Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Escobar’s Pilot Makes Millions & Escapes Prison | Roger Reaves

Episode Date: May 3, 2026

Roger Reaves, a former pilot, rises from poverty to making millions flying for cartels, but after surviving violence, prison, and repeated close calls, he ultimately faces the consequences and begins to reflect on a life that nearly destroyed him.⁣ ⁣ Roger's links - ⁣ https://roger-reaves.com/⁣ ⁣ Check out Roger's books here - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B076VW59WK/allbooks?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=aufs_ap_ahdr_dsk_ab&pd_rd_w=r2lrn&content-id=amzn1.sym.7e190e19-9f6f-4df8-807a-5a7608594741&pf_rd_p=7e190e19-9f6f-4df8-807a-5a7608594741&pf_rd_r=131-3567205-0800056&pd_rd_wg=6a31A&pd_rd_r=98391cc2-a53a-44b3-a1fe-ea8e301d14b5 ⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Upgrade your wardrobe with timeless essentials that actually lasts. Shop Quince with free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/true⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS: ⁣ 0:00 - Growing Up Poor & Early Hustles⁣ 3:00 - Crazy Youth Stories & Meeting His Wife⁣ 6:30 - Firefighter Career & First Taste of Smuggling⁣ 12:50 - Shot Down by Federales ⁣ 15:20 - Mexican Prison & Survival⁣ 17:10 - Meeting Cartel Leaders & Entering Escobar’s World⁣ 34:00 - Arrest, Informants & Facing Life Sentences⁣ 1:03:30 - Prison Escape & Life on the Run⁣ 1:13:30 - Final Deals, Close Calls & Betrayals⁣ 1:21:00 - Life Inside Prison & Harsh Realities⁣ 1:28:30 - Life After Release & Trying to Start Over⁣ 1:32:00 - Dangerous Voyage Across the Ocean⁣ 1:42:00 - Getting Caught Again & Facing Consequences⁣ 1:48:00 - Reflecting on a Life of Crime & Lessons Learned Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever wondered why songs on the radio are popular? Why does certain movies get made, even though the premise seems completely random? Why are concert tickets costing you $3,000, but nobody makes any money touring? Well, on my podcast, breaking down the biz, we answer all those questions and more. I'm Seth Schackner. I have over two decades of experience in the entertainment and the music industry, and every week I talk to insiders that lend insight and expertise on the media you know and love, past, present, and future.

Subscribe now on your favorite podcasting platform or watch us on YouTube so you never miss a beat. Let's make sense of this industry together. You know how much my pay was? Two and a half million dollars a day. Then I hooked up with Abu Escarbaran. So I hired Barry Seale. Mexican Federal is on my takeoff. They put 80 bullet holes in there.

Bow! I got number 41 on that continuing criminal enterprise in the United States. John Goddy was number 42. It's a slim chance I ever got out of prison. Ever got out. My father had become an alcoholic, and it was a sad life of seven little young ones and my mother and me. So he died. Seven?

Yeah. And so, and he was absolutely just, it was a drunk back then, no such thing as alcoholism. Yeah. I mean, it was sad. So we were poor. In the summertime, I would hitchhike up to Canada. At that time, the Dutch people, and we were growing tobacco in Canada. It looked like 100 miles over on Lake Erie on the North.

than shore was tobacco farms. And they were beautiful, just beautiful. And they paid $20 a day room and board. So I went to Canada, took my thumb out. It looked like a 1938 chivalry, pulled up real gently and stopped, and dapper-looking black man was in there, a nice little hat on. And I stepped in right quick, and he took off, and he missed second gear. And he went swerving down the highway.

He was drunk, some kind of drunk. Like, oh, Lord. He went over on the other side, drifted over, and a semi coming the other way. He went on the other side. And I said, hey, mister, I haven't eaten in a long time. Would you stop up here at this place so I can get something to eat? Well, he pulled in on a gravel spot, and I jumped out of that car. Thank God that I was still alive.

My heart was still beating from my heart. And he took off with my suitcase with my $30 in it and all my clothes. I lifted on the back seat. I thought, oh, Lord, this is just awful. And, I mean, my guts were just on fire at 17 and 18 years old. Here I am. And I looked down the highway, and you can see the heatways coming up. And there's some men under a peak entry over there on the tools playing checkers.

And I went over there, Mr. Mr. that guy's got my money and stuff. I don't believe I catch him. He's going mighty fast. So I stood out there. I'm like, oh, God, what am I going to do? I'm looking back down the way I'll come, and I hear tires on the gravel behind me, and I look around there, and I can't believe it.

There he was. Hey, hey, buddy, you'll have your suitcase. Thank God he was honest. Might have been drunk, but he was honest. Wasn't that wonderful? And when I went up to Canada and got me a job the first day, and boy, that was wonderful. They call it picking the back.

We call it cropping tobacco in Georgia. Some boys came and asked me that I would like to go to a carnival over in Tilsenburg. So I'm sure. Every day I went into the greenhouse and scrubbed that tobacco juice off of me. And I was already cleaned, so I put on some white shirt and fair pants and hopped in their old car in 1954. Went to Tilsenburg, Ontario. What a, what a fair. Going down the way, as great big fellow flowing beard on his chest,

buy brand new $100 bills, anybody rouse on my bear and get all four feet off the ground or can throw him. Anybody, anybody got guts enough to rouse on my bear. What's your name, young man? Roger Reeves. Where are you from, Roger? I'm from Georgia. I might have known these yellow belly Canadians don't have guts enough to rouse on my bear. How much you weigh, boy?

I weigh a hundred and forty-five pound man. 145-pound man against 600-pound beast. And he threw me in that cage with that little black bear. When that little black bear started getting up, he wasn't little at all. He got up all over that circus cage. And I ran up there like an idiot. And he sworeed me about my knees, and I went up about six-foot levels, leveled out. And I hit the ground, blam, blam, flam.

And the ground was all loose. in the crowd here, he sick him, Roger. And I got up, and that bear hit me faster than lightning. You can't believe it. They ain't no man alive as fast as a bear. That was just like, Zup, you couldn't even see it. And he hit me the other way and laid me out about six feet,

and I hit the ground like this. And I thought, wow, something got to be done. I didn't realize it. That bear is that man's pet. And I grabbed the top of the cage, and I swung and kicked that bear and run into him, and we made a big racket as we hit the other side of that cage. That bear took me and threw me, 20 feet into the other side and got on top of me and scrowling and carrying on.

And the man come pulled him off of me. And the bear run over the man. And the chain got hooked around the stake and part of the end to come down. And the crowd was stomping over one another trying to get out. And I would say, you sick him. So the reason I'm telling the story is... I don't feel like they let this happen now. No, wouldn't.

Of course not. I don't feel like this is something that's going on right. There's pictures of it. A couple of days later, I couldn't walk. The boys took me back to the greenhouse, and I fell down, I couldn't walk. They had to drag me in. I thought I was paralyzed. The next day, though, I could walk, but not very good.

So a couple of days later, I went down to Turkey Point, Lake Erie. And I had on my white little hat and white shirt and like jeans, and I'm limping along with a king. and it's three pretty girls on some towels, and I kind of tip my hat and walked on out, and I'm a little bit shy. And I come back by, and the heart stopper says, is that a university ring? What university are you from?

And I said, no, there's a high school ring. Oh, we don't have high school rings in Canada. Could I see it? I said, you're from Holland, aren't you? She slid over, said, sit down here and tell me how you know about Dutch accents. Well, I had met a girl. from Washington, D.C. on my way up that had the same accent. That's only one in the world I knew.

Anyway, that's Mari that's sitting over there. Oh. That was 64 years ago. Wow. Isn't that something, yes. It's the reason I tell the story of the bear. Right. They got me married.

Yes. So I went out to California and went to work. I went to work, railing nails. I became an electrician, a counterfeit electrician. They never knew I wasn't one. And then it was advertising for the Redondo Beach Fire Department. And I took the test and got the job. And it was like winning the lottery.

You only work 10 days a month, 24 hours a day, and top pay. I'm saying, it was all right. And you didn't work. You rode the back of a hook and ladder truck or what? I drove the back of a hook and ladder truck for four years. And I hauled antiques. I was one of early pickers. And I had some firemen that was back in Missouri, and they would gather it up for me.

And I would go back there and run a big U-Haul and drive it back out. And I made pretty good money with it. I bought me an airplane. And we had a nice house, a car. We were doing all right for 27, 28-year-old couple, you know. Did you know how to fly me? I learned how to fly back in Georgia, yeah. Oh, I was going to say, you don't just buy an airplane.

You've got to know how to fly. I just about did. And so we'd go down to Moula, Mexico, Marry and a little girl, and she's a potty trainer, and I'd go fishing, and we'd stay a day or two of my days off, and somebody asked you,

why don't you bring some pot back with you? I said, I don't know anything about it. That's the hottest thing? You, man, this is the hottest thing since pancakes. I said, hippies, I know they smoke a little bit up, but I don't know. He said, I said, what would you pay? He said, I don't know.

I'll introduce you to somebody. Who is this that said this? This guy that sent riding with me in the truck with his antiques. Oh, okay. You know? And we're just talking away. He's just hauling out of antiques back and forth. That's a thing.

He wasn't into it. He didn't care. Oh, he wasn't? Oh, I assumed he was doing, he was already doing it. No, he just knew a lot. He was a guy that was kind of an entrepreneur. He knew. And so he won't you.

Anyway, I met a fellow. He said, I give you $10,000. And I said, what? that was two years pay at that time take on pay so I said oh some of that stuff in there I went down there and I did a load I came back we just threw in the back of your car in my airplane when I went down to Mexico okay I missed that part okay I'm going to Mexico and he said why don't you bring some I assume would you I know I assumed you were driving no I was in there was in a flight on a Sessna 182 okay the four-seater anyhow he put two or three hundred pounds in there

give me $10,000. And when you're landing, it's not like you're going in and you're going through customers or anything, right? No, you don't do that. Not with pot. Otherwise, I did it, you know. But it was pretty interesting. You could land in Clexico, Mexicali, and on the border, and you go in legally. And they give you a paper, just like you're a Mexican airplane.

And it was good for six months. You can go anywhere you want to. Don't even file a flight plan. Just come in and file one by the air. It was easy. Yeah. And so I hold that back. And the guy gave me $10,000 and I took it home, shook it on to bed, and Mari put her hand over her mouth, and the baby's grabbing a $100 bill and running around with it. And I said, wow, now this thing, this is not real.

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So I went to see a lawyer. I said, I don't know about this. And I put a $100 bill on the desk. I said, Mr. Lawyer, what would happen to me if I got caught bringing pot back from Mexico in my airplane? He said, what's your criminal history? I said, I don't have one. Nothing? I said, no.

He said, traffic? I said, I've never had a speeding ticket. He said, we're going to fire him? Yes, sir? He said, you'll get probation, man. You will get probation, but at the very worst, the worst judge in town, you get a year and serve four months,

rake and leave somewhere. That seems... And I thought I have found my profession. Yeah. I went and got me a... Sesta 207, and I hauled 1100 pounds now, and I can make $40,000. And I tell Maury, I'm going to make $300,000, and we're going to move back to the farm. And I'm quitting.

I'm just going to do this, just bam. I said that myself many times. After this, I'm quitting. And it was like you touch a max to a thermometer. I made that $300,000 so quick, it was like, zip. And then the number moved. Did the number move? No, particularly.

Mario didn't want to go to that farm and remember those rattlesnakes and cotton mouth moccasins and bugs and picking up eggs. Then you stopped. So you stopped? Didn't stop. No. You forgot the 300,000. My problem was that I kept setting that number and I'd get to it and then I go, you know. This might not.

