Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Hunting Griselda Blanco | Miami's Most Evil Queenpin

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

Taking care of your health just got easier – start here with Zocdoc: https://zocdoc.com/ITC #sponsored⁣ ⁣ New customers get 40% Off with code COX at https://GLD.com #sponsored⁣ ⁣ Matt Cox sits down with former Miami detective Raul Diaz to share how he went from leading a Cuban street gang to becoming one of the investigators who helped track the violent rise of Griselda Blanco and Miami's dust wars, revealing the corruption, danger, and high-stakes investigations that shaped the era. Despite years spent facing some of the country's most notorious criminals, Diaz reflects on the choices that kept him on the right side of the law and the purpose he found through a lifetime of service.⁣ ⁣ Check out Raul's book here - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1970361247?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_1Z300M0MTFKBY2SF1SXJ&bestFormat=true⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Shop my merch: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MatthewCoxCollection⁣ ⁣ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have Griselda going on a rampage, killing competitors. People she owed money too and people who owed money. I was born in Cuba in Havana, Cuba, 1947, a long time ago. And my brother and I left Cuba in 1961. We came to the United States via an operation called Pedro Pan, Peter Pan. 14,000 young Cuban children were picked and were brought here to this country. We didn't know whether our parents were going to come or win. So my parents took a chance sending my brother and I here.

My brother and I were fortunate in that we had our aunt and uncle in Miami. So we stayed in Miami. But of those 14,000, many thousands. left Miami and went to orphanages throughout the United States, Catholic orphanages or foster homes that were part of the Catholic Church of the Archdiocese in their towns. So we had kids who one morning woke up, their maids dressed them up, their chauffeur drove them to the airport,

and then they came to this country. and they were sent to an orphanage or a foster home in a new country with a new culture, new language, and no money. So what is the reason that they're coming to the U.S.? Is that just because things were so bad at that point? At that point, Fidel Castro threatened with taking the responsibility for children away from the parents. Okay. So he was going to let the state raise us. And our parents were afraid of what would happen to us.

Right. They were afraid of the indoctrination. They were afraid of our safety for our safety. So they sent us here. So an orphanage in the U.S. was better than the communist government in Cuba. In 66, I graduated from Drexel. I went to Miami-Dade Community College. At that time, I was the president of the Lords,

a Cuban gang in Miami Beach. It turned out to be the biggest Cuban gang in Miami in the 60s. But it's not like the gangs today. I mean, we were not into, you know, dope or anything like that. We were more into making sure nobody beat our asses. because for a year or so before, you know, all the kids were ganged up, American kids mostly. And for instance, in Hyaliyah, next to Miami,

they used to go Cuban hunting on Friday nights and Saturday nights. So we wanted to make sure that if they came hunting for us, we'd be ready. Right. So there's strength in numbers for us? Absolutely. Yeah. In 1967, two of the guys from the gang and me, we went up. to up A1A on a surferi.

We stopped on most of the beach towns on A1A looking for the perfect wave, right? Right. Which we found in Ocean City, New Jersey. But when I was there, my girlfriend calls, I called my girlfriend to see how things are going on. She's doing, and she says that my vice president wants to talk to me.

do I call him. And he tells me that one of the guys who's with me is planning and bringing about 500 to a thousand hits of from New York. Good. So you were going up to New York? Okay. Yeah. You were going to come back.

But that, that, but, you know, when, when the government sees a car for transporting narcotics, they take the car. Yeah. They took the very seriously, too, right? So that was my parents' car. Right. And it really pissed me off that these guys were playing. One of them was planning on bringing that shit in my car, you know.

So I came, that night, I didn't say anything. I packed up. And the next morning, I just drove straight to Miami. That was enough. With them? With them. Oh, okay. Should leave them?

No, no, no. I leave them. I brought them with me. What did they say? when you turned around, they must have noticed you weren't. I told them. I didn't say anything, the rest of the drive. So I got to Miami, I slept a little bit.

And that night I fired 14 of my very, very best friends, guys that I had met, that were my friends since we have all gotten to Miami. I got rid of them. Right. So. Because this had happened behind your back and you couldn't trust them. Yeah. Okay.

No, it's because, I mean, how they, you know, they put my parents' car. They would have put my parents' car in the age of my parents. They didn't have money to buy another car. Right. You know? So I, when we came back, we started the school year of 67, and I had applied for an internship with Miami Beach Police Department. And I got it. It was part of a program from college where you worked at a police department.

And you got paid, and then they give you credits for the hours that you put in. So I started working in Miami Beach Police Department. When I got there, they put me on. They put me to work in the ID section. What is the ID section? The ID section is, for instance, we had a very heavy volume of fingerprint cards that needed to be classified because Miami Beach, in order for you to work in Miami Beach, you needed to get a civilian employee ID,

but you had to be fingerprinted because they kept felons out. So we, I, as a cadet, had to classify all those cards so they could file them. So I started doing that, and then one of the detectives who worked juvenile comes up to the ID section

and sees me working there. And he said, what is the president of the Lord's doing, working in us? So they called me in. I went and I had a conversation with the juvenile's exit. And they said, okay, we're going to give you a chance. But when they found out, people in the narcotics found out. And I found out when I came back, who was going to sell, who was selling drugs to my guys? Okay.

So I spoke to the people on narcotics. And I said, look, these guys are selling dope to my guys. And they said, well, what are they selling? Oh, marijuana, acid. So they say, can you set up a control buy? I have no idea what that is. Yeah. But then after that, I did it many times with my guys.

It's where you go to buy the drugs, but you're searched and give them money that's marked. Your search to make sure that you not carry any contraband that can be, you know, that you can say that, you know, they sold me that. Right. So I went there and I got, I went with two guys. And I bought one ounce, one ounce of, in 1967 or $25. That was my first buy. And then they said, we'll see if they sell you.

Two pounds. Two pounds? Two pounds, yeah. So he went from an ounce to a pound? Yeah. Okay. And they did. They was, so it was set up to go down the guy's apartment, one of the guys apart.

A guy lived right almost right across the street from the police apartments. So I went there and I purchased that two pounds. I came back. I opened the truck of my car. That was a signal. And all these guys in, you know, uniform and any plate clothes came. They picked me up, they threw me on the floor,

I said, oh, shit, these guys forgot. These guys forgot I'm working for them. You know, what are they doing? To make it look good. They made it look real good. So then we were all handcuffed. I was putting a cell with one of the guys, and he would talk, I would talk to him, he would talk to me.

Anyways, these two guys got five years, four of two pounds of my men in 19. It was incredible. I mean, today you take it and you flush it, you know. You don't even arrest somebody for two pounds or grass anymore, you know. So anyways. Did you do, if you did, if back then, if you got five years in the state of Florida, did you do five years? Or did you-

In those days, you would do maybe like three years. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There was not the mandatory minimum that they have done. That came out in the 80s. So. I never used to think about jewelry as something I'd wear regularly.

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Use promo code Cox to get 40% off at gLD.com. That's 40% off with promo code Cox at gLD.com. They transferred me to juvenile. And then I started helping them with the gangs that were coming over from the mainland to Miami Beach, identifying people, stuff like that. So I graduated from Miami Day. You said people that are coming from what? From Cuba? From the mainland?

