, we had this body bag. And we had put everything in the body bag. We'd collected individual at that time.

They wanted everything individual packaging. And then put it all in the body bag, and they would come and get it. And they brought a lot of body bags to us. They bought so many. And we had one body bag full about 200 pounds, and that's it. that was everything and they took it and then they were like, look, we can't bag it up that way anymore.

They'll never finish doing the IDs that way. They'll never get it. And there's so much more, we've got to keep picking up. And so we just kept doing it however, whatever the FBI and the laboratory came down with, we followed their protocol to keep picking up the remains. and they brought us canine units. A lot of them were volunteer people.

They had these great dogs that were for search and rescue. And unfortunately, their dogs weren't there for rescue. They were searching for just the remains. And the dogs get depressed. And so I could go and I could get a couple of agents to say, y'all want a break? And they said, yeah, we'll take a break. And I said, I said, come on. I said, let's go make these dogs happy.

The dogs want to find somebody living. I said, so we're going to go over here to this little park right next to the river, next to the Potomac. And you guys out here in the middle of the night, y'all go hide someplace and don't move. Let the dog find you. Let them enjoy you, you know, let them lick you, whatever they want to do. You know, I said, because they're just, they need to find somebody. I said, and they were like, oh, that's be fun. And so I was working with those teams.

We had a veterinary group that was with us, so they were out there in case anything happened to the dogs. at all. And so it was myself and like said, Francis Neely. Our job, you know, if somebody found remains, they would contact us and we would come and collect those. And I got, unfortunately, too good at that, I suppose. I don't know. I remember sitting there one night and we'd been there probably a couple of weeks and we had all our operations going. So you had the skid-score bob that's picking up like debris in a bucket and taking it over to an area and sorting that bucket out on the ground. Then you had a group of people that would be around it

and they would rake it clean and look through every piece. And then if they found stuff, you know, go by hand looking for what it was and picking out parts. And it's a lot of dust and a lot of smells, a lot of odor. There's a lot of rot going on because, you know, it's been weeks now. and I remember they're sitting there that night I think I had old five-gallon bucket just sitting on in the parking lot just chilling out, waiting on my dogs,

making sure my dogs were happy, or the teams. And I saw something out in the parking lot, not the parking lot, like a driveway. And I started walking over to it because I knew what it was. and about 30 yards out it was just a bone and it didn't belong you just got to where you

recognize things that didn't belong and that bone didn't it just something about the shape of it I guess I don't know it didn't look like part of a building it didn't look like metal and once I got over there I realized what it was but we were doing that

all through the night shift and they were doing that all through the day shift because that's what we were there for and that was the 9-11 experience. It was a lot. And when it was over, it was just over. And I got back to my office and I'd been there. Let's see, I drove back on a Monday.

And our team got called out, I think, that Tuesday evening, to go to Musick, Pennsylvania. So I really barely had a chance to even wash my clothes. It just got them washed and turned around. you know and we had a drive still there weren't any jets for that and we drove up to music Pennsylvania there had been a explosives facility there and the guy had been making M80s that it was illegal that he was making thousands of M80s and with the M80s he had an accident and he blew himself up and his employee got blown up.

And so it was just a chaotic mess because it triggered an explosion of some of the explosives that he had on site. So it ended up being about 10,000 pounds worth of stuff that burned up and blew up on the side of this mountain. And so we were up there working that. I finally got home from that event and working it. And I realized I was really sick. I didn't know I'd been sick. But I had just sinus issues all. kinds of issues and things. And then, I don't know, you go about life and everything works on. And

9-11 finally decided to sneak back up on me here a few years ago and went through uterine cancer. And I got lucky. We caught it early. Got it handled very early. I am going to get my five-year clearance in April of this year. I've been good. So, congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. I've been talking to a lot of my friends. that I worked with. ATF has lost eight agents so far to 9-11 related illnesses.