I'd be better here. And then you get there and then it's like, you know, another million. If I just another, that's the spot where else, and it just never, I get moving. Yeah. Well, I went away. I just shot all the hell and back in Mexico on a trip with a 207. They put 80 bullet holes in there. Who put 80 bullet holes?

The Mexican federal is on my takeoff. They killed a man. They shot the man's foot nearly off of me. I lost my toe, top of my head, my knee cap. I still got a piece of lead right under my ankle bone. So, yeah, I got, and they shot that plane down right on takeoff. And I got away with the boy that had to. his foot almost shot off.

A young fellow would get in there with me. It was very light, and he would go 30 or 40 miles, and they'd block a freeway, a big four-lane highway, and I'd land on it. They'd come out with the trucks with the guns on it, and the bucket brigade put that one in my plane. I'd take off, and I remember one time they looked like 20, 30 cars on the road blacked up there, and there was a highway patrolman in it,

and he didn't have his light on, you know, the one on top of the car. So they had it under control, so. But anyhow, I thought they did. So one morning, they were waiting on me, and they just riddled me. 80 bullet holes right in the cockpit with me. I don't see how to live through it. So we went away and got away on a donkey. Oh, the donkey was up there.

And him wounded like that, and me too. So it was a miracle. Did you know that was a possibility that they, I mean, you know it was illegal, but did you know that the Mexicans were going to actually, that they would actually shoot down the plane? No. Oh, you didn't think that. And also the guy. a harrow-up piece of garbage that was buying from.

He said, oh, they paid off. They fade off. Federalists paid off. Everybody's paid off. Well, he was lying. He knew you didn't want to hear the truth. It makes it easier for you. It was just fun.

Mari was packing every day I was going down, and she was packing toys for the children and candies and all kind of the women want things. I had a plain load of goodies, and I'd take back in it got so many, children and people waiting on me, I could hardly land. I was like Mr. Santa Claus. This was the very beginning of it.

Nobody cared. Yeah. There's no war on drugs. Nothing. And the Mexicans and nothing. It was all sweet. Well, up until they shot the plane down. Now there seemed to be taking it very seriously at this point.

Those guys were just wanting to rob me probably. Oh, okay. So nothing honorable down there at all. So I went back down to see about getting the load. another plane to come down and he messed up and they arrested me and put me in a prison and tortured me almost to death certainly did i and this is okay this is the mexin the local police or is this military it was a federalist federal police me sir yes they they um i told this to him many times about hanging they they um they put hot chili up my rectum you know pulled me apart and

buttered me butt up and fill me up with it and i mean it would just burnt my insides up till i was messed up a long time. And then after a few more week or two, I was in a cell, just five-foot square, hot, light was on all the time up at the top. And they brought a black man in, and he was frozen. It looked like he was wrapped like a mummy, a little strips of the newspaper. And they put him on a meat hook on the wall, hung him there, sitting there like this. And first thing, your eyes thawed out, and he looked like he was crying. And then slowly it pulled up. You could see his liver, and then the formaldehyde started running out of his orifices, and it puddled on the floor, and I put my head right up under the door, all that crap all over the floor, there's

blood and feces everywhere. That's where they tortured people. And I put my head up under there, and I breathe like this, and I woke up in the hospital on a respirator, and the doctor was very concerned. Breathe, man, breathe, breathe, and they was helping me to breathe. I almost died from the formaldehyde poisoning. And I finally got to general population, and I got somebody leaving, and they called Mari and told her where I was. And she came down, gave a Mexican person we know $17,000, and he paid me out.

That's how much my life was worth. Were you able to leave? Did you just leave? Yes, we got on the plane. It was the fourth day of July, 1974. I thought, wow. So I started flying further down in Columbia and hauling pole. caught out with bigger loads.

And then I hooked up with Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa. How does that happen? Like who contacts you through, is it just you were working for this guy, and then this guy knew this guy, and then eventually you're approached? Kind of like that. It was a guy ripped me off,

and they were trying to make it good, and they introduced me to somebody. And they introduced me to Fernando Correjo. And he was drunk. but he was like Winston Churchill he could speak a bunch of languages and he sat there and drank three bottles a day and sent me to his

house and he had lots and lots of product and so his wife said he'll sober up one day so when he does you're going to have all the work you can do so I was invited to a party

that they had on the beach for him for his birthday and I reckon that that was the day that actually if anything, the Medelline cartel was formed. They had a huge party there. In Columbia, I believe there was 10,000 a year it was murdered. Maybe it was Medellin alone.

If you had 10 kilos and somebody else had a way to get it up there, they'd look for, okay, it went, oh, some of my 10 kilos busted in New Jersey. I'm so sorry, bang, bang. So these guys got together, the five of them, and they actually made an insurance company. The cartel was an insurance company. If you would give them your product, I don't even say it because people don't like the word.

Right. If you gave them your product, they guaranteed. They would guarantee to be delivered in Miami to your contact for $10,000. If it was busted anywhere between Columbia and Miami, they would replace it in Columbia, like 100%. So I understand that they got 100 tons.

put on them. Everything out of Peru and Bolivia, everything was coming to them in this insurance program. So I was right there. I went down and the lady, I called and she says they having this big party, Rogers, the airlines are flying people over there. So I got on, I don't know what it was. It was an o'engine propeller plane and we flew over like jungle out of Medellin and we flew over to the Pacific coast, about halfway between Panama and Ecuador. And it looked like it was just a green jungle far as you can see. And then there was a long runway, clay, and a river that run by it in the old log house, and they landed there.

And on the plane going over, I met Mario Matilda. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch, the real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. Nice looking couple, beautiful young Colombian couple. Matilda spoke perfect English, French, and anything else you want to speak. She was educated. And so,

made friends, or at least we knew each other on the plane, and I got off the plane. They put me into bunkhouse with the men, and I went for a walk to go on the beach. And I was walking down the beach, and there was a young woman. She looked like a poor person that come from the barrios. And she's walking along, talking to me, says, I had never flown an airplane before. I have no idea why this man invited me to come. And I thought, honey, you're fixing to find out. Anyway, we met Mario Matilda, and Matilda said very sweet, Roger, Mario tempted me to tell you that you're walking with the most, the girlfriend of the most vicious killer in Colombia. We suggest you get away from her. So I excuse myself from the lady and walked on, and that night I'm in the bunkhouse.

And that woman flies into me, like, wham, knocks me sideways. And a very irate man is there, and his name of Jaime Ordonez. And he had made 16 judges lose their life. He got caught with a ton. And he was jumpy. Anyways, I thought, uh-oh. So his friends got around him out, blah, blah, blah, blah, and got him away. So the party raged for like three days.

They had all kind of entertainers. stand-up comedians and people would band and stuff to play. Most of the people left with their planes and their helicopters, and they just left us full folks or the workers and the entertainers, and there was a bunch of us. But there was only me and Mario and one real tall Avianca pilot. It was left. And that afternoon, it was like Sunday afternoon,

I got me a plate of barbecue goat. I like that, and I went around behind the house and got in a hammock under a shade of a tree. And I was reading the book, M.M.K.'s, the far pavilions. I remember just about where I was on the place, and bow, pow, right by my head, and blood spattered on my face and on that book. It spattered just like, I rolled out of that hammock,

and I didn't quit rolling until I was 10 feet away. And I looked up, and there was a dog flipping, and there was a white man, about 60 years old, and he had shot that dog right in the head, big old dog, and that dog were jumping and flipping and spreading blood. But there was a young black man. Looked like he was about 25 years old, nice-looking specimen. And he had been shot right in the femoral artery,

and it was just pouring out of his pants. And he just reached to the, took that big pistol and tore it out of that white man's hand. and put it right between his eyes and went click, click, click, click, click, click. There's no more bullets in it. So he's going backwards, and I'm saying, hey, man, in Spanish, I'm a doctor, I can help you. And he pointed that gun at me, and I thought, I don't want it going click in my face. But I could have saved his life right there.

I mean, I'd been on the fire department and rescue and had no sense to do that. And Mario came and talked to him, and he went hobbling backwards, and he went on down in just three or four minutes. He were dead. So an old Krohn came and said, they're going to be plenty of trouble for you white people tonight. You've been drugging enough trouble here and da-da-da. I guess it was an argument over a wrench,

five-sixthes or whatever, you know. So we was a little concerned. And so when it got dark, the lights on went out. And I went out with a flashlight. There was just three men there, and all those women. and they had poured the generator gasoline tank full of sand and water. All right, so we put little cups of fuel and put gasoline and diesel and put little wicks in them.

So we had some smutty fire all night long. And the next morning the runway was just covered in debris, 55-gallon drums and things. And we started out there and they said, no, these men up here, they're cracked shots, and they will kid you if you go out there and move that stuff. So the airplane started circling. I got out on the beach and put great big SOS all up in the red sand of the beach. And we spent another muggy night there really in some suspense. And that airline pilot, that great big tall fellow, he just cried and cried and cried.

He couldn't quit crying. It's just some people get scared. The next morning about daylight, three soldiers showed up in a boat come down the river, and they arrested the white man that had done to shoot. So he said, I want to take a shower. So when he took the shower, he tore the boards off the back of it and escaped into the jungle. Well, all those guys went livid. And anyhow, late that afternoon, somebody got it straightened out in Medellin,

and the soldiers went out and cleared the runway, and we got out of that place. But anyway, that was the big party where I think that they decided not to kill one another. They had police chiefs from all the big cities and all of Columbia there. So that was something interesting. When did you meet Pablo Escobar? Right after that, I was taken in by Mario. I went to their house after all that. We bonded up with that fear of the man being dying there.

So I went to his house with him, Matilda, and he took me to see Jorge Ochoa and went up in driveway. and when the C.O.T. He had a big desk like this, and there was 12 telephones on it, and there was all 12 different colors. And I said, where he spoke pretty good English. And he said, this is New York, this is Chicago, and this is Detroit. Each one of them had a different place. So he knew. And so he asked me what kind of airplanes I had and what kind of experience I had, and I told him. And so he said, let me call my compadre. So he sent the pretty woman at met us, and she went next door, and Babelieu Escobar came in. shoe cans, cracky, khaki pants, starts from ironed and nice plaid shirt.

And it's like you and I, about our size. And he asked me the same thing that Jorge asked. He didn't speak any English. And I told him, he said, we have all the work you can do. So that's why I went to work for. How did that work? You're flying in.

They load up the planes. I mean, I only know from, you know, watching movies or... Well, the first place, the first load I did for me was at Accindee right on the border with Panama, and it's a military, a little military back there, and the soldiers loaded me up. Wow. Where are you dropping it off in California, or is it going to Miami? No, I would go up to Louisiana and drop it off. And let me see. So what was the question you asked me? Oh, yeah. Yeah, like how did it work? Oh, yeah. Then later on,

I was saying, you know, I had trouble. And so they said, listen, you go over El Banco at the forts of the Magdalena River. There's a radio station there, I believe, 7.40 a.m. And it's circled at 10,000 feet, and there'll be a plane to meet you. So I'd be circling. I'd come in there. And when I'd come in there, when I'd come in, there'd be a plane circling. And I'd get behind him.

I'd fall him 100, 200, 200 miles. And going to the gentleman. So you don't really know where you're going until you find the plane. Exactly. Okay. So they didn't, nobody tell you, you don't want to say it. So I'd fall him down, I'd land, and I'd spend the night. And the next day, whatever I wanted to,

they had to jet fuel or whatever I was flying, and they'd fill me up, and I'd take off and fly back. I'd come through those oil wells off the coast of Louisiana and weave my way in. He had most of the helicopters coming back at night when his changing crew at the oil wells. Is anybody with you? No, I worked alone, yeah.