No, no, no. I'm sorry. From Miami? From Miami Beach is an island. Oh, okay. Yeah. I've never heard that. Yeah, Miami Beach is an island.

You have three bridges that are going into the beach. Yeah. So the mainland was Miami. So then they had a lot more gangs than Miami Beach thing. So I graduated from Miami-Dade and I started working, pending my citizenship. Okay. It would take several years with a residency,

and then I was not eligible to take my citizenship exam until 1970. I had to quit Miami Beach Police Department because I was no longer in college. You know, one interesting thing that happened when I was working at the beach. I had a part-time job also working at a drugstore with a stock inside the drugstore. And one day I come in, and I see. the captain in charge of internal affairs inside the store talking to the owner and I'm thinking, Jesus, what did I do?

I mean, the only connection that I knew between this door and the police apartment was me. So when the captain is leaving, he says, hey kid, come here. His name was Captain Shemp. Nice guy. He says, I don't want you to worry, but I don't want you to tell anybody

that you saw me here. I'm going to tell you what happened is that last night the store was brought broken into by two police officers in uniform, in police cars and they were seen by a Canadian tourist who was walking a dog

wow so you know after another thing had happened my soon-to-be mother-law was working for a man named Eli Quain he's dead now a long time but he used to be an associate of Santo Traficante,

and he was very friendly, very friendly with judges and the chief of police. What his store got broken into, and they stole a whole bunch of stuff from the store. And he was to cops. So, you're so, so, can you imagine this now? On a roll call, at 11 o'clock from 11 to 7, the captain showed up for the roll call,

and he said, gentlemen, we had a problem. We had a B&E over Eli's store, and we all know that Eli is a good friend of our chief. So I don't want to know who did it, although I know who did it, but I don't want a confession. All I want is all the stuff that was stolen from Eli's

to be placed back outside the store tonight. And the next morning, everything that had been stolen the night before was there outside the store. Now, that scared the hell out of me. you know, because I didn't want to go into a police department where, you know, all this was going on. Yeah, there's a lot of corruption.

No, when I got my citizenship, the guys from the beach were pushing me to take the beach exam and go with Miami Beach police rather than with Metro Dade. So I took both. But what I did is I made sure that I failed Miami Beach's test so that I would have an excuse to go with Metro, I get notified from the beach that I'd failed the exam. And I get notified from Metro that I passed it, about 89.

And that night, my soon-to-be mother-in-law's boss calls me at home. He says, hey, kid, oh, how are you? How are you? He says, congratulations. I said, thank you. I thought he was talking about Metro. Yeah. He said, yeah, I talked to Rocky.

Rocky was a chief, Rocky Palmer's, and he told me you passed with a 90. I passed the beach test. I said, no, no, no, no, Eli, there must be a mistake here because I got the letter. No, no, no, no. The mistake was made in the letter. No, no, no, no, no.

You passed with 90. So they want to set you up to take the polygraph. And I said, Eli, listen. It can be because I know I failed it on purpose. What do you say? Oh, well, you know, you don't want to go to the beach? No, I don't want to go to the beach. Well, you think he pulled some strings or something or just?

Did he pull some string? Like what? He did. Oh, okay. He was a friend of something that's a bankruptcy in Miami Beach, you know? And I went with Metro. You know, but it was, it was, imagine. I mean, you know you, but you already have the letter in your hand.

Yeah. Where you only got 50%. And then this guy calls you, said, no, you got 90. Yeah. Yeah. If you didn't have proof of the corruption before that, now for sure. Yeah. So, where did you start?

Like, do you start on patrol? Did you start in? Because you'd already had an internship. I went to the academy. starting December, 1970, and I graduated in May of 1971. When I was in the academy, I had a problem with Sergeant DeLucah, New York recycled that we were, came down to Miami-Dade. He calls me out of class one day and takes me into his office.

He says, why is the... the Department of Justice asking questions about you. I said, I have no idea, no idea. He says, well, I had a guy from a Department of Justice come here and he wanted to know how you were doing. You know, if you had any problems, no, I'm going to tell you some, if there's an issue with the Department of Justice,

I want you to resign right now. I said, I'm not resigning. Well, I'm going to be looking for you. I'm going to be looking out for you. I'm going to be watching you. I said, okay. So I'm thinking I had no issues of the Department of Justice, you know,

but my soon-to-be father-in-law had been with the CIA and had worked with E. Howard Hunt for many years. And he had asked Howard to go to the academy and find out I was doing. And that's what happened. E. Howard Hunt is, he's the guy from the Watergate. Is he the one?

Okay. Yeah, he sure is. He, E. Howard Hunt, was also the CIA's man in charge of Bay of Pigs. All right. In 1961. And my soon-to-be father-in-law worked for him in the CIA during the Bay of Pigs training. Yeah, training and the eventual landing. So I graduate May 1971, and I go to uniform.

They put me in Liberty City. Liberty City is mainly blacks, very poor. And so it was considered in the department that six months, and Liberty City was equal to three years in any other district as far as getting experience. I go there and I got chosen. Before you get there, can I ask you a quick question? Yes. So we're at Liberty City.

What is your take on the Bay of Pigs? Just curious, for somebody who was there, you know, in that time air, that air, because I've, one, I read a book that had been written. this was when I was in prison, this is, gosh, this is probably 15 years ago. It was written by a CIA

officer that had been a part of the training and was on one of the boats when they were basically being slaughtered and that was rip begging for fuel and everything else

even though they kept, they held the beachhead for several days. I think that was ripped. Okay. The book they do read? Yeah. I think it was ripped.

And it was just, it was just, you know, it just was... He was in the training, yeah. It was extremely critical of Kennedy. So I'm wondering what you... Because I've seen other people are like, oh, they didn't hold it.

What do you mean they didn't? Like, I, after reading the book, and maybe it's just my take on it because of the book, but it seemed like they did everything and then some of what had been agreed upon and Kennedy just let him get slaughtered. That's what it seemed to me.

I don't know, but what is your take? My thing, initially, I would say I'll get when it happened. I mean, I would think you would have when it happened. when the landing happened. So I thought, always thought, that Kennedy had betrayed us, the Cuban people. That was my thought. My father-in-law thought that Kennedy was a hero

because he inherited this very poor plan from Eisenhower's people. I mean, the area where they landed was Marsh. You know? So he and he said that Kennedy continued to wage a war against Castro, but through the CIA and very, very quietly. So my father, no, admired Kennedy. He didn't make it very well known because he would have to explain.

Yeah. So, but that's, that's, I had inside information on Kennedy. So that's how I feel. But I'll tell you something that happened. When Kennedy got killed in the afternoon, we were sent home from school because Kennedy had been killed, so they stopped the classes. And we went to Cresby Park in what we lived in Miami Beach, and we were playing basketball and laughing and yelling and screaming.

And a guy across the street from the park said, hey, what are you guys doing? Don't you know that President Kennedy was killed today? And one of my guys, one of the guys who was playing basketball, two of the guys, the Argoeus brothers, their father was in jail in Cuba because he was part of the invasion forces. And Kennedy, and they felt like Kennedy betrayed him. and they hated Kennedy. So when the guy says that, Carlos, one of the guys says, hey, you know what?