Three were in New York City, five were at the Pentagon with me. Everything from lung cancer, interstitial lung disease, prostate cancers, blood cancer. They're all

9-11 related. The World Trade Center Health Program is looking after us. I know we're dealing with some stuff through our headquarters to make sure that they're aware and staying in touch because a lot of things is we're all retirees for the most part. You know, and once you retire from the government, you're gone. So trying to get them to remember that, hey, it was us. We were there and we're still out here.

And so we're getting through those issues, trying to make sure the government doesn't forget us. and trying to stay in touch with my buddies because I got a few of them out there that are in various stages dealing with issues of cancer and other things that have come about because of 9-11 or that are in remission. They're doing good. And they just want to make sure they're staying healthy

and they're signed up for all the things they've got to sign up for. So I've been kind of pushing that and getting people doing it and getting headquarters to make sure that, These people have all the official documentation they need because it's the only way to get the World Trade Center to be able to take care of things. There was so much fraud on that system at the very beginning,

you know, that people that were never there, that were pretending that they were there, that were trying to get money out of it, they were trying to get benefits out of it. And there was so much far at the beginning, they had to really, really make the rule strict in order to prove that you were there. So you can have a picture of you there.

That's not enough. You've got to have witnesses, that you were there. You've got to have documentation. You've got to have your government organization to write an official letter. You have to have a lot of things. So that's 9-11. Do you feel that when you do a long career in law enforcement for, say, a federal government agency and you retire, do you feel like they forget about you? And that sense kind of kick you the curb after dedicating so much of your life to it? I think there's a way to feel that way. And it can be that way and you have to understand you were there in your time and not in the current time

but I also think that with things in particular like 9-11 or let's say you got severely injured out here doing some other kind of activity with the agency whatever it is I think it's incumbent on the agency to remember who those people are that these people you know ended up getting paralyzed while doing the job, that this person ended up dead because of the job, that they got sick from these illnesses because of the job. I think it's incumbent on the agency to maintain something like a web database, website, something to keep these people aware. There is this thing we always say, never forget.

Never forget. It's not supposed to have a. shelf life. Oh, well, they're retired now, so it's okay to forget them. That's not right. That can't be. And I don't give a fuck if you forget me. I don't fucking care. But my friends that have died, I do care about that because they have families. They have widows. I care about those people. I don't want them forgotten. You got to look after them. Make sure that they have what they need, you know, because that person gave all, let's give back what we got to give back.

Let's stay in touch with them. You don't have to be up in their business all the time, you know, but stay in touch. Make sure that they don't get dropped into the cracks. That I do feel. And I think some organizations are working with that. When you read my book, and even though it's the state police experience, I mentioned the troopers who get killed that die. And I have Chapter 37 in the book,

and I put down the URLs of how to locate information on what happened in that incident. So you know about that, why that person passed away, what happened. And I feel like it's a way of making sure they're not forgotten so that somebody knows. Recently, the State Police Retiree Association had a couple of their chaplains that met with me, great guys. So they made it so that I could meet with one of the widows. They asked her. She was gracious enough to say, yes, not a problem.

She came, we got to meet. I'd never met her. I'd met her husband. I hadn't met her. And so I wanted to talk to her because his life was taken from him in an ambush in 2013, J.A. Walker, a Junius Walker. And he was less than 90 days away from retiring and would have had 40 years as a state employee. And somebody with an AK-47 decided to kill him.

And he was just stopping to see if they needed help with their car. He thought that they had broken down and were needing assistance. And he didn't get a chance to help him. but I didn't want to forget about him, and I don't want to forget about the widows, and I don't want to forget about their families. And I want these organizations to stay on top of it. I think the state police retiree folks are doing a great job of staying on top of it. And I'd like to see ATF do a better job.