That's how I got away with it so long, and let nobody know where I was going or what I was doing. And then they're paying you. I mean, I'm going to say, I don't know why I want to say this. This is stupid. They're paying you in cash, obviously. Yes. So you're, how, what are you doing with those funds?

Are you, you know? I give them to my wife and she took care of that. Right. No problem, you know. Somehow or another putting it. I mean, is this money that you're, but back then you could probably go and put $5,000 in the bank or $1,000 or something without raising suspicion, right? You know how much my pay was.

Two and a half million dollars a day. It's hard to get in the bank. You didn't do it. No. I loaded jet airplanes up and took it to the Grand Cayman Island and backed up they'd be two big vans to back up the plane and take it to the bank

and they would steal it. They'd steal all they could. It makes me think of oh gosh, George Young where he had his money in, what, Panama in a Panamanian bank and then they nationalized them and took some money. Exactly.

A guy. I'm not sure if that really happened. Oh, absolutely, it happened for sure. I mean, that's what I had heard in the movie. But in real life, it happened. Right. But Panama was worst. And I guess the Bahamas was the best, but I didn't have it.

I had the grand Cayman Island. He's a guy named Stephen McTaggart on a big bank down there, and he took that money. And he closed the bank up when I went to prison. Now he's over in Bakersfield, California. He built a house with a moat around it, like an old British county. And I went over with him and I got another five-year sentence. No. I said, it was after your boy.

I mean, it's just like terrible. It's terrible. But people can do that to you. During this time and you have these close calls, you're getting shot at, do you ever think, like, I am able to stop or I have enough to stop or are you just totally enriched in it? Well, I tell the story. I believe that I had $7 million cash.

And I hadn't done it. At that time, I just got started three or four loads, whatever it was. I started off with 300 kilos and 500 kilos. And I got above the fog one night coming in an air commander, a turbojet, 300 miles now with 300 kilos behind me. And I couldn't get down. Everything from San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, New Orleans. zero-zero visibility.

And where am I going to go? I can't go to my strip that I'm told to go. I couldn't land on the highway where I usually land. So the only choice I had to save my life, if I had a parachute, I'd have bailed out. So I came down the glide slope in New Orleans International runway at 9 or 10 o'clock in zero-zero visibility and bounced down that runway to a stop right in the middle of it

and sat there all night long. They have a little radio called AITIS, automatic transmission, zero, zero, everywhere. Next morning, seven o'clock sun comes out. You can see it up through the fog or the mist. Eight o'clock, it's still breaking up a little bit, but it's still zero, zero. Nothing, towers closed everything. So it was a mile to the end of the runway,

and a mile back the other way. I hit it, got to start right in the middle. So I took off. I just couldn't stand it any longer. I mean, if anybody would come down that runway. Or even if they'd run up one of the planes, it certainly got them at land. I didn't think in planes it was closed.

But I thought just any little renter cop come down that place. I'm dead meat. So I took off, and I still had an hour or so of fuel. And I went over to the runway where I'm supposed to, and I circled until I had red lights. And I could see it through the fog. So I just pulled the power and went almost straight down and flared and got stopped.

that I'm finished. It done, that was just too hard. It was just like, all right, this is not worth it. I could have died last night. I could have died right now. So I told the Colombians, I'm through. And, of course, they was one beating. When I'd get stuff to Miami, that was the way they was making living.

It was probably making $100,000 a thousand dollars a kilo to disperse it. Oh, they about cried, no, Roger, no. Don't you know anybody? And I thought, well, why not? So I hired Barry Seal. Right. Of course, he just, he let the hammer down. I mean, he was ready to go every day.

As soon as he got paid, he was ready to go. He was, he was gung-ho. And what year was this? Was it in 1981? Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. So was the DEA formed by then? Yes.

Okay. All right. But did you quit? Yes, I quit flying. But then I'm just taking the stuff that he's sending down. I'm making it and I hire a guy Jerry Willes that lives in California out there now. But by this point, though, you understand you're probably not getting probation, right? Like you get caught at this point.

At this level. You know what you're going to get. At this level, you're not. But I didn't know how much did you know. I mean, it was a five. five, five, uh, 15 year sentence. Mandatory minimum or? That was before the mandatory minimum.

Oh, okay. This is 81, 82. So that was the max was 15 years, you think? Maximum 15 years. So it's a long time. But you do five years on that. Oh, because they had the, they had parole in the federal system. What I didn't know, they give you 15 years for conspiracy, 15 years for doing it, 15 years for

thinking about it and three years for using the telephone. And then a reico on top of it. And then a continuing criminal enterprise, which carries life, which they give me. I got number 41 on that continuing criminal enterprise in the United States. John Gotti was number 42. It's a chance. It's a slim chance I ever got out of prison, ever got out. So if this is an 81, Barry Seals taken over that operation.

And what are you doing now? Now I'm just counting the money and showing he would have somebody. I had two guys buying cars. and they buy about six cars a week, and they buy big LTDs or Mercury Marquise. And they put shocks on them, new tires that wouldn't go flat, you know, those, and put new belts and all on them. And I pay about $4,000 for the car,

and about $1,000 for the up, maybe $1,500. And I never wanted to see those cars again. When they come from me to Arkansas, they had drivers drive them. Barry showed me where they were parked. I'd show this guy Mario where he was parked, hand him the key. And that was it. And it'd be at least 100 kilos in there, 150 kilos in the trunk.

And they was angry. I said, I want $5,000 for that car. And I'm on top of this. Ah, yeah, yeah. I said, it'd go into your stash house? I don't never want to see it again. So, I'm just an awful number of years. Certainly we did more than 100, maybe 200 cars that way.

It was really, had two people buying cars all the time. and getting them fixed up. So that was what I was doing with the cars and showing the man where it was and getting the money. And Jorge Ochoa's sister came, Marta. She was the one that they had kidnapped down there and the FARC had. And they went and got one of the leaders from FARC

from every city in Colombia and said, if she's not released at such and such a day, all of you going to be say goodbye. So they released her and they made a deal with the FARC not to mess with the narcos. So that was over that. But she came up there and she's a lovely lady. She really was. And we'd meet every Wednesday at a restaurant there in Key Biscayne, Rusty Pelican.

And she came in with a nurse's uniform, really upscale place. And we would have a drink. And we'd go over what they owe me. And I wouldn't let them get over $7 million. I said, all right, you owe me? seven means I'm quitting. The boys are quitting flying until you catch up some. So I talked to Jorge Ochoa. I said, well, what happens if you owe me this seven million dollars and I get arrested? I'm paying these pilots. So I'm going, I'm only got half of it.

Signor, we are honorable people. We would never, we would pay you. But sure, okay, it made me feel real good. I just went down there about three months ago. We were out. He wouldn't even talk to me. I got a rock and banging on the door outside. And his pistol arrow comes in, no, no, clean, clean. I said, yeah, tell him he's clean with my money. He cleaned me out. So he owes me 11 million dollars, and he won't pay me. He won't talk to me.

And it's been 40 years. I just thought I'd put closure to it for 46 years, maybe. So, but anyway, at one time, I said, you owe me $7.5 million. No, Roger, $7 million. She said, no, I reckon I know I'm keeping up with it. And she was concerned because that was, they're making their money above what they're having to pay me. And she, she got to thinking about it. She said, remember Thursday night at the holiday inn?

Actually, with the yellow Cadillac, he had two boxes. I packed it, $250,000 in each one. I forgot that. Sorry. So that's how much money I was handling. I forgot a half million. $1. Okay. So I'd every once in a while, I'd get a charter of Falcon jet and fly to Grand Cayman Island

and drop it off. Put the money in that bank and come back. So what happened when he owed you up to the $11 million, you stopped working for him, right? Yes, well, I got arrested. Oh, how? August of 14th, 1982, my daughter. they. So, of course, you're not ever going to get that money.

They, you know, just liars. What, how does the arrest, how did they, how did they get onto the, the organization, someone get arrested? Was there a, the, was there a fluke? Or there was there an entire task force put together? I think that I did it to myself. I mean, they had, they had 18 feet. a discovery. They had 18 boxes.

The lawyers said we can never read it. Not 10 of us lawyers. They just smothered it. Most of it was photographs of me and playing somewhere. But really and truly, I think, a little judge in Thomasville, Georgia, did it to me. I held a little hawk in it, had a lot of seed in it. And I sent a suitcase full of big black seed back to my buddy in South Georgia. And he planted 245 acres in the car. corn.

And I brought seven Mexicans up to keep it hoed out and the drops. And it was way back in the back. Well, anyway, that got busted. And he got seven years in the state penitentiary there in Georgia. Well, I went to see him after he got out of his all trouble. And he looked good. Now he's in charge of the dogs. And so he's a bloodhound man.

They'll kill him if he can kill. him. So he's outside. Anyway. To see him in the prison. He's outside the prison. Well, he's a prisoner. So he's got his house trailer, and he's got the bloodhounds, him and another fellow. Well, the other fellow didn't get his parole, so he told all, well, Johnny had taken the warden on his holiday. You know, when you get close to the time, you get a we call for something near furlough, and they'd flown down to Florida, to Destin, Florida, to go fishing. Well, that rat had written all about it to the FBI. So they went, down it and

the FBI and arrested him in Florida and the warden had his gun so they arrested him with a scape with a firearm

and the judge gave him 10 10 years each in the coldest night and the hardest hottest day I don't see you bust in rocks

nothing could be such vile as you criminals you know because they went fishing on his furlough I was going to say

I don't understand he was on a furlough nobody else could either so I went this one Sunday morning I went to see the judge and I talked to him not just as nice as I could be

and the next day he reduced their sentence from 10 years to 10 years probation nice. It's nice when the judge has a change of heart like that and then I guess about a month Johnny and I both were charged federally we continue in criminal enterprise

he said well you know good and well he went and told the feds, put him away forever. So Johnny cried, and he, he, um, he pled guilty and got five years probation. And I got,

I got, I got five years, custody, 25 years special parole, um, give up my house and the property and the farms and the money and the grand Cayman, uh,

everything I had, I owned the city of all the I planned there at Marino Valley as a town out there in California, doing the planning and zoning that. Give it all up. And so I served two years, and they let me out on parole. And I had been home just a few, I don't know, a few days, a few weeks, and I'm watching the television there. And there's Ronald Reagan's blue eyes. And he said, we have absolute proof that the communist

Sandinista government is in the cocaine running businesses. And there was Barry's fat lady that he had belleted in in Nicaragua. I said, oh, God, Barry has done it. That was right down that military base. So it wasn't long before the phone rang and Barry, said, Roger, I'm coming out tonight. I hadn't talked to him in two years. And this is what if it was, is that 84, 85?

Uh-huh, it's 85, uh-huh. Did you say that? Pardon? Did you say that? And I missed it? No, I didn't say it. It had been two years since I've seen him. I went in in 82, and so it was a little bit.

It was in 85. Okay. It had to be in the fall of 85. And so he said, I'll meet you at this French restaurant there in Santa Barbara. And I said, all right, so I reluctantly I went in, of course. There's all 30, 40 years old men and women, about 20 of them. You can see the little bulges, and they're dressed nice with blue jeans and black. So Barry's at the back back there, and he's leaned up.

He's gained weight. Did you realize it at the time, or did you completely trust him? What do you think? I don't know his plane's been busted, and he's free. So I mean. Okay. Well, I didn't need no explaining. So he's leaned back, and I come here, Barry.