Fuck you and fuck John F. Kennedy. And the guy goes inside the house, comes back with the rifle. One of my guys had thrown the jazz basketball to the net. And I tell you, before that ball hit the ground, we were over the fence on the other side of the park. And we didn't go to the park for a few days. Years later, I saw the guy again. I was in uniform when I'm driving to work.

And I see the guy, and I have plenty of time. So I stopped by and said, hey, officer, I'm going to give it. And we started to, and I told him what happened. He starts laughing. He goes inside the house and said, I, Jesus Christ, this guy, and I come back with a rifle. And he comes back with a Daisy BB rifle. He said, this is the rifle I brought out.

We didn't know, but, you know, we weren't going to stop and see whether it was a real rifle or be begun, you know. So, anyways, that's how I felt in the beginning of a Bay of Pigs. And then I heard that Kennedy had, in fact continued to do what, Kennedy didn't have much chances to do much of anything. He got, he took over the government and jobs. January, 1961, the invention was in April. Yeah. It was already, the training had been going on forever, and it was already in the works.

Yeah. Okay, so Liberty City? Liberty City. You got to Liberty City. I got to Liberty City, and I did very well as an officer there because I was very aggressive in my enforcement. But on June 17,

I was told by my lieutenant that I'm being transferred to the organized crime bureau to work on a task force with U.S. customs investigating a group of Cubans who had moved from New York to Miami and who were related

to the French connection case. June 17, 1972 was the day that E. Howard Hunt and my father-in-law got caught in Watergate. My father-in-law was, Eugeneo Martinez He passed away

Two years ago at the age of 90 So he was one of my mentors And helped me be a good cop So I'm wondering So Colby's very young Yeah I'm wondering if Colby knows what Watergate is Only information I have is from this podcast

A couple years ago And it's something to do with spy Something spy Yeah Listening Yeah listening equipment So that's all I know. Yeah.

I remember Pete corrected me because I thought they got caught. I thought they got caught when they were in the building planting the equipment. But my buddy Pete told me to know they had gone in to remove the equipment. And that's when they, the burglars. They have been there already. Yeah, they'd already been there. But they were going back in for, they didn't work. And what gave them up was that one of the guys.

had left some tape covering the lock on the door, and that was found by the guard. So he contacted the police. Who called the police? And then they caught these guys upstairs. Listen, you just, one mistake. You just got to make one mistake. Yeah.

You can, you know, with. And they got, I think, Bacord, my father-in-law, Frank Sturgis, Barker, and the, the key guy. My father had rolls and rolls of film. They never showed up at any hearing

anywhere. They never showed up anyway. Just disappeared? So I don't know. So they just got lost. Yeah. It happens, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So I went from uniform to the organized Grand Bureau to be part of a task force

to investigate this group of Cubans who have moved down. Let me tell you some, let you know, people watch TV and they read their paper or they read, they read online, and they hear, you know, the bust that happened here,

the bus that happened there. And some people are under the impression that narcs and people like that are very well trained. I was fortunate because I had worked the undercover case in Miami Beach, so I had some experience. And I had already attended a seminar by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous drugs, which was the predecessor of the EA. But most narcotics guys in this country get pulled out of a uniform.

and put a narcotics and you're now an arc. Okay. No training. And other than on the job training, they don't do anything. They haven't done. You know, so they have to learn on the job. And so it goes with most of specialized units. So I went there and I did my investigations of the French Connection guys.

It was a hard case because this. These guys had come from New York. Many of them had worked numbers in New York, so they were always looking behind them for the surveillance. And we didn't have that many people, so it was one car and one guy, and they, you know, they made us, they made us, yeah, almost immediately. When I finished working there, then I was sent back to uniform to finish my probation. And when I finished that probation, I went back to the organized

Bureau to work narcotics. I worked narcotics for maybe six or eight months. I made many undercover buys in local bars that nobody had been able to get in. So I was able to get in. I had a good informant and I made purchases of course in all these bars. How old were you at this point? I was 23. Oh, okay. No, I was no, I'm sorry. Oh, 25. You're 25, you're Cuban.

Yeah. You're kind of a street guy. Yeah, the guys, they show me, because other guys were doing buys from hippies. Yeah. They have the long hair and their beard and they, you know, ripped up jeans and the Jesus sandals and all that. They're the ones that would go out and buy grass.

ass and shit. Right. So I would come in with a sport jacket and an automatic on my hip, and they'd say, man, you carry a gun like that, or you're dressing like that? I say, listen. August always sneaks up on me. One minute it's brutally hot outside. The next thing I know, I'm thinking about fall. That's usually when I start going through my closet and figuring out what's worth keeping. That's where Quince comes in. Their t-shirts are some of the softest I own. Their Mongolian cashmere sweaters feel like something way more expensive than what I paid. I keep wearing my favorite pieces over and over again. They work just as well on a normal day as they do when I go out to dinner. And if you're still wearing the same old beat-up jeans, they've got denim and chinos starting at around 60 bucks. For the same kind of

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Mine is a different market. Right. So I would go into these bars. I would show my gun because most of the guys there had guns. So it was not unusual for someone to get the winner. So I made the purchases. I made the undercover buys. And we hit all these people with search warrants.

And we closed, I don't know, like 10 or 12 bars all of a sudden. when I started testifying in court, I got burned. What do you mean? Because this is... Oh, you got. Exposed, exposed, yeah. Ah, but this is something that people don't understand here, okay? And you see some police departments where they have narcs,

guys who've been working in narcotics for seven or eight years. That's bullshit. Because the moment that you go and testify in open court, and you show your face and you know you and they and you give your name and you have the family and his friends sitting in the back looking at you you're burned yeah so when that case was through i asked for a transfer because i didn't want to get killed yeah i don't want to go someplace be recognized and get shot. I was transferred to the counter-terrorist unit

where I spent most of my time. During the next five years, I worked counter-terrorism. I worked every political homicide in Miami-Dade County, every bombing, every kidnapping, anything having to do,

with Cuban crime, that was mine. What year was this? What years were those? It was 1973, 1997. Okay. This is all prior to the Mariel Belt Lift. I mean, that's in what, 81?

80. 80? April, 1980. So, anyway, I, um, I made some good, contacts when I was working homicide. I mean, organized crime. One of them was the radio personality in Miami, and his name was

Milian. His last name, Emilio Milian. Emilio was very much an American patriot. He loved this country. And he hated terrorists who were committing terrorist acts in this country. His thing was, if you're going to bomb something, go bomb Cuba. If you're going to murder someone because he differs with your opinion, go shoot someone in Cuba. But whatever acts were committed in this Cuban would make the Cuban exile community look bad in the eyes of Americans.

So when you say terrorism, what is the terrorist groups that are, I mean, that are functioning at that? time. And when I think of terrorism, you know, I think of 9-11. A Cuban terrorist group, or a combination of them, Cuban power, a Cuban National Liberation Front, were one of the first terrorist groups to blow up a commercial airline in flight and killing everyone upward. But these are, what are, what is their goal to, they're blowing up? I mean, why are they blowing up stuff in the United States? Okay, because they couldn't go do it in Cuba.