I'd like to see a lot of agencies do a better job with it, because I talk to some of the guys that are former military, And they say, hey, once you're a veteran and you're not in anymore, you know, oh, the VA's got you. The VA will take care of you. And you're like, not really. That feeling you were describing earlier in between leaving the troopers and going to the ATF of that adrenaline and that action, does that ever go away? You know, even now, you're retired.

You're out of that, you know, action life. How does it feel? Okay. I suck in my grandchildren so I can get some adrenaline. What I do is I'm like I'm out there tubing on a mountain. I am so not the person for snow and for skiing. And I tried skiing. I tried snowboarding when I was young.

They were not my activities. But I will get out there and go tubing a million miles an hour with the kids. My husband took me to the Daytona track and let me drive an house car car. And I got to do eight laps at roughly 150 miles an hour. And the NASCAR guy was so nice, in fact, when I was there. He said, you know how to drive. He said, I don't know where you learned how to drive, but you know how to drive. And I said, well, state police wanted to talk me how.

And he said, oh, he said, well, you got a car coming up there in your turn. He said, normally we don't let people pass. He said, well, go ahead, go high on that bank and pass them. I loved it. It was so much fun. I got my oldest grandson to go with me to one of those places. is what they call it, I fly. I never heard of it.

It's indoor flying. It's indoor. Oh, like a trampoline park, but for flying? No, like flying. Okay, it's like skydiving, but indoors. Oh, with the air. Yep, I've heard of those. Yeah, that's cool.

So I wanted to do that. So we went indoor sky, indoor skydiving thing with the eye flight. I love that. That was fun too. They're always, I'm always looking for ways to find out of adrenaline that rush. I have a motorcycle. I've always had a motorcycle. Be careful.

Yeah. If it's a helmetless state, I go helmetless. But I love riding motorcycles, and we've traveled most of the U.S. and most of Canada by bike. I used to ride horses a whole lot. I haven't ridden in a while, but I like that too. I need the adrenaline every once in a while, and you look for it in different ways. I heard somebody describe PTSD one time, and I agree with them. it's not, they call it the post-traumatic whatever.

He goes, no, it's L. He goes, what? Lack of stress. He said that lack of stress. And he goes, we function on this high level of stress, these immediate need, emergency needs, the constant. You do that constantly. Law enforcement, you know, it's always going, going, going, going, going.

And then when I got into ATF, because I had a very active office because I like to be active. We always called it being, you know, running and gunning. We were always busy. There was always something doing. It was always something to get that adrenaline pumped up. And so we were always out on cases, always investigating, always making search warrants or rest warrants.

Even the surveillance is, you know, and me. I was like, okay, let me work the undercover, you know, anything like that. You were always doing those things. And you retire, and it stops. And it's like, what are you doing? well I'm in a recliner watching TV all right what are you going to do tomorrow

recliner TV and that gets that's terrible the first thing you do is I put on weight I was like no no no can't do this what are you going to do stay busy

I think we're going fishing I love fishing but it's like that's not the same and you know there's no more lights in sireen there's no more running and gunning so yeah you miss the adrenaline

and keeping that adrenaline going. And that was my addiction. Adrenaline was it. What do you think teenage Jennifer would think of you today? Oh, gosh, I don't know. I think teenage Jennifer would be, hey, doing okay. It all worked out. You did everything.

So it's like, all right, keep being a badass. What are you going to do next? I'm just waiting to see. And I think she'd be wondering, you know, like, all right. It's like, what else you got planned? I don't know. I'm on the Ian Bix show. It's pretty cool.

It's pretty darn cool. I'm going to CrimeCon. I'm going to be in CrimeCon. That's pretty cool. I don't know. I would hope that she'd be really tickled to death. That's awesome. Well, Jennifer, I appreciate you coming on the show today.

This is an incredible interview. Thank you very much. Yeah, almost three hours long. And you did great. And you thought you wouldn't be interesting. I didn't think I would be, no. we'll have the description to your book and the description this episode too

and thanks so much for coming here today. Thanks a lot.