I said, how are you doing, buddy? He said, I'm right. I said, are you wired? He said, no, I'm not. I said, well, you just talk to me, Barry. I'm going to sit you and listen. I'm not going to say anything. And so he started talking, and he just told about how that Bill Clinton was, you know,

he'd paying him off there in Mina, and the CIA was unloading him, and they'd put everything in his name. He said, they made the scapegoat out of me. He said, and I was charged in three states with life sentences. Right. with the DEA. And I went to work for him, and I said, the old DEA, he said, every one of them.

I said, he just put his hands up over his eyes, and the tears came down between. He said, Roger, I just couldn't do three life sentences. I just couldn't. I went to work for him. Now, you're under my umbrella. Anything I get, you get. You can save your money, new passports,

your family, all can live anywhere you want to in the world. Never be bothered again. I said, bring you head honcho over. And a real nice DE agent. I really liked him. We'd have been on the same side. We'd have been buddies, Jake Jacobson. And so he came down, a long, lanky fellow.

I think he's a cropped duster or something, Alabama. And so he just said, you know, you can come to Marr, to Marry and first class with Mari and testify before Grand Jury, or I can take you down to the night in Shains. And the only place, if I do that, The only place you're going to ever see your family again is in a federal penitentiary visiting room, so I guarantee you that. Man, I'm coming to first class.

I was going to say, that's not a hard decision. That's what? So, Murray and I flew down the next day, first class, and I went to see a lawyer. I wasn't supposed to be the best one in town. I didn't know that he had represented a stitch and his partner had been blown out of his shoes, a car bomb. So I went in and tell him he was on a treadmill. and he's telling him my story and he said let me tell you he said I'll represent you for $600,000 but I don't even talk to snitches

I'm not a snitch man I just got it to go into that grandeur and got to say something he said man let me tell you something you go in there and say one word to those people and you don't tell them everything on your mother and everything you know and somebody else has said you're going to go down for everything you've said they'll pull your deal yeah and and use what you've said So I said, wow, my face turned red. And he said, listen, man, being a snitch is like being pregnant. You either are or you're not.

Make up your mind. Well, I'm not. He said, well, I represent you for $600,000. I said, man, man, this is awful. So I had to be at the courthouse at 4 o'clock to meet them people. And so I got there, and there was a big pillar there at Miami, that federal courthouse, marble. And I kind of got up behind it a little bit, and I saw them coming, three cars coming, and Barry was in the back seat in the middle, two of them agents,

and they had the little machine guns, and up the front of them, and there was three cars, and Barry's in the middle one. And they're looking out like this year, and they got the guns like that, and they got Barry coming, and they pull right up, one, two, three, right up in front of it, and I just stepped down them stairs, and it was hot, and the top was open, and I went, bam, I hit the top of that car. and they like to shit themselves. They ain't no...

They're turning around with the God. I said, see how easy it would be? They didn't appreciate my humor. So anyway, I told Barry, I said, listen, I'm having trouble with the lawyer. I got to get a lawyer that I couldn't find one. We use mine, use one. And I said, he gave me his card for his lawyer. And Murray and I went to the festival restaurant that night.

He knew that I liked that restaurant. my favorite dining Carl Gables. And him and Debbie came in, she was looking good, and we was about finished. I waited on them. We had dessert together. And it was my birthday, 19 and 85. And we got up and we walked out, and I just gave Barry a hug.

I said, I'm not going to do it, Barry, but they're going to kill you, friend. Oh, no, I said, Barry, they're going to kill you. Oh, no, Debbie. And so I took off in Marry and we went to Brazil. and we stayed down. It was only been down there for six months or five months, and he was killed. And I just went to the place with his son

a month so ago, and they did a memorial of his assassination and went out and had a nice party with the family. That was my short life with Barry Seal. I feel sorry if I like Barry, and I'm sorry that he turned, and I'm sorry that he's not here with us. Yeah, it's an,

amazing story. Yeah. I remember seeing the HBO, saw the one on HBO with, oh gosh, who played him on the one on HBO. This was back in the, I remember who it was. Oh, come on. I knew it very well, too. He was, he was, I don't know if HBO.

Dennis Hopper. Dennis Hopper. That's it. Thank you. Boy, you got a good memory. Dennis. And then I saw the one with Tom Cruise, too. which, you know, which, I mean, I thought they were both good.

You know, you only do so much. Oh, absolutely. You know, but I thought both of them were great. But it's, and I wondered the whole time watching the one, watching, was it American Made? Yes. Yeah, watching American Made. The whole time I was watching, I was thinking, I wonder if they're going to show, you know, him at the halfway house, you know, where they sent him to the halfway house. And the one with Dennis Hopper, I remember he says to the judge where they say, oh, you can do.

this and this, but you have to go to the halfway house. He's like, what are you talking about? You can't tell me I have to be here. The agent screamed at the judge. They begged him, said he will kill him. And he said, he should have thought of that first. That judge knew what he was doing. Yeah.

It was sure it was an execution. So how long did you, so you're on the run? Yes, I was on the run and I lived down in Brazil. We lived down there a year. and went on down to Argentina, right to the tip. We kept looking for a home. Mari just wrote her memoir, tell her about all my travels,

looking for a home. I felt like the bowievel, just looking for a home. Then we left there and went to Europe, and we lived in France a year, and I had some stuff shipped there, and it was bugged. So we fled France.

You had, like, your personal items? A ship. My mother was shipped him to Canada, and they came with a bug in them. How did you find out that they were bugged? When I went there, the other person acted really strange. I went to pick them up at Marseille at the shipping place. And so I left, like get out of here, tire squealing.

So I called the man in Canada. And, oh, he was a, he said, I wish I could have known how to get in touch with you. Yes, they bugged that stuff when your wife brought it here like three years ago. They put a bug in everything. So we had to leave France, and we went to Majorca, Spain. And I met Howard Marks. He was Mr. Nice. They wrote a book and made a movie of him.

And he hooked me up with the English Lord over in the Philippines. And that guy was nothing but a snitch. And everything Howard Marks did, it was like snake bit. He was just in there. And he knew that I was wanted. Yeah, I was wanted. So he had me hold hashis and turned me in every time. And I kept escaping.

I escaped three times from the police. What? So they, what do you mean? I don't understand. They arrested you once. You were moving, you were moving it for him, flying it? And I moved it with a ship. Oh, with a ship, okay.

So I was living in, Majorca, Spain, Memorial, and their children, three little children. And I bought a big ship, a 5,000-tonner, and I was hauling hash-ish out of Morocco and into England. And he did like three tons and sweatshirt you dough for him. He supposed to give me $2 million, and he turned me in. So he told me to go. He said, here's a new passport. Go to the train station in Amsterdam, and the man, they will be there. It would be a fat man.

He'll give you the two million. So like a little idiot, like a little fly and coming to my web, I flew to Amsterdam with the passport that he gave me. And I got there, a big tall Dutchman, young fellow. He said, is this your passport, sir? I said, yes. And he reached up, get closing. And he come in and grab my arm hard.

He said, come. And I said, what's, he wouldn't speak. So he wouldn't put me in a room. And there's five or six people in there with turban zone from India or Pakistan or somewhere. And there's four or five of those agents. And he was on the computers. He took my passport and stuck it on the computer and kind of turned like that. And I hit that door, bam.

And I ran through that crowd knocking people going left and right. And I went into a little room and out another window, and there was a long corridor. I mean long. Maybe, I don't know how long it was two or three hundred feet. And down to the where it goes out, and it was completely empty. I ran like crazy. And I got to the end of it, and there was a wall, 10 feet wild, and it was stainless steel. And it was an elevator.

And I punched it, and it zip. And I got in it, and it went down. And it was a pilot's lounge down there. And there was a KLM captain with the four stripes on it and a cap. I put that over my green coat, put that cap on, and walked out. And there was a crew coming from about 20 of them from a big 747. They was lined up there, the 747s. And I said, all right, I'll just follow that crew out.

So I just got riding in with them right behind them. And I walked quite a way. He's a couple of blocks. and I knew they had my picture, so I wasn't going to last long. But when they come to the gate up there, they was all showing their little pass, and they had two policemen there at that gate, and I said, oh, oh, I can't go. So I came back towards a building. And right when I got to the building, I said, can't go there.

I can't hide. And so there was a fence. I guess it was 10 feet high with barbed wire like that. I climbed up that fence and put that barbed wire at that time. I could do it pull up. and when I got up on top of two policemen came up in a van and they had the little guns out in their hands and halt halt halt and I jumped down into shrubbery from the top it was a high jump

I guess 10 feet and it was like the crown of thorns that stuff had thorns on it that big it just tore my legs up I mean it was you couldn't move I guarantee it was like nails sticking sharp ones wow and those policemen just right there It's halt, halt, and they're on their radios, but their radio don't go to the city policeman. There's four of them right across the road there. And I took that captain's uniform off or this coat and put it in front of those bushes

with the thorns and stomped it until I stumped to the edge. It was only six feet or so. And I walked across that freeway. We went through it, right by those policemen, and walked back into the airport where there was several hundred people waiting on loved ones to come through immigration, where I'd just been on the other side. And I got on gun in those and I knew they wouldn't find me. So I went in and there was an escalator going down Nardi trains to the trains.

And I went on one out. They might think I'm going to Amsterdam. So I'll get on the one going to Rotterdam. And I got on that plane and went in the bathroom at Brand New Train. And I closed that door in that bathroom and it went, and I said, my feelings exactly. And I stood there and tried to pick those storms out. And I got off at the first stop. And there was a bus, like a train bus out there with three coaches.

It had to rubber in between the road train. And I got in the very back and sit. And then I saw a little muscle car come slinging up to that station, and they come out with a paper, showed the guy, and he said, no, yeah. And then they just peeled out. So I knew they was looking for me. So I got, went to a haberdasherie and stopped and got me. and got me some tools to get the thorns out and I went to the train station of course nobody was there

so it was just so then I went to went somewhere for two or three months and I slipped back to I missed disguised myself and slipped back to C. Murray and Howard said I have the money come I pay you arrested again over the policeman the nose okay and all right it's over now so then uh And then I was, so I got away from them twice that way, and they're in the street, and then they arrested me later on and put me in prison in Spain, and I had extradition to the United States and to Germany. He had turned me in and I, about the German charge. So I got, I got nine years in Germany for using a German citizen in an international crime.

I'd never made a phone call to Germany or... What was this for the passport? No. because I hired a German citizen on that ship to be the captain. Oh, okay. And he told. And whenever they come to him, of course, he talked. I gave him $400,000, and he went back to his hometown,

and he bought him a long car and a long cigar, and he's smoking and bragging, and the police come and get the money. And he said, if you tell us who gave you this money, you'll be home for Christmas. They forgot to tell him which Christmas. Right. He got seven years. They knew nothing, nothing, if he hadn't a told. So they, they, you, you got nine years in Germany.

Did you do nine years in Germany? No. The year and a half I spent, when I, okay, when I was arrested in Germany, I left a good little part out there. They took me, had me in Mayorka, Spain as a medieval type buildings and town, and they took me to court. And because I'd skate from them three times, they made me naked, naked at night. They wouldn't let me have any clothes. They thought that would keep me from escaping. I had a blanket.

And they handcuffed me everywhere I went like this over my back. And all my paperwork used maximum restraints on every page. So they treat me pretty rough. So it got into court. And Mari was there with our son, and the court was full. And they have to take those handcuffs off from me from my back, and they take the leg irons off to go to court, and they put a little something in a little towel over your handcuffs

so you'll look decent. And I thought, oh, boy. So I'm up on the third floor, and it's high. And I asked the lawyer, I said, hi, hi, or when he said, you'll kill yourself. And I said, well, I'm about there already. So the four policemen are standing behind me. And the judge is a little slow coming, and we got a stenographer over there. She's nine months pregnant.