They didn't have the balls to get it, and they got on a boat, and go do it in Cuba. Okay? So what are they hitting here? What are they what? What are they, what are the terrorist acts against here? Are they Cubans? Are they against? Many of them, many of them was Cuban against Cuban.

Okay. The death of, the death of Jose Ali and, Rolando Masferrer and several others were committed by Cubans on Cuban because they wanted to be, they wanted to, that particular group that was committing these cases, this, this acts, wanted to be in control of whatever anti-castro efforts were made in Miami. So these aren't even like democratic organizations that are committing acts against communist organizations. These are democratic Cuban organizations blowing up other Democratic cubic? Exactly.

And that is the reason why that government is still in Cuba. Because the Cubans in exile have never ever. gotten together and agreed to be one group for the liberation of Cuba. We had 20 or 30 different groups working, Miami. Interfighting. Yeah, New Jersey, New York, California, interfighting. They killed Cuban political figures in Miami because they wanted their group to be the top group.

Right. And they blew up that, that airline. They killed a man in front of the Chilean embassy. This was the prime minister of Chile, the presidency of Allende. It's a bad strategy. It's a bad strategy. It was terrible.

It was terrible time. So I learned to work a scene by working the bomb scenes. Bomb scenes are, the work you do in a bomb scene is a lot more meticulous than the work you do on a homicide scene because on a bomb scene you're looking for maybe a spring, a little spring, a little wire,

a piece of paper. So you can become very, detailed and I worked that. So while I was there they asked me to be they they detached me to a group called Airport Seaport Security Project. This was a group that was assigned to investigate the organized infiltration of the unions at the seaport. So I worked that for about a year and a half before for the terrorism got bad, and I was called back to terrorism.

In February, and I went to trial on a guy that we had arrested in Fort Lauderd, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. This guy's name was Rolando Otero Hernandez. He was known as the mad bomber. He detonated 10, bombs in two days in Miami. He put a bomb on the Miami Herald dispenser

for the FBI. He put a bomb inside the men's room of the state attorney's office. He placed a bomb in the squad room of Miami Police Department. He went crazy. Okay? So I made him on one fingerprint,

all these bombings, and they only left one. fingerprint and I made him on that on a locker at Miami International Airport. He was taken to Jacksonville by the federal government and tried and fell not guilty by a jury in Jacksonville. I don't know what happened there. Anyways, I called the state attorneys and I said, listen, Roland Otero was just found not guilty and he's going to be walking. So we came up with a new warrant number that was made up by the guys in Miami.

and we charged him and we arrested him and brought him to Miami. There was a change of venue in his case was sent to Fort Walton Beach. We were sworn in and I remember when my partner and I got there and we carried little fag bags. Right. You know, fag F-A-G doesn't mean it's not referring to... Homosexuality. Yeah. It stands for fast action gun bag, F-A-G bag.

Doesn't sound good, though. Doesn't sound good. It still doesn't sound good. Them boys up in Fort Walden Beach, they didn't wear no bagbacks. They didn't carry no fag bags. So when my partner and I were deputized and we left that afternoon, we said, let's go celebrate. and we went into a cop bar

and the moment we walked in there everybody stopped talking and there was silence and then I see everybody looking at our bag bags and I told art I said you do exactly what I'm going to do okay he says all right so I took my bag and inside

my bag was by browning which weighed a lot so I took it at a pole and I dropped out of the bar and he made a very little noise and he took his and dropped out of the bar and made a very loud noise. So it was clear

what was inside the bag. So then we started having guys coming over, introducing themselves, and we did very well. Ronald Otero was found guilty in the state case and given 80 years. During that case,

I was asked by the sheriff to service a subpoena to E. Howard Hunt in Eglon prison to Art and I when Art's father used to work for the CIA and we went to serve the subpoena on E. Howard Hunt

and we get there. The prison head accompanies us to E. Howard Hunt's cell. We get there. Howard looks at me and goes, hey, how are you? He comes and gives me a hug and a kiss and he gives Art

a hug and a kiss and the warden is looking at us like, whoa, wait a minute, who are these guys that are so close to? So he calls a sheriff and lets him know. So we went back. The sheriff asked me, why are you so friendly with B. Howard Hunt? So we explained to him that our father used to work for the CIA,

and Hunt was his boss, and that my father-in-law was caught in. side Watergate with Howard Hunt. The guy goes, oh, your father-in-law is a patriot. And after that, I could do no wrong in Fort Walden Beach. My father-in-law got caught with him to jail, but he's a patriot. So, hey, I'll take it any day. So when I get back, I got promoted.

No, no, I got one call. I got one call. I get a call and the deputy there says Detective Diaz and you have a phone call from Miami. I said, okay. So I go get the call

Diaz and the voice says congratulations, Sergeant. I said, I'm sorry, sir, you have I'm Detective Diaz. He said, no, you're Sergeant Diaz. I said, listen, I got security on the trial here.

I don't have time for this. So I'll talk to you later, whoever it was. He says, I'm telling you, I promoted you today. I said, hey, fuck you. And I hang up. So I go back to the court and the deputy comes back after me and he says, you got another phone call.

I pick up the phone and I go, what? And is my, is the major who's my boss in the organized grand bureau. He said, do you recognize my voice? I said, of course, sir. So in the next voice you're going to hear is that of E. Wilson Purdy? and that was our director. And he had promoted me in absentia.

He told me to tell me he promoted him. I told the guy to go, fuck himself. So he said, don't worry about it. It happened to me before. I said, okay. So anyways, I stopped in Miami, got my badge, he got my sword in. And in February of 1977,

I was transferred to a uniform. By that time, I had made enemies inside my own department because I was doing a very good job and I had made connections with every state and federal agency

in the state of Florida. I had friends inside every agency. I could pick up the phone and find out anything in the world I wanted to know. And I I have these connections because I worked with people. If I found out something that I couldn't do anything about,

but ATF could. I'd give it to ATF. And I would do the same thing with DEA. And so I went to work uniform. So I got to Southwest District. And the captain there was a guy named Bob Windsor, known as Flatte. because he had not changed his hairstyle since he left the Marines and he was not friendly with

people who worked in the organized Grand Bureau because we were we were treated differently than other guys in the department who were supposed to be like the elite of all the elites in the department and so he told me that I would be getting a squad and it was the worst producing squad in the district So they were giving you a squad? Like they were putting you in charge of a squad? Yeah, every sergeant had a squad. Oh, okay.

So they gave me the squad, which is, you know, they called it the fuck-up squad. So I got the fuck-up squad. How many guys is that? There were eight guys. Eight fuck-ups. Eight fuck-ups. All right. When I asked that my saving grace, if I said he was at his secretary,

the captain secretary had been the secretary in Central when I worked there and she loved me. So I said listen, what's wrong with his squad? He says, I think it's a sergeant that you're replacing. He's terrible. I said, let me have the

let me have the personal files. So I took all the personal files and one thing I noticed in Metro, it's like in the army. When you go in the army, if you go artillery or if you go infantry or if you go So tank, that group will always be your home. You know?

And in Miami, in Miami-day, the police department, if you worked in Central, you were a central guy. If you work South, you were South guy. So here we go. We have a squad of seven Central guys in one South. And the sergeant is from South District, and he put the South District guy as his acting sergeant.