She's on black hair. He's doing her nails and sitting there. And I bound across that courtroom, bam, bam, bam. I jump on her death. She screams and slides that chair back, and there's a big window there high. And I mean, we're on the third floor. I kicked that window out, and you could hear a big sucking sound in that. I think Mark screamed in the hotel.

I kicked it out and I looked, and it was a long, long, long way down. It was 31 feet from the top, bottom of that ledge, and it was a car kind of parked up, a station wagon parked on, and I bailed out kind of sideways, and I hit that car in slow motion, and it went almost to the pavement. It went to the drive shaft. The ceiling did. And I jumped right of that car and got away. Down, outrun them. No broken feet.

No broken. I still have a spot in my back that's itches like crazy. It kills some nerves. They run me down with a car and a guy jumped out and knocked me down with a shotgun. I was almost there. Almost to the main intersection. I was reaching for a water truck to grab up to go. That was how close I come.

And the U.S. made me do two years on a parole. violation for that, what I did in Spain, and it's not illegal. Oh, yeah, I know. I've heard that. It's not illegal to try and escape. To escape, nothing. They've had a, they had a, I watched a documentary on a prison break.

Yeah. Where they broke into the prison using like a backhoe or something or a big bulldozer. They bulldozed in through the, into the prison. And the guys that orchestrated were on the other side, and they all just ran off. And they captured everybody eventually. Yeah, they usually do. But they, none of them got, they don't get new charges. In Australia, the same thing, you get three months.

And Germany is completely legal, but you have to send the clothes back. Now, later on, they said, they asked me up to Germany. And I got the nine years, but they gave me, okay, whenever I got, when they caught me up there after I got knocked down by the young policeman, and they drove me back that courtroom, and they took me a little room, and they worked me over. I mean, they, they, they, they, they weren't happy. They were screaming, we'd a bit.

That's the police. My mark was after her. I mean, she was just like it was a circus. That place went crazy. And so I was banged up pretty good. And I don't know if you ever, I've never had it once before, but you ever hear women picking up cars off of babies and stuff like that. Oh, yeah?

Well, I had one of those experiences. When they had me in that little room, that wouldn't bother me. I mean, I don't mind fist-fighting and knocking. around. It's okay. I don't like it, but certainly I was just shutting it. And one of them came up behind me and popped me on my, and opened like that, hit my ears like that. It done something. It changed gears on me. I slamming him upside the wall. I was screaming and handcuffs and knocking and kicking them. They couldn't get out that door quick enough. I mean, I was like, like, just had super, super strength that I never had. So anyway, the, uh, the German embassy is

heard that I was arrested and I was for extraditioned there. So he come to see me. Well, I was just blood. Even the next day, I wouldn't take it on again. So he saw me in that mess. So he reported it. And when I got to Germany, they gave me three days, three prison days for every prison day I spent in Germany. So a year and a half is four and a half years prison days, just like I'd been in Germany that long. And it was an eight-year sentence, I believe, not a nine year. He got seven, and I got eight. So with that, I mean, I didn't figure it up, but you had to do two-thirds of it.

So I'm almost there. I did one more year, and I'm getting ready to be, now that double-ext tradition, I'm going to the United States. I'm facing, and I'm not, I'm not facing anything, but I have 30 years of parole. And I'm telling them, well, they didn't mention the parole, but when you get back there, The judge don't care how you got there. It said, well, road board, don't. So I just didn't want to go back to the United States and face.

I didn't know how much time they is going to give me. So I escaped from that German prison in Lubeck, and it was one heck of escape. I lost my clothes and skin off of me. How did that happen? Sorry. I really, that was a plan to escape. It was a seal place. I mean, you couldn't get out of it.

I mean, it was almost impossible. But when I was so close to getting out, out, I could go beyond the seal, the door, and I could clean the lawyer's visiting room. And I go there with three guys, and the guard went to the office where the computers were with that guy that cleaned. So I had about 20 minutes. So I was claiming that I was sick in my heart and this and now, and they take you to town to a doctor, to the hospital.

So I went to see the doctor. But on the way back, I saw above the south. Alleyport, all that razor wire was removed. They was putting another wall adjusting to it. And I thought, boy, that is a way out of here. So I had to get out. And I got a guy, a mortar rope. They make these rubber boats for the Navy in there.

They got, we call them painters. They'd pick around as big as big as your thumb. And I told them I wanted to a jump rope. What? So I got to give them a book of stamps. And I got it, I cut it in two. And they got mops in there that they're big as whole hounds. Their stuff is rough.

It's that big around. Well, I cut that thing into, and I tied that rope right in the middle of it, good and tight. And I put it down my breech's legs. And the next day when I went to clean that Friday afternoon, I told the lawyer that was the ex edition, I said, I'll give you $10,000 if you'll be at that cross street. down there Friday afternoon at 510 or whatever. He said, nobody's ever gotten out of here. I said, I'm getting out of here.

I said, listen, mister, I'll give you $10,000, whether I make it or whether I don't. If you'll just promise, then you'll be there. He said, well, that's a mighty big bet on your part, sir. I said, do you promise to be there? Yeah, he said, I'll be there, but you won't be there. I said, all right, it's a bed I'm taking. So I

There was the bars on the lawyer's office was like piano notes There was like wide and that thick And you could kind of move them a little bit They weren't like big bar They meant to be pretty and it went out into the place Where they kept the equipment for the ball Football and all that So I tied the rope around it

Around them to and put the stick in it and twisted it Like you would an old propeller you know And I turned that thing loose and it Nearly knocked my knuckles off Wow, oh, it hurts so bad. So I got that straightened out, and I did it. I made sure it stuck this time, and I did the other one. And it pulled bars right apart.

Now I'm getting up there, and it's just pouring down rain. And I dig my head right through there, and my chest won't go. I take my shirt off. And then I almost die from, I get stuck. It won't go before, and I let all the air out of me. And I'm trying to go like this, and I'm going like this, and finally it catch, my skin catches, and I get a breath of air,

and it's just pouring down on me. That side of the building had a scaffolding all the way to the fourth floor. They was putting new windows in, and there was a little indent back, maybe six feet back, and I could get my hand on that scaffolding and grab the in between the bricks, the grot, and worked my way up to the fourth floor, and I'm above the guard towers.

Now, they'll shoot to kill for sure. There's like nine of them around that. and then I get above the Sally Port and I had to put my clothes back and I had to come on, lose my shirt so I don't have a shirt on and my pants had fell back but I got them back on and I got above the Sally Port and there's a guard tower and it's sticking halfway out

like a half silo and there's a guard sitting in there with a charge and the entrance way to come in and he's got a machine gun and he got a gun, shot gun and I don't found out what he had So I'm waiting. It's raining, and there's a guard and his wife coming in a little boy, about three years old. They're walking together under a double umbrella, and she brings her husband to the Sally Port door, and she turns around to go back.

And I jumped down one floor on top of that guard tower. Bam! And then I jumped. There was piles of sand, like he was snow skiing on the side. And I hit that mountain of sand and buried up to my knees. I didn't stop, and I ran straight to her. He couldn't shoot me. Then on past her, then I turned down, and I am stretching out.

I mean, the sirens are going behind me. And I hear, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam. And that woman is up on the sidewalk with a big old car, American car, and she's knocking down the sidewalk, blowing the horn. She's tearing that car up. And I thought she's going to kill me. And I'd run behind a car. There was one car.

And she tore the fender off of her car just wrecked. And she's looking at me with like a demon's eyes. Like, ay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And man, I can't go to the lawyer like this. So I go jump over a fence. It's a concrete fence. And it's got beer bottles on it. And I cut my hands and my arms.

I mean, I'm pouring blood. Not serious, but I mean, I got cut. I skin off here, and I'm all cut up here. And I jumped down in the garden on the other side, and I went up nearly my knees in mud and squash. And I pull them up, and my shoes come off, and Marry had slipped me $200 in the, in the prison visiting room, and it went out of my shoes, and I'm running my socks flapping.

And I go across on the other side of the block, and I'm sitting up on the retainer wall, and the linden trees and the rogu— She lost the woman? Yeah. Okay. She couldn't jump the fence, I reckon. So I didn't even remember anymore. So I'm about to go across the road, and I see a little mussel car back in.

Uh-oh. They had certain places they go when somebody— Then I went across, went back across that block, and I was standing up on there, and then I see the lawyer coming down in a blue combie. And I hollered, hey! And brake lights came on, and I jumped in that car, and it scared him nearly about the day. He tried to stop in a light of cigarette. I said, go, man, go, go.

And he took his coat off and gave it to me and put your coat off right there in the street. He was too nervous to even go. I guess he had heard the sirens He knew I'd escape So He said Did you see the old woman? And I said, no

He said, well, she sold you. So he knew he, I said, Do you take the license plates off like I told you? He said, no, I didn't think he was going to make it. So he said, I am in trouble. And so he took me to Hamburg And there was a fellow out for murder And he's out on bail.

I guess it must not have been and they took me to the Dutch, Dutch border, and I walked across and got into Holland, and Murray had buried $100,000 at my Linden tree. He said,

I'm sorry, you said there was a guy out on murder. I must, did I miss? He was a German citizen and he was out on bail for murder. Who was this? This was a guy that was my lawyer

was representing. So he took me to him to take me to Holland. Okay, okay. So I went there and this big old woman, and I said, I want a drink. Give me a drink.

You want to get to Holland? You better not have a drink with those guys. So I gave them, the lawyer gave me some money. So I gave them some. She said, you know, they came back with one little bottle like an airline bottle for me. Like, if we can't drink, you aren't either. So that was funny. They took me to the Dutch border.

And so I got to the Marys Cousins farm. And I had to walk a long way about 30 miles. And nobody picked me up, man. I'm going to look, I look like something. You ain't seen those come back that looked bad as I did, you know. So I, and they were with money buried? Yeah, she had $100,000 in two drums so that wouldn't, we done no in the ground that it gets wet. Boy, your wife's a trooper.

Yeah. She's a soldier. But she's real smart, too. She said, you go to the haystack, and then you go to the Linden Tree and take three steps to the right. Well, I got to the haystack, and these linen trees are 360 degrees, about 100 of them. Like, which linden tree? It was a big one, so anyhow, I just laugh about it, you know. So I got an iron rod, and I found it right away.

So I had $100,000 in Holland, and I stayed there for a few months until I could get a passport. And then I went back to Columbia and see about some work. How long does that last until you get, you get caught? Like you, you say see about some work. So you started flying things, or fly things. You started flying in, are you flying again or are you? I just want to see these photos. And I met, you know, I remember what was what, but yes, I met the, I believe it was that time.

I met the Aurelia, Miguel and Roberto Aurelia, they were the druggish. They were probably the richest ever, and they were the Cali cartel. They had a string of pharmacies. And I stayed in the house with Miguel, and he was a chess player, and I liked to play chess. So we played chess, and he had a mountain line in the house. And that old mountain line would come up. So after four days, he decided to use me, and they sent me to Canada to unload a ship with 20 tons and i was to make 40 million dollars okay what happened with that i'm assuming

well i'm up there i bought a salmon packer with a reel on the back because it was going to be in a in a container it was going to be on the line and every two meters was going to be a knot and a and a 25 kilos clicked on it well that string out a half a mile or maybe more and that hook it the reel on the salmon packer, and it would reel it in. I bought all that, and I had two big dump trucks to put it in, and a crane to put it over into the truck. And I'm calling Mario, the same, my friend down in Columbia, and saying, Mario, like, when's, and he says, get out, get out, leave, leave.

And I said, what are you talking about, man? Laylan Atisia, read the newspaper. So then I am there right there on the They're the people that I'm dealing with Operation Millennium worldwide I'll forget how many caught Every one of them was arrested And here I am that close

So we bought a pathfinder And we left everything that I had there I mean that about broke me Get out of here and we took across And went across Canada and went down to Georgia Had Pablo Escobar already been killed by this point Just wondering Yes yes by this time

Yes, he had been killed. That was one of them. The mountain line makes to talk that I've told this story, but I've told it, and I have a grin on my face, and people think I'm laughing. I'm not laughing about this story. It's just so bizarre and bloody until what do you do look like? Yuck. Okay.

There was a woman, Sonia de Attila, and you'll read about her in the Big White Lie, of the CIA and the crisis epidemic. And she was, when I met her there in Medellin, and she said she was on the way to buy, the United States to buy an airplane. And I said, well, I got an airplane to sell. And she said, what kind?

I said, a queen air. Oh, queen there. She thought she was queen of Bolivia. So I said, she said, if I like it, I buy it. I said, well, it's going to cost me $5,000 worth of gas to get it here. Let me give the man $5,000. So she gave me $5,000. And so I called him, I'll let it down you.

I said, bring that queen there to Panama. Okay, I'll be there tomorrow. And so we flew up from Medellín to Panama and waited on it. We was out on the patio, and it come in big. It's big lights on it. It looked like a jet coming in. So she bought the airplane. We said, but you have to go to Santa Cruz to get your money.

Yeah, listen, I don't like these people. telling me you go here to get the money, go here. Well, anyway, I want to sell the airplane. I'm selling it three times more than it's worth. Right. So it don't matter. You don't know what she's buying. She wants queen air.

Then yeah, she flies out to the island where the show had been kept there. It was right after that when he died in cancer. And I guess he died in Egypt, but he was looking for a sanctuary. And we went to the casino there right where he had been. And then I flew her in our entourage to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. and she was met with the police and flags on the front of the cars, and we got in it to go to her house and through the town when the sirens blowing for. She's a blackwood.

I mean, she's awesome. She was a Griseldo. Grasaldo. She was the same. Right. So we got to her house. Anybody wants to know it's under the water tank. Santa Cruz, Belivia, just off to the left.

And it's square, made a big chunks of marble. It's got a high wire fence around. it all the way around it. And all of her staff was outside, ringing their hands at the gate, and the gate was open. And she jumped out, what is the matter with you people?

What's the matter? What's the matter? Your line is eating the baby, signor. And she runs in the house, and I run into her, and she had one in mountain lines, and he's eating a baby. And there wasn't much left.

You know, you ain't even getting the guts and the little head and the eyeballs and the diaper on the floor. And it was a mess. Oh, Tom. Me time, and she gets him and takes him and other, he got blood all over. You know, she takes him and puts him in another room, and she goes, you idiot, what kind of idiots are you? Leaving a baby in front of a lion, you know.

Yeah. So, anyway, she fired them all, and I got my money and got out of there. Who's baby? One of the maids babies. Oh, my God. Yeah. Poor folks. Just poor folks.

So I didn't laugh. I think the first time I told it with Danny. Like, oh boy. So I've seen some gross things in my life with some evil people. Now she's in witness protection here somewhere. At what point do you get caught? Is it shortly? Like, this has got to be in the late 80s by now?

This is in 2000. Oh, this was in 1999. Yeah, that was that. I skipped some years and some rest and stuff like that. but they're not so flamboyed as the lion in the head folks, yeah. So when, at what point do you get caught, though, and go? Well, how does that happen? Like, how does that play out?

I had some, I went back to Santa Barbara and somebody told, and reported me. Oh, that. Yes. So they said, here he is. And he was a salve a chiropractor, and he turned me in. So I did, I got 11 years for parole violation. That's all they could charge me for. And that's the longest than anybody in the world I've ever heard of for a parole violation.

They gave me two years for each escape. From two years in Spain, two years in Holland. There's not American escapes. Exactly. It's not illegal there. So I filed a... You should have faced one parole violation. Of course.

Now, they would, but anyhow, they got me for... the five of three tons of hash she's, three and a half tons of hashish, that was five years. That was all he could care for parole. Then they got me two years from the escape in Spain, two years for the escape in Metropolitan Detention Center and Los Angeles, and two years for jumping out to courtroom in Spain. And that was six years when I took it to court, and the prosecution agreed with me and said that he could not. So the probe wrote me a beautiful letter. We will come back and give you another parole.

role hearing and you can expect a more favorable result and like an idiot cost me six years of my life i wanted it right now i want to get out because they think they're going to give me a favorable they came back and said we're going to take that uh all those escapes off of you however you're are you think you're like one of them vietnam veterans you can crawl out of them bamboo cages when you want to but we don't think that of you you are a bigger risk than we had originally considered So we're going to give you 132 months. How do you like that? I said, I hope you burn in hell.

I did 11 years. But they gave me the time I did in Spain, Germany, so I did about eight and a half years in Lompoc. Somebody ever murdered there every month. Bad, bad, bad, bad place. My buddy, Pete, did, I think, 10 years in Lompoc, something like that, yeah. It wasn't all that bad, but it was, it was dangerous. It depends on when you're there.

You know what I'm saying? Like sometimes things. You're bad for five or ten years and then they get okay and then they get bad again. I went there in 90 and I got out and I guess 98. You know, I was in the in Coleman. When I was there, it was nice. Yeah. It was the garden spot.

Now everybody's like, it's horrible, horrible. You know, after COVID, all the guards quit and the new guards came in and they're bringing in contraband and weapons and and cell phones and drugs. And now they got the drones bringing in drugs. And it's just, it's a cesspool now. Something's got to be done. This whole system's got to be changed from the ground up. The attitude of the people. Well, the amount of time they give out is, it's ridiculous.

And they don't care. It's just, can I get a parking spot? Can I get a raise? Oh, it just so much needs to be done. And I have, you could pay them more if you didn't have as many inmates. You know, if you didn't have it. them, half of them are in there mentally ill, and you know it too. Oh, the inmates?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But that's the thing. The prisons are the new insane asylums. They are. Well, they don't want not to be. No, no. They shouldn't.

And they want not to catch these people that these DEA with a needle hanging them out of him and gets under the bridge and gets this bum to sell two ounces or two grams of the other one. And he's got two bust. He takes it to court, young prosecutor, bam. You're going to get five. if you don't do two. They don't need in prison. They just, but they won't.

And so that prosecutor and that DEA agent, the bus like that, they're going to be caping. They're going to be major. They're going to go up the line. So it's just, it's just absolutely money for them and the system. It's wrong. Anybody listening, it ought to be changed.

Well, I mean, I can't tell you. Colby's heard this. People, you know, how many times I've had some guy come in here and they offered him three years and he says, Why, I didn't do anything wrong. Like, I, you know, maybe he owned a pill clinic, a pain clinic. And he's like, I'm not a doctor. Like, the doctor has prescribed the medication.

I just owned the place. And they, you know, we'll give you three years. And I didn't do anything wrong. And they say, okay, we'll go to trial. Ten. I got a buddy, I got two buddies. Both of them went to trial because they're like, I did not do anything. Yeah.

19 and a half years. Another guy got 19 years. I got a buddy who owned a, you know, you know, It was a, well, he didn't own it. He came in after it was already going, which was a Forex. They were trading and they were getting people's money and trading it. And he didn't realize all he was responsible for was to go out and raise funds or investors for the fund. He didn't realize they were running a Ponzi scheme.

And so he told the prosecutor, like, I didn't do anything. Matter of fact, when he found out what was happening, he's the one that went to the prosecution. He's the one that went to the government said, listen, this is what's happening. And they are losing, like, this is what's going. on and they said, well, we'll look into it. When they looked into it, all of the investors are like, he's the one that told us to invest. So they have a slam dunk case on him. So he gets indicted and he says, they said, well, give you like, you know, you'll get like two, three years. You plead guilty two, three years. And he said, no, I didn't do anything wrong. So he goes to

a trial, 17 years. And that's under the new law. Why was three okay? Three was okay. Well, absolutely. How does three? No, it just happens all the time. Well, I know. It should be. And I have a solution for a lot of it. And some of it's severe. I would say that they should put right in the middle of America a trade school.

And I mean, if a young man, you're going to get 10 years or whatever, a young man or a woman, he needs a trade. And they give him an aptitude test, he can be a plumber. Well, when you become a plumber, class A, you can walk out of here. No parole, nothing. That's your sentence. You can make a living. You're not going to steal cars if you can make $50, $100 an hour. Plumbers are making $150,000, $200,000 a year.

They often restart in Seattle for that. But I'm just saying, and even electricians, just any skilled people, I'm paying a mechanic $110 an hour in California for work on my car. Well, that's because nobody's going into the field and people are aging out. And so the gap is eventually it'll be outrageous. be able to charge whatever they want because there's just nobody in the field. Well, that's what they're doing. So a trade school, Australia does pretty good job with that.

But if they do it and say, that is your sentence. Now, you go in and do drugs and get in fighting and carrying on, you're going to go back out to Lompoc, where we've got a place for you. And I believe a lot of people would take them up on that. And we'd have a better world. Unfortunately, you don't get reelected by saying you're going to give these guys a trade. Well, it turns into, why are you helping them? They're criminals.

They should be locked up forever. Do a crime. Get a trade, you know. Yeah, exactly. And then they're like, oh, it doesn't sound good. They don't know. Nobody believe it. I want to get reelected.

Exactly. So it's just all money. I'm telling you it is. And I have another one. And I don't know that this would work, but it would be a wonderful idea. When I was down in West Australia, I was waiting and I was serving.

I'll tell you about that later on. But before I got sentenced, I got to thinking about and I wrote it and I said you know over the years we've been punished by many different ways hanging pulled apart so many years

doing this or the other now it's just prison and I said there's I forget how many it was 7,000 people on dialysis and I says some of those old policemen judges, prosecutors, all of you need a, you need a kidney.

I'll give up my kidney for 10 years off of my non-parole period. Yeah. But the prison doctor and the prison thought it was great. The state thought it was fine, and the federal wouldn't do it. So I'm thinking about, I'll guarantee you that it would help. Now, it would be abused. People would give these young men a lot of time just to get kidneys. So if we had an honest system, it would work.

work. You get people involved. You can have a perfect system, but people get involved. It's all that stuff. It's agreed. After I got out of the 11-year parole violation and all that stuff. Which is about eight years on. I had to do eight more on top of what I did in Germany and Spain.

They gave me the year and a half in Spain and a year in Germany and maybe a year and a half in Germany the time I went back. and so I needed to make some money so I called my old buddy and no I was out working out on the farm my sister's farm and I had my brother had just found three lockboxes full of money for me he's good on the computer so we had some money

I think a couple hundred thousand dollars there but I was staying out there on the farm my sister and these two guys showed up two Colombians fellows nice looking guys about 30 and they said the boss man wants to know if you'll take a load of

to Columbia to Australia and I said what do you pay and they said $20 million dollars you hook me up

let's go so I went and bought a nice sailboat and got it ready and then they come and I said could you I had to go

down by Antarctica to get around South Africa I said could you meet me somewhere off of Brazil or Argentina, I'll come in 50 miles in case I need something and refurbish me.

What do you mean? I said, well, something could break on a sailboat. Oh, no, no, we can't do that. So what wouldn't break? I said, one of these offshore supply vessels, I suppose, they're just like twin-engine airplanes. They've got two sides. And I said, when they get 40 years old, they sell them for scrap. And I said, he said, how much?

I said, about a half a million dollars. He'll go around the world. Instead of putting all that mud or whatever they take out, we'd clean it up and make fuel. Go buy one. So they gave me a half a million dollars. I went and bought one. That thing's huge.