So the rest, and he put him over a guy from Central who had more security. They got pissed off, so I come over, take over, and I remove the guy from South District and I put a guy from Central in charge of being the acting sergeant.

In two months, the fuck-up squad was the most production, squad in the district. We had more arrests, more tickets, more everything, more calls answered, more report, everything. We were the number one squad in that district.

So Bob Windsor was very happy with what I did there, and he was finally convinced that he had to form a VIN squad, a stands for vice, intelligence, and narcotics. Winster hated them.

He didn't like the narcotics investigators. He didn't like anything that would have long hair. Oh, okay. So, but he was forced to because every district had to have one. His district was new. So he called me up and he offered it, and I accepted it. I said, yeah, I'll take it. I said, with one proviso, I said, when is this going to happen?

He said, Monday. I said, okay, we're not going to go operational for three months. I want all my guys, and I prepared a training plan, where I took some of the guys and I sent them to DEA for two or three weeks. I took others and I sent them to OCP narcotics for two or three weeks. I sent other guys to ATF, to customs, and to City of Miami Police Department, Highalia Police Department, and Florida Department of Law enforcement.

So when they came back, they had their own contacts in all these agencies, and they had the training. They were trained to see how these people were working. Yeah, because you said earlier they were just taking guys off the beat and throwing them in there and they didn't understand

how to work it at all. So my guys hit the ground running. In a year and a half, my unit, my Southwest Vice Intelligence and Narcotics Unit had seized more narcotics, made more arrests, and seized more.

more cash than all the other six units combined. So we were presented, we were presented with the Department of Unit Citation. That year I made Officer of the Month and Officer of the Year. One thing that happened, we got to get into that. You know, when I was working,

terrorism, we're looking for these explosives. Well, these explosives, and people were getting, you know, where are they getting this? And there have been a break into a magazine full of dynamite. It was stolen. And I remember I had an informant in the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. And he says, are you interested in any dynamite? Of course.

So he set up were arranged for me to meet someone who was going to give me a taste you know a stick of dynamite to see if I was interested

I was introduced to motorcycle mama by the name of Janet Barnes Janet was about I don't know five foot square big big

So I was introduced to her and I go meet her by myself and I said, I understand that you got dynamite. I said, well, how much you want per stick? She told me and it was like 50 or 100 bucks. And I said, I said, do you have a sample? She says, yeah. She comes out with dynamite stick in a towel and it's all wet.

It's all wet because the dynamite stick is sweating nitroglysis. I mean, if you drop it, it'll go off. Right. When you have all that nitro sweating soap, I mean, I walked that thing down the stairs to my car. I put it in the backseat. I got very smoothly into my driver's side and I called, and the guys in the Bob Squad were waiting for me. You know, like five blocks from there, I drove it there, and they took it off my hand. And the guy says, you're lucky, you're lucky because this is very, I mean, it's very dangerous.

Anyways, we made arrangements to buy the rest of the dynamite that they have stolen. And we went to meet with Janet. And I took with me, one of my partners in counter tourism, Iggy Vasquez. he was 6'4 250 pounds he had won the police Olympics

bench pressing so I took him with him I was wired this time she never searched me the first time so we go in and we make arrangements

she gives me the address I gave her an envelope with all the money she gives me the address I get on the phone I call the others I said go get it it's paid for

you're going to call the guy and my my cue to my guys when they were supposed to come in and arrest Janet was you know every there's

there's an end to everything Janet all good things must come to an end so I'm talking to her and I said you know Janet you know all the things must come to an end. And nothing happens. And I look at Iggy,

all good things, Janet, must come to an end. And she said, okay. And she said, okay. I said that. What are you saying? And nothing happens. So I said, fuck it, Janet, you're under arrest. Right.

Matt, I'm telling you. I have never heard a sound like that come out of a human being before then or even now. I have never heard a growl like that come out of any other human being I've known in my life. It just, it was like a gru. And she got up and there in the folds of her stomach, there's a little handle and Iggy goes, gone with this. them. If I had been there, that lady would have been the shit out of the six, four, two hundred and fifty-pound guy. And we're in the middle of it wrestling, and the door comes on, bam. And it's the other two guys that were outside waiting. So it was an experience.

So what happened? They couldn't hear. My wire had come out from the transmitter. And they couldn't hear. Right. I'm saying, I'm yelling. All the things have come to an end. Right. Yeah. So, you know, it was a dangerous thing to work.

Undercover. Yeah, especially with motorcycle guys. When I got, when I was working the Southwest Vin, this was starting 77. 78 and the beginning of 79. That was and no, 79 and part of 80. That was when the eco- wars started. At first we thought it was the Colombians trying to get in

to the Cuban market and trying to fight and the Cubans were going to war. But it was done because all the, the dead people were Colombians. All the guys that were getting killed were Colombians, no killans. So I'm saying, if there's a war, they're communes are losing it. But it was not so. So in 79,

before people say that a shooting at Dayland Shopping Center was the reason was what started us looking into what was really happening. But it was before that, a couple of weeks before that, There was a chase going down US one. There were two cars holding ass down US one. And a police car was chasing them. Well, they start shooting from one car to the other.

And one car takes off. This one car is left behind. And they start shooting it out with the cops. These guys go off the road and they smash a light pole. And so they were there. One guy gets out and starts running away. They opened the trunk of the car and there is a dead body, huckedide, and several kilos. That one guy, two weeks before that, there had been the homicide of a maid in a safe house where the cocaine was stolen.

That maid belonged to the guy who owned in that house. the guy Hog died I've been the one who had killed the maid okay so the order

of the kill the guy who stole the okay now the guy who stole the

two weeks later I mean the guy who shot this guy the guy who lost the cocaine and the maid yeah

and then he killed this guy he goes to Dayland Mall the Crown Liquor's door and he and his bodyguard how they're looking to buy some wine

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Gersel de Blanco. Gersel de Blanco's voice. I had never heard the name Giselao de Blanco until that day. These two shooters are coming to Daitland in a step-up fan. which was abandoned behind the shopping center. When we got there, we saw that the Stepa van had been added, three-inch steel plating along the sides,

and the roll-up door had been covered with bulletproof vest. So it was an armored car. and he had portholes when they could stick guns out and shoot it out. And I had no doubt that that van was prepared to transport money and drugs and to have it out with the police. That truck would have killed a lot of policemen. And inside that truck, these guys left behind 14 other guns. of the firearms.

Everybody, that's when everybody said, what's going on here? And the day after that shooting, a friend of mine from DEA named Charlie Cecil, who spent a lot of times with my unit, he said,

that was Grisel de Blanco. That was Grisel de Blanco. And I asked who Grissel de Blanco. And I asked who Grisel de Blanco was. And when he told me, I couldn't believe it. Because he's telling me about a woman who is from Medellín, which would make her a competitor or a member of the Medellín cartel, who at that time was Pablo Escobar, the Eochos,

Rodriguez-Gacha, the Mexican, and Carlos Leder, Plays Transformation. those were tough people and for him to tell me that this woman had her own organization and that she was respected and somewhat feared

by these very bad men told me that this was a very dangerous individual but we had no idea until then what was going on and interdoubt that there was no

war actually it was Cristina Blanco killing competitors people she owed money too

and people who owed her money unlike other people who would you know if you owed money to some people they would break your legs

or something if you didn't pay them now she didn't care if she didn't collect she'd kill you so in In 1980, we had the burial boat lift, and we had the Miami riots.

And we have Griselda going on a rampage in Miami. There was an article that came out called Paradise Lost. I came out in Time magazine. and that really kicked the politicians into action. Everybody wanted to do something. My captain from Southwest District, who had put me in charge of the VIN squad, had moved on to Detective Bureau.

He had been promoted to Major, and he was put in charge of all Detective. bureaus, including homicide. Before he got there, just recently, before he got there, the FBI had worked in a corruption case where they arrested most of the experienced homicide investigators in Miami-Dade police department because they were stealing drugs, stealing money,

and getting rid of it through a Cuban drug trafficker named Mario Escalder, who went back to 1968 in the first big operation that the government had against Cuban traffickers. These crime guys, these homicide detectives were stealing drugs and dealing it through Mario. The drugs that were found in the car where the body was in the trunk. When they were analyzed again, it was no sugar in the property room.

These guys, somebody, one of them had checked out the real and put in sugar and another, but nobody knew who had taken it. But anyways, he was probably one of those that got indicted.

So, Winter called me, and he says, I have a terrible problem with homicide. Europe. They are completely deboralyzed. And I'm having a problem with federal agencies and state agencies trusting them. Right. Trusting the guys that are left. Seems fair. Yeah. He says, I need you to come here. And I need you. I said, Major, I don't know anything about homicide. You know, he says, well, you know, scene work because you work bombings.

But what I want you here for is I want you to establish, I want you to bring your contact with you and establish the report that we had before. And also I want you to help these guys out with informants.

I said, okay. So I went to Humboldicide. Real quick, can I ask a question about the Merrill boat lift? How many people came over in what period of time? Because this is when this is Castro, was, whatever, frustrated at people going to the United States.

So he opened up like the, he opened up the prisons and sane asylums or mental hospitals, whatever, and said, go, go. And they jump on boats and they're coming because we're 90 miles away. It's still a rough crossing. And so they start landing on the shores of Miami or Florida in general because, was it Carter that had was it Carter the president?

Yes. He had a, was it wet foot or dry foot? He had the policy where if you could make it here, you could stay. Right? So, but how many people came over?

Carter changed the policy. Oh, did? Okay. Yeah. What Carter did was there was some guys went into the into,

I think it was a Brazilian embassy and they were sent them to the United States and Carter received them. When that was found out in Cuba, thousands of people went into the Brazilian embassy. And Castro was pissed off and said, okay, you guys want to go to Miami?

All right, I'm going to open the board of Muriel for any and all boats. I want to come in and take the relatives, back to Miami, it's open. So he did. And over a period of six to eight months, 125,000 people came into Miami, out of which 15,000 were hard,

were hard, hardcore criminals and mental patients. and in some cases both. Right. Now imagine those criminals who came from Cuba became super criminals when they hit the United States. You have to figure out that in Cuba,

these guys have the right to remain silent only as long as they can stand the pain. Right. Okay. Right. So these guys were criminal in Cuba. They had to be bad. Because there they would take you.

They would beat that crap out of you, put you in jail, and beat the crap out of you every day. They come here and they are told that they do have the right to remain silent. That they have a right to an attorney and if you can't afford it, we're going to give you an attorney,

okay? These guys, you know, it's like a big birthday party for all these guys. So, strong-arm robberies, burglaries, assaults,

it all went up. It all went up. And then the Colombians found that these barialitos were pretty mean themselves. and they were cheaper than the Colombians hitmen that they were bringing.

There was a kind of a romance happening there where Colombians were hiring this Cuban hitman as bodyguards. And so this all came together and just created one hell of a situation. I mean, listen, any city anywhere that absorbs 125,000 people in six to eight months and of that 15,000 of criminals

listen, there were five times more criminals than cops or eight times more criminals than cop that came from from Marien so we had to I mean

when the riots took place I was not in Hamaset but the guy from Hamaset would tell me that they had a call, uniform unit was standing by. There was a dead body someplace,

and they would go there with the medical examiner truck, go open the doors, bring, put the body inside the medical examiner's truck and take off. There was no scene work. There was no picking up projectiles. Just because the bodies are coming, because it's coming in so fast.

And at that time, There were so many bodies coming to the medical examiners office that they had no place to put them. And so the medical examiner's office rented a freezer trailer from Burger King. It's all horrible. What? Yes. It's horrible.

I know. I didn't eat Burger King for a year. You know? But they did. They had to. Yeah. So they put the body. inside a Burger King trailer.

For those people who are listening, it would happen 45 years ago, so they don't have to worry about the Burger King things anymore. But no, I didn't eat Burger King for about a year, okay? Because I didn't know whether the trailer, you know. So. So you move over. So at this point, you move over to the homicide. And at the same period of time,

they've arrested half the homicide detectives for fraud. Not for fraud. Sorry, for corruption. Yeah. And so you take over that unit to try and bring back some, well, training and credibility. I was transferred to a lieutenant's position, but my rank was sergeant. So a lot of resentment there because there were guys that were sergeants in the Humminside section that could have taken over that position. But they had the same, you know, they were guilty by association.

Yeah, you know what's going on. You're just not saying anything. And you think that somehow makes you okay. They were not trusted. Yeah. So I remember the first day, the first week I was there, you guys from homicide said, hey, boss, listen, we've been trying to get this guy who's a witness to a homicide,

and we know that if he talks to us, we'll solve this homicide. And maybe you can help us. I said, who you're looking for is the monkey Morales. In those days, we didn't have portable phones. So I beeped, Ricardo. It calls me right back immediately. And I said, where are you?

He says, I'm on the Mutiny Club. It's fine. So I took my two guys who went to the Mutiny. Ricardo sitting there at a table, his favorite table. You know, he's sitting with his back to the wall there. than all the entrances within his view. So we sit down and my guy started asking him about what they needed. And he did solve the case for them and they tried.

And they made a murder case. One of the guy says, Ricardo, he has a gun on you? He said, no. How can you sit here like that? We don't go ahead. He says, excuse me a little second. Jennifer, can I have some bread, please?

And Jennifer brings a basket of bread and Ricardo opens it and there's his browning 9mm inside the bread basket he says so it's always he says it's always within my reach so these guys were able to do that and

and it was that was good that that happened because the guy started seeing what it was that I was bringing there but one I was expecting it that

someone would question my authority as a lieutenant with a rank of sergeant. And it happened to have been one of my good friends since homicide who wanted to be funny. And I said, when you get to this, it was called to the casino homicide, said, David, when you get there, if you need anything, call me.

And he mobile, kind of like, oh, yeah, like you know so much about homicide, I need to call you. And I was sorry it was him, but I'm glad it happened. because I knew how to buy that dog right in the air. I called him back in, and I said, I can't believe you said that. And I made him feel pretty bad.

He went back out and then I apologized. Then from that day on, I had no problem. When all these homicides were going on, and we were not able to work them, I mean, how are they getting solved then? Or are they just not? They're not. It's a body. There's still cases.

open, you know, pending. Is it like triage, though? Are you, are you figuring, hey,

there's 14, these two are probably solvable. These two were not even going to work. Like, is it? It was kind of a triage, yeah.

You know, where you would, what you would take that one were the most leads. Right. We have to remember something.

In homicide investigations, in this country, traditionally, the hardest, Hamaside case to solve is the

who done it right? Yeah when you get to the scene by the body you know that somebody bumped Joe Smith

and then you start finding out who done it right we had a worst problem we had who is it

right so when we got to the scene we would find a Latin mail who would take the wallet out of his pocket he'd have a driver's license, a false driver's license with a false address, false credit cards under other names, card registration, the card was out there

and they came to the name and the driver's license but we didn't know. We went to an address that was not the address. This guy was not the guy on the driver's license. So we had a, who is it? Who done it? So there's no aphus. There's no NCIC, right? Yeah, we have NCIC. Okay. We had NCIC. But you don't even know who to run. Huh? You don't even know who to run. That's exactly the point. Unless maybe he's got a tattoo or something. No, no. These guys were not tattooed. that marialitos yeah they were covered with tattoos

and Colombians were not tattooed very few of them were tattooed so we had no cell phones no cameras no no flock cameras no DNA no DNA

no nothing just a Burger King van nice guy yeah hey but you know so that was a problem we had so when I get there I meet an old friend

June Hawkins June had been an analyst when these homicide started happening someone smart enough brought her as an analyst to homicide

the problem was that they didn't know how to use the information that June was giving them and besides that they were not the

homicide as a a reactive investigative technique. Investigators are reactive. They have never been proactive. They get called to the scene. There's a body there. They start. Yeah.

So it's reactive. June was doing things that they could, they could start identifying people, but they had to do some legwork. And those guys were not interested in that. So they're gathering intelligence, but they're not using it. And June was going, getting frustrated.

I started reading. She had acquired an incredible amount of information, but it was not being used. So when this article came out, Paradise Lost, on Time magazine and these politicians are going crazy, I wrote a proposal. I knew what a CENTAC unit was because I was very close to the evening.

I was an instructor for a southern region of the DEA in Miami. And I traveled with them all over the place teaching other departments. So I was familiar with the CENTAC program. I put together a paper and I wrote somewhere that whoever led that that since that unit had to be a Latin, okay, who spoke Spanish, not just a Latin by name, who spoke Spanish, who had experience in narcotics and in terrorism. It just sounds very, who's five foot 10 and 185 pounds. That was, and so I wrote this for myself, you know.

Why not? And then I went to present that paper to Benzinger, Peter Benzinger, who was the DEA administrator at the time. He had been appointed by Carter, but he wanted to remain under Reagan. But he wanted to do anything he could. And the problem in Miami was the number one priority for the EA, for FBI, for Asia, for every federal agency. And so I took it up there. proved that one day he didn't even read it. He said, I proved, let's put it, let's do a CENTAC.

And they put me together with my CENTAC coordinator, and we started it. Do you get additional people to come in, or you're just using your same squad and you're just going to train them? They allowed me. The best thing I got from the EA was a zero budget. Okay. That means I have. That doesn't sound good.

That doesn't sound good. Oh yeah. Let me tell you. Oh yeah. I love zero budgets. Because they tell you, look, tell us what you need. And I told them everything we needed, everything, everything, everything. We needed computers.

We need a computer and others. We needed car, rental cars. We needed. Everything I needed, I gave, they gave it back. They gave it to us. It was, in other words, money would never run out because there was no money. There was no money. Just tell us what you want and we'll get it to you.

I was able to choose my guys, my supervisors, except in one case, I was given one sergeant and one guy that came from the same station as he did. But I knew the one detective because he had worked for me in VIN. But he was still chosen by the major who had changed by that time. So we started, I started having training days with these guys.

It's the same thing with some of them as I had done with the guys. And we went, we went operational, I think it was in December of 80, 81, December of 81. Before that, before we went operational, One night, we got a call and we're told that Paco Sepulveda

who was one of Grisilda's favorite hitman and her brother-in-law who was staying at a hotel in Kibisgain. I went there, I put together a group of guys 12 homicide investigators, 12. And myself and Bobby, Gonzalez, another lieutenant. We saw the guy come out,

and he sure as hell looked like Pablo by Paco. So when he came out, we blocked the street. He came out. He went off the road onto the grassy area, and when he went, he came within three inches of running me over. I'm stocking his by car. with my browning in my hand,

and he pulls the window over and sheds a Mac 10. I went down and he stepped on it and took off. I turned around and I shot at him. He didn't fire the Mac 10? He just put it out the window. He just put it out the window. He didn't fire it though. He had nothing to fire it because by that time,

I'm eating grass, buddy. So he made a left turn. Kimis Kane has only one way in, one way up. We had, we raised the bridge. The draw bridge, right. And that's it. So we caught him. The next day, I get called by captain secretary, the major secretary,

is that my captain wants to meet with me with the major. So I go. And I said, what's going on? No, I asked her why. He says, he's been. you know, raving around here. Why, why did you have an automatic? And everybody else had, oh, I said, okay, fine.

So I took, I looked at my papers at home, and I took one paper out, and I took it with me. So we went, he walks me into the major's office. Major was Windsor, my mentor. So we sit down and Captain Frank says, why did you have an automatic? I said, because I have permission. and who gave him permission?

So I showed him the memorandum I had. And he was signed by Winster to hear it before because I was working narcotics and he gave me permission to carry an automatic but you can carry that from one unit to another. So he had to shut up. And then I explained to Winster. I said, look, we stopped this guy.

He had a Mac 10 with 60 rounds. He had a Mac 11. which was the same as the Mike 10, but in 380, with 60 rounds. It's 120. And he had Smith and Wesen Model 59 with two magazines of 14 rounds each. This guy has got 28, 148 rounds. Right. My 12 guys from homicide at 72, 38 rounds.

Combined. Combined. Altogether. There are 72 rounds. It seems a little outgunned. Huh? They're outgunned. Oh, yeah.

So Windsor looks at the captain and says, what's your complaint? Well, you know, I thought, so he couldn't say. And Winster says, what do you think we should do, Roel? I said, I think we should give as long as homicide. I've got to investigate these cases. They need to be well. You know, they need better weapons. So he says, you're saying we should go to semi-automatics.

Yes, sir. He looks at Marshall. And he says his hand and slaps it on the table. He says, poor shit. We're going to go fully automatics. I love that guy. So, when we went out, Sintag had machine guns. You know?

And you've never seen a happy face until you see a Cuban with a machine gun. Okay. So that was Pablo. He became an informant later. So we started. So he was the hitman. He was a hitman. But you didn't have him on any hits?

Is that it? Did you have him on? Was he attached to bodies? No, most of his cases were in Colombia. Oh, okay. So you know, but you know he seized. We didn't know any one that he had killed here. And he's acting as an informant because.

for what reason? For money or just to stay free? Because to stay free? Okay. Yeah. He pulled a gun on a bunch of cops and, you know? What are the rules for him? Like when he walks out the door, do you have a set of rules? Like, we're going to let you do this, but you can't do this, this, this, and this,

all of which I'm sure he disregards. But absolutely. No more guns for me, no drugs. When we arrested at me, he says, well, you know, are you going to help me with a bond? I said, I can't help you with bond. You have to make bond. He says, well, can we go back to the apartment? I have a briefcase. So he says, okay. So I said, okay, we'll go back to the apartment. So we go in the apartment. He goes in the kitchen. He takes the sugar container. He empties it. And there's like 40 or 50 emeralds.

Well, they're not going to take the emeralds for bond. He's got to bring that to a bos. So he's got these emeralds, and so we allowed him to give him to his girlfriend. And then his girlfriend, and then he told her to give him to the, to give some to the lawyer. Right. Who's going to argue his bond. And we had to. The good old days. Huh?

The good old days. Yeah. You could go in with cash and they didn't ask any questions. Like, oh, but now it's like, where did this come from? Do you have your 1040s for last year? So anyways They The attorney

It was a Cuban attorney Very well known For his sneaky ways He takes He told the girlfriend That she had to give him all the embryos Or the government They'd take him away from her

And she did I wouldn't want to fuck this guy over He got him out of bond And told him That he had to use All he said all his emeralds. Two months later, the attorney was shot to death

going into his car. Yeah, that's what you get. You get cute. But Pablo was with us when he got shot. Okay, so we didn't, we couldn't, and he got shot in the city of Miami. So it was not our case. Anyways, we got to CENTAC and we got CENTAC going.

We got good information. on our number one target. Who's that? His name is Rafael Leon Rodriguez, better known as Amilcar. We were fools because we thought that Amilcar as bad as he was. I mean, we thought he was really bad. Right. With the 20-some murders that we suspected him of.

We later found out that some of these guys had 120 murders. And so we went out. We had the information that he was going to meet somebody at the mutiny, hotel, and then we had to follow him and say, what would we take him down? So we followed him out of the mutiny. He went into Coral Gables, a very rich area in Miami, very rich people, very, very expensive stores. And so we lost them. We had 10 cars on them at an airplane.

We lost this guy. I don't know how. You know, we lost him. But we knew he had to be within, you know, within like a four-block area there. So we started going around. And we saw him come out of a French restaurant, get in his car, and take off.

They take off. They go one block, make it right. They're on a June road, a block away from Miami High School. The kids are coming out of school and going to the Burger King a block away from them. When he makes the right and goes on the June road, he stops in the middle of the road,

right outside the burking. They don't move, so everybody freezes. And my guy said, what do we do now? I said, obviously, we're burned, let's take him down. One car pulls up in front of him. With a car pulls up in front of him, something that I had never seen happen before. happened. They opened fire through the front windshield without opening a door. They just put their guns out and started shooting right in front of them. The guy who was driving the car that blocked them got hit in the ear with a piece of

and the girl, the girl, I'm sorry, the lady agent had to beat the pavement because they were going to kill her soul. They both get out of the car. The driver was a black Cuban front. The driver was a black Cuban for Mariel, who was already wanted on a murder. They both take off running. A mill car gets, the car stops to see what's going on. He opens the door, pushes the guy over, and gets in the car and drives away. The other guy, he had already shot of my guys, so he's running with his guns still in his hands, and my guy running over.

You know, the press has. I said, why did you do this? Well, I'm not going to, he's already shot at me. Yeah. I'm not going to stop and say, freeze police and give him another chance. So he says, I rounded him over. He did. That seems like a clean shoot to me, even though it wasn't a shoot.

Yeah. You know, so anyways, we got the black guy who has to take him to the hospital, but it was okay. And then a mail card disappeared. We get a phone call from downstairs that as a guy, the guy, the guy, whose car he had taken was up downstairs. So we bring him up. He said, look, I just decided that it was the best for me to come here rather than you go looking for me all over the place

and maybe give my hand shot. He said, what a nice guy. The guy that just carjacked him. Yeah. What a nice guy. Look what he gave him. And he shows us a Rolex presidential. That's all gold.

Right. Resonentials are all gold. So he was pissed because he said, sorry, buddy, but you know, that's not yours. And that's the proceeds of narcotics, so they stays here. He said, God damn, I should have never come here.

I said, well. So he says that they draw, he drove him to Biscay Boulevard. And he got out of the car. He says, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He had a very heavy accident. But anyway, he gave him a Rolex, and he took off.

And I thought the Rolex was maybe a phony one, you know? Right. But no, no, no, it was a real thing. It was a Rolex presidential. Solid gold. Anyways, we just, this guy disappears. This was on a Monday. This appears of Tuesday.

We pick him up again on Wednesday. We had trap and traces on our informant's phone. So, whatever he called the informant, we would be told where he was calling from. He was making all these calls from public phones. So I started, I moved in like 20 cars into the area. And we started closing on him until maybe an hour later, two of my guys say, we got him on June Road. And, what do you say?

I mean, right close to June Road, they follow him. They, a mill car goes into. the parking lot of an apartment building. He's got another Cuba-Marielle driver who we also had a homicide warrant for and who had in the back seat he had a jar with alcohol and one finger of the woman, he killed.

So, I mean, you know, and that was the warrant we had for him. And he's got her finger? So the warrant you have for the murder, He's got the finger in the jar. He's got the finger in the jar. Oh, so yeah. Yeah, okay.

He's done. Yeah. So. Might as well left your wallet at the scene of the crime, too, you know? So he and a mill car get out. And the moment they get out, they have their guns in their hands. And my guys didn't wait either. They didn't wait.

No, no, no, police. They opened fire. Now with semi-automatic guns. So we open fire on the gas. They take off. they go upstairs in the apartment building and they hide in the laundry room and that's what we got them so we got our first target a week into being formed centaq we took him upstairs to my office and roy black who is you know what i've met several guys who had roy black as a

guy he must have been young at this point too right this isn't this is in the early 80s right This is 80. 80. 80. Oh, 81. I'm sorry. This is 81. Yeah, Roy must have been because I knew guys in the 2000s that had him as an attorney.

Yeah, I remember Roy when he was clerking for one of the circuit court judges. We were good friends. Roy and I were very good friends. We had a good relationship. And he calls me up when I'm talking to a milker, he calls me up, Roel, I understand you have my client there. I said, I don't know who your clan is. Who's your client?

He says, you know who I'm talking about. I said, no, you give me a name, okay? And I'll tell you whether he's your client or not. But I'm going to tell you something. Call me like in an hour or a half later, okay? Because right now, Roy, he's up to $15 million that he's offering me. If I let him go, and I want to see how far he goes, he goes, God damn it, you son of a bitch, get into it.

So I, I, I, put him on the phone with his client. And we took him back to the jail and then Roy had his day. But he was found guilty eventually. Not even Roy Black, get him off. Roy Black. You know what? Let me tell you something.

Roy Black and I had drinks after that because we were friends. And he says, you know I had clients? This guy scared me. This guy scared me. He really did. He scared me. So he knew what he had. What was the other one, Shrebnick.

Wasn't Shrebnick Roy's partner at one point? It's, uh, forget his name. I want to say it was Shreber. I know, I know his name and I know, I know him because he's my brother's neighbor. Howard. Howard Shrebnik