I mean, it's a little chip. And so as soon as I bought it, they fled. So I didn't even know how to operate that thing. I got on it. I can run most anything. So I got, Mari got on there with me, and I didn't have a crew. And we were going up and down that in,

over there in Louisiana, Bahoma, trying to get up to the fuel docks. And what a mess we had. Murray had to put the big rope over to station for me. She's not my only crew member. That thing's 130 foot long. I mean, you're three, four stories up, like the North Sea fighters.

So anyway, I got one fellow on there, and my brother-in-law. So we took off, and we went to, I was supposed to load up in, the South Atlantic. And I went to Praia there in the African nation. I forget what it is,

Trinidad, Senegal. And I fueled up. And I'm waiting, and then the Colombian shows up. And he's supposed to have a Spanish passport, but he just got out of prison in Colombia. And he shows him his Colombian passport.

So he was troubled the whole way, really trouble. He had a bag of him understaged stone and he told his food. on the floor all kind of stuff of me to step around. We got into it pretty rough, and he finally got a knife, and we were walking around with his knife, you know, and I went and got the butcher knife, and I think,

you're ready? So kill me, kill me. I don't want to kill you, fool. So he had to ride all the way to Columbia. So I went out in the loading boat didn't show up three or four days, And here I am wasting fuel. I don't know how much that thing sucking, going up and down under the satellite. And they finally come out and throw the load over on my boat.

And they'd swarm over and try to steal everything on the whole boat. They'd about 15 people. I think there's Venezuelans, old raggedy tuna boat. So, anyhow, I got rid of those and went on and got down in the Southern Ocean. And I put it into the rudder room because it went up on her. and my brother-in-law is a big, strong football player, and I thought, okay, there's just a one little hole that went down into that,

and I put drums of oil and hydraulic oil and put a chain binder around it. I thought if they come here, they're not going to find out under that drawer. Anyway, I'm going along in the Columbia and Senor. We're going in circles. I get up, sure enough, we're going in circles. Well, I keep testing it, everything, hydraulic,

trying to find my way back, and I go in the engine room, and there's a pipe coming from that other room, and I touch it, salt water pouring out of, oh, my God. My brother-in-law, I'd ask him, do you check that every day? Yes. How is it?

Bone dry. Well, he just phoned a switch. Nothing come out, so he said it was dry. Of course, it's not dry. Those rudders, water comes up around, those big things at all the time. So I opened that thing up, and white bags and powder just popped up in my face.

it was pure white the water was that stuff had come up and floated and they little bolts in the top it just to warm up I thought we'd lost a whole load and the Columbia went into fibrillation his heart did he liked to die well we dipped and dipped and dipped

and dipped all afternoon it was cold down there he was done getting down towards the Antarctic water and where it had come up there was a box, and I reckon it was 24, 30 wires going this way and that to the autopilot, to the rudder, and that had been torn loose by the other thing, and it's all hanging there and all on them wires. Ain't no way. So we kept dipping and dipping until we almost paralyzed to get the water dipped down low enough,

and then I dove down and where the, uh, The pump, where it picks up, there's a screen there, and there's great big paint flakes that had fallen off of the wall when that stuff that water's flashing. And I reached, and I got a hat full of them, and he pumped it right out and got dry. Well. How much did you lose?

I think maybe 20 or 30 kilos. Out of how many? Out of a thousand. It wasn't nothing. But anyhow, it made that water. Anyway, I got. I got so high I couldn't even see.

I was just chewing my tongue. So I went in and I had to get some coffee in a warm shower and oh my goodness. And then I came back down there and how in the world we ain't never going to get there this thing, this autopilot.

The boat didn't even have a wheel on it. It just had a toggle switch up there to control all this. Modern. I got to put them together, color code to this, to color, code to that and having a little light in my mouth and trying to cut wire strip that it worked

perfectly after i put like 48 wires together my god's looking after me man i'm telling you what that thing i couldn't believe it so we went on and up came up under um so that i was i was down there i guess about 50 degrees south and i mean whales and we came by an iceberg and let me get out of here and the way or the waves got so big i thought it was on feet. They say they don't make them that big. And they used to put shields behind the people steering it. It looks like the water's coming to come and fall on top of you.

And the boat would come up out of the water like that and both of those big engines, and over and over it would ski down that wave and the bow would just stick under there. Just stop, boom. And it would just wait a while and then come to come up. And all that water would come just over the boat and come back out. It was a mess. and one of those barrels of oil, hydraulic, it was using about five gallons a day.

We had to have it, and it got loose on that deck out there. And I tried to get the two fellas come help me, and they ain't no way in hell I'm going out there. So I tied a rope to me and got out there in that swirling ice water and had to lasso that drum and get it bound down. That was rough. So I had a rough trip getting to Australia, and I came up in a place called Sharks Bay.

and I have visions, and I had a vision of getting caught. I had a vision of me laying behind me in my knee and putting the handcuffs on me, and I'm up in the water like this, and I'm crying, and I'm saying, poor, poor, poor Mari. I'm just like, poor, poor Mari. That's all it was in the vision.

And I saw him. I saw the guy, like, hit me in the head. And so I turned the boat, and I went like four, five, five, 500 miles from where I was supposed to go. I wasn't going to go into the offloaders. I was going to go up and find me a place to unload. So I came in a place called Sharts Bay, and we unloaded that in two zodiacs.

I had like 2 18-foot zodiacs, rubber boats. And I got it already into Columbia, and I said, let's go. He said, he jumped in with me and held on to me. He said, no matter how, no matter how, what? You can't drive a boat? No, signor, no. I have to make a harness out of it and drag that thing in through a sin and get it. It was dark and raining.

and we got it unloading in the clumming ran go get Joel that was gone no go get Joel and he set up with a flashlight with a blanket around and with a flashlight all night long on the rock go get Joel so anyway one of my sandals came off in that sharp rock and it cut the bottom of my feet till I had to have new skin grafted on well that fool set up there go call Joel so we tied the all we could tie the rubber boats to us to the rocks and one of one of the come around and it hit that stuff and those rocks like razors. It cut it and sunk it right there. And the other one got away. And it's out there so the boat's five miles out. I got to go get it. So I jump into water and I start swimming.

I'm trying to catch that boat just drifting. And it's drifting as fast as I can swim. And it's dark. I mean dark. And a fin cups around me about the high. I don't want to in a shipplace called Sharks Bay. They say there's tens of thousands of them there. And it scares me bad.

I pull my feet up, and I'm just trying to stay above water, not making anything. And it come by me again closer, having a look. And I say I was scared, and then the third time it blew, it was a dolphin. Well, I almost swam over that boat. When I got to go in again, I had more energy than I've ever had. I jumped in that anyway. I came ashore, and we sunk that boat and got stuff buried, Joel, and I did. and as soon as it got daylight

it was kind of raining there's some people fishing was waiting to leave and it went down down down you son's a bitchie down down down he kept me right in the head bam with a rifle and knocked the skin off of my head

and right on top of me just like in the vision grabbing me I mean it was rough there was a TRG the military type I guess that do that they took me in prison

I got 25 years and they appealed the sentence. Joe, I testified of Joel said he didn't know. I told him we're going to sell the boat in Indonesia. He got off. Jury let him go the third time. And he kept appealing it.

This is in Australia. In Australia. You got 25 years in Australia. Yeah. And then the crown appealed it. And they raised me to life. And they had me in a special housing, you know, a place back there with a one-way mirror,

just like in silence of the lambs. and when I went to court they had they had me like in a brink truck and they had a helicopter up overhead and two of them in front two them back we go to the court stairwell three secure

roof secure like 20 of them around they just blowing smoke so that's how they treated me down in Australia so I served and on the life sentence I served 18 years and President Jimmy Carter wrote a letter and said if appropriate

I'd appreciate you considering. He wrote it to the Attorney General, my friend and neighbor Roger Reeves for parole. And when I got 18 years, they paroled me. And they put me on a plane with three of their marshals, handcuffed. We laughed and talked all the way back across the ocean. And I figured that they might arrest me when I get back, but there were no charge.

They've got a parole from 43 years before. So I wait until everybody else. They wait until everybody else to get off the bus, me and the three nice policemen from Australia get off. And there's seven Mexican, what do you call them, Border Patrol. That woman slowns me into the wall and busting my nose, kept my feet apart. She's a tough little rooster, I'm telling you.

And I said, woman, if I had a bulldog as ugly as you, I'd shave its ass and teach him to walk backwards. So anyway, I didn't help. They put so much chains on me, and they walked me just about a block and gave me to the marshal, took it all off, but one set of handcuffs. That's how I was treated to come here. And then the marshals took me all day long. They sent me at that airport, bearing that little office.

And I got up to throw an apple core, and he said, if you stand up again, I'll chain you to the wall. That's what kind of reception I had after open prison in Australia. So they came in and put me in the chokie in Metabon. detention center, and there I stayed for a year. No charge, nothing. Nothing. The warden had come by and stuck his little thing up. Mr. Reeves, I want to see what you look like.

We saw your National Geographic documentary. It does me pleasure to keep you in isolation. And there I was. Supposed a parole, but they never serve me a paper or nothing. Not one thing. Mario give a lawyer $7,500, and for all you listen, His name is Cannon. I wish I had a big one for him.

Yes, Cannon up in San Francisco. He didn't even make one phone call. Nothing. So somebody got to him and to me. And so the COVID, there were so many of them died in there with me. They transferred me down to Terminal Island. And I believe 11 people died in there with me. And they got me in isolation, and I won't come out.

Dead man walking out there. And I'm washing him with my sock. we're pushing a little bit of water. I don't care. I got two books a week and one other thing come by. And I let one young fellow from Central America come and stay with me for a while. That's a sad story there.

And anyway, one day they just come, says, go home. They was just all the guards. There's so much they were scared of that COVID. And they just let me out the door. No discharge. nothing. Well, I mean. And so I was on parole and I was on parole, I don't know, three or four months and had

me pee in the bottle every week. I said, listen, I've been in 33 years. I've never had a drug. What are y'all doing this for you? Who's making this money? You know, so. Then one day they just said, you're off parole. I never saw them.

I never saw a parole officer nothing. I just went to that lab to pee. Hmm. That was my. What year was this? Well, this is... 21, 25 years ago.

When did you write your book? I wrote it when I first got to probably about 2002 or three. I was in, when I was in the, when they raised my sentence to life and I was back there in solitary, it was like the movies of Silence of the Lambs. They're looking at me from one-way mirror. And five of them come in and open my door in the morning. And I could cook for myself.

They brought the food in. and when I got that there was a computer in there but it uh I didn't know how to use a computer and got it turned on and I can type and it didn't have a program where it had a thing called paintbrush it comes with the computer yeah but you could just you can type but it don't type in you know no so I sat down there and I said all right I better I got life I better write some of these things from my great-grandchildren people that never

are going to know me so I started writing child children stories about my childhood. And I got into it. And I wrote every day, sometimes in the tears just come down my face as I would write, as remembering love once a long ago, you know. And it just, it did me good.

It was, oh, wonderful. So I wrote over a million words in one line with no, no abbreviation of nothing. And so I stayed in that place one year, and then they let me out. And a few months later, I got into a place called self-care. And they let me buy a computer. It wasn't hooked up to anything, but you could buy programs working.

And I worked on that thing for a year. I guess I cut three quarters of it out. And I wish I'd have kept every bit of it on that computer. Now, it's become the number one bestseller for true crime. Nice. Nice, yes. I got some good out of it. When did you publish it?

Mari published it in 2016. Smuggler. And they wouldn't let me send one word of it out, not even a page of it out of the prison. So there was a fellow in there. He was a skydiver. Well, I guess he could send a page out, but you certainly wouldn't let me send that book out.

And I had it bound in the prison. You know, we had a print shop in there and start with. I had 12 copies. Most of them disappeared. But so there was a skydiver in there. And he said, you want your wife to have it? Yes. He said, get her to get an email address.

What's that? But she'll know. Get it. And so I called Mario, talked every day 20 minutes. And so she got an email, and he just, from the back of that computer, put a little wire to his phone. She had the whole book. And we had several people look at it to edit it. And I said, no, I don't like their writing.

Leave it just exactly like I wrote it in that prison cell. So there's not one dot, not one T changed. People say it's raw, but people like it. Some, it's a good seller. Have you been approached by any producers to? Yes, Apple kept it for two years on an option, and they hired two writers, and they wanted a 10-part series, and they had, what's his name, the English right, no, you know, you arranged media, but who was the actor that came in Taryn Eagerton?

He played Elton John. Okay. And he was to play me. So that kept on for two years. And then about a year ago, Apple said, we don't like what you wrote. And they said, kicked into guts. I mean, they've had it for two years. Exactly.

They couldn't, you know. So now I have a very, very famous movie star. I won't see his name because he wants to make a love story with 10 episodes of Mari and I. and what she's done in using her book. She's just got out to smuggler's wife. And her book is released right now? No, but it's ready. She's completely ready.

All we've got to do is put the pictures in. I think when you get back next week, we'll upload it. It's hard to, you know, what's this? Convert isn't the right word. To make. Yeah, it's hard to turn, you know, such a large book, probably, into, well, obviously, it'd be difficult to turn it into a film, but a multi-part series, it would be easier.

Minimum of ten parts. Now, the fellow I got now, he wants to be never-ending, like Little House on the Prairie. Right. He said, it could go on a long time. Yeah. Yeah, and they can do that. They can do that in lots of ways. They could just extend the book itself, or they could do so many seasons with the book, and when the book runs out,

It just continues as like... Well, there's 43 chapters there, and each one of them could be a one of them. Right. Yeah. But even if it couldn't, then by the time... Yes. Like, Orange is the New Black. Like, after the first season, it was over.

Yeah. But they built the characters. People like it. Then they just, it kind of becomes... Oh, absolutely. You know, it kind of becomes fiction-based. But it's, I mean, or true crime based, but the scenarios are fiction. But you're going to show my book?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've come all this way to advertise this book. I mean, we're going to... I'm going to do a little something. Oh, you got Barry Sale on the front. We got Barry. We got Escobar.

I have his poster. I have his mugshot on my, in our green room. I've had enough of Mr. Escobar. So how long do you think it took of you to write it? Only about three months, I think, if that. And that was four times bigger than it is now. And it covers your life story. The whole life, yes, everything, yeah.

Because I could tell just from this podcast, you could go for 10 hours if you... Oh, yeah. You're leaving a ton of stuff out. Oh, absolutely. And how long did you... Were you on... You were on Lex Friedman? How long was that?

Two and a half hours. Okay. But now seven hours on... Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan, that's up. And then I... Oh, I've been on a lot of podcast. Yeah.

You were on Danny. We talked about that earlier. You were on Danny's... Danny Jones. It was concrete at the time. Yeah. Now they call it Danny Jones. Okay.

I called him. The Rascal won't return my call, so he can just call me, Danny. Let's see, who is it Patrick Bet David? Oh, yeah, yeah. I enjoyed that one, too. Yeah, he's very tall. He's very tall. And then one was a big Herc.

I loved him. I'm telling you what I would hold him. I've been on all these shows, by the way. I've been on Big Hurt, too. Yeah, I have not been on Sean Ryan, but I've been a Big Herc. I've been on Patrick. David, you know what it was called then when I was on it? It was a valutainment.

Me too. Oh, okay. Do they still call it valutainment? Yes, I think so. Oh, me too. Okay. So that was a while. That was a few years ago.

Yes. And really, really nice. Some of these people, yes. When he moved to, I don't know where he's somewhere in South Florida now. Yes, that's where I met him. Oh, okay. About three years ago. I liked him and they did a good job.

Yeah, they did. He had a very professional. He probably one of the most professional. studios that was set up. It's beautiful. Right. And I want to get on Joe Rogan. He talked about me 20 minutes.

He said, is he out? Can he come? I want him on my show and talk to Lex Friedman. And so he sent me the paper, but they never did respond to it. I think that Lex Friedman took the guts out of it. Yeah. And so he said, what am I going to ask after that? Right.

That's probably what it was. Yeah, I was on Lex for forever. He just kept saying, you know, it's funny because I kept, wanting to wrap up the story because I felt like I talked too long. You ever feel like that? No, I just wait until somebody kick me out. See, I kept saying like, hey, I can wrap this up in like five. There's a stopping place here.

Like I can, he's like, no, keep going, keep going. And I was like, and then it just kept going. When we were done, when I was finally like done, I was out of prison, I was, you know, he said, how long do you think we've been talking? I was like, gosh, I said at least three hours, at least what? three, four hours, and he was like seven and a half hours. Exactly. He trimmed it down to six and a half.

I was like, my wife was waiting. I had left her in the lobby, and she said she was going to go shopping and get some lunch. But I had turned my phone off. So I have no idea where she is. It goes quickly. I'm thinking I might be safer staying with Lex than leaving here. I mean, when he said. I was like, oh my gosh.

And I turned it off. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. She's like, okay, it's okay. I'm fine. She went, parked the car in like a garage and climbed to the back and just fell asleep. She's a trooper too. Oh, good, good. I don't think she did, I don't think she was, she'd have gone to the lengths you went to.

But yeah, at some point she'd been like, listen, this is too much. She went and crawled under a prison and where the batch are coming out and show you where to cut out? No, no, no. No, she'd have been like, well. Listen, I'm going to put money on your books and I'm going to come see you, but I'm not going to end up going in myself. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you've really, oh, my gosh. Yeah, you've probably got a great story.

It's wonderful. I read two books a week and I know it's good. How old are you? 83. 83. And I can still do 100 push-ups without slowing down. I mean, you're very sharp. I'm sure you get asked this.

Like when you look back, going back to that first trip, like what are your thoughts? Do you, I mean, you've lived an extraordinary life? Like, do you think, would you change anything? I know it's... Regrets. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I really regret leaving my family for 33 years.

Yeah. And I regret the life that I didn't live. 33 years in prison is a long, long time. And let me tell you about me coming home when they find. finally let me out. I might just about cry if I tell it. It's just emotional. I got home, and our house, of course, is gone. We got a small condominium, and Mario was waiting for me. And she's a felon in Australia, so she couldn't visit me. She brought $11,000 down for my defense, and it was in American dollars, so she didn't declare it in customs. So they came in her door

kicked her door down, and they're trying to get me to talk. And they arrested her. Where did you get this money? I brought it my husband's defense. You didn't declare it. I just says, so do you have over $10,000 Australian funds? I had none. So I said none.

So now she's handcuffs, go to court, and they take the money and charge her $1,000. She has to pay $1,000 to the logger that's sewed up with her. Now she's a felon, so she can't visit me. So she can come say good to buy to me through the mirror with our hands on the wall. like that. But then I serve 18 years there and come back here in one year in Los Angeles during COVID. Nobody's visiting there, so I don't see, we don't see each other for 19 years. Wow. And then I just, all of a sudden, we don't know that I'm getting out. They just let me out. So many were dying in there, and it was kind of a hospital place that I was in for old people. And I come

home. And we were shy. I say just the nicest word, just cautious, just shy. It's cautious, a nice hug. And she said, get those prison clothes off, and I got your clothes. So I took the clothes off, and she went and put them in the garbage chute to get rid of them. I had. And I went in there, and I showered and scrubbed myself raw, hot water.

Man, it felt so good. I went in the room too small. bedroom, and one big room, and one little one, and she had the clothes laid out there for me. And all of those clothes, I'd been 40 years. I'd been gone 38 years. And some of those clothes, a lot of them are 40 years old. And I put them on, and I thought, God, was I ever this rich? It was just really nice just to put your clothes on.

They fit perfect. And I put the shoes on and tied them, and I took a step, and they came apart, the soles laid on the floor, all the strings had rotted. He just like, ah. And she wanted to show me pictures. I couldn't look at them. I wasn't there when she was 50. I wasn't there when she was 60.

I wasn't there when she was 60. I wasn't there when she had cancer. I had to go through all that hospital stuff all by herself. It's just like, yes, I have horrible regrets that I wasn't there. The children and their weddings and their graduations and daddy's not there. He's off in prison somewhere. Yes, it's just, it's sad. really sad. And some people, you have regrets. Of course I have regrets. And I understand how I did it.

I understand how I kept one. I understand how I wanted to do it. But looking back, would you do it again? No. Are you crazy, man? They're not even a question about it. Yeah, I could have done anything I wanted to. They always kills me when those guys say, oh, I do it again because, you know, maybe the man I am today. It's like, you're an idiot. You do an extra 10, 20 years? Like, come on, man, that's foolish. That's just something people tell themselves. You just don't know. I know that I know I didn't have to do the time that I did, that if I would have testified,

they came three times in Long Park Penitentiary with a prosecutor and the DEA agent and said, we will take you out today. You can go home and your wife, and we put you on witness protection, but you've got to tell them Jorge Ochoa and the pilot that I hired in California. Well, they didn't even know it was not.

name. And I just couldn't do it. So, yeah, it's just, just unbelievable. So where can people get the book? That's where you want to send people, right? Anybody's watches. It's on Amazon. It's on Amazon. And I read it, and I get by as many audio books as I do book sales. They let my voice. Is it your voice? Yeah. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, you look, did you read the back of that? No, I did not. Well, you'll read that For us. Well, you don't want to hear me read. I don't read my own book.

Can you read it? I'm going to read it for you. Okay. All right. Nice picture of me here on the back right there. Look at that. I'm telling you. I had hair.

Roger Reeves grew up a poor farm boy in Georgia and went from making moonshine to become the most prolific smuggler of the 20th century. He covered six continents, transporting 20-toned shiploads of hash, tonne. tons of and completed more than 100 shortages across the U.S. border with planes loaded with America. His friends and associates span the globe from Medellin Cartel Kingpin, Jorge Ochoa, and Pablo Escobar, to Mr. Nice, Howard Marks, and the infamous Barry Seal, who was Roger's close friend and employee. He escaped from police custody and prisons on five separate occasions. He was shot down in both Mexico and Colombia and tortured almost to death in a Mexican prison.

Despite five decades of a real life, Indiana Jones adventure, the sparkling Roger's eye and the smile on his face remains. Nothing is made up here. It all happened, and you have probably never heard of him. Then, Your Honor, Mr. Reeves is not a drug dealer. Your Honor, Mr. Reeves is not a drug importer. Your Honor, Mr. Reeves is a drug industrialist with a fleet of ships and an Air Force of planes.

at his disposal. He spanned the globe for three decades with his death and destruction. He should never see the light of day as long as he lives. Lane Phillips, federal prosecutor before Judge Hatter, December 21st, 1982. Where do they find them? It's funny at the time that was probably devastating to hear, and now you're like, that's a great quote. I said, that fool stood up in front of a mirror all night long practicing there. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, if you want to get Roger Reeves' book, we're going to leave the link to the Amazon book in the description box. You can go there.

You can click on it. It'll bring you to Amazon. You can buy the book. Also, he has an audible, which the link is also there. It'll bring you to audible. You can buy the audible version. Roger, unlike myself, reads his own book. His voice is great. sells a ton of them. People love the audible version. Please go there. Please buy a book. I really do appreciate you guys watching.

Thank you very much. See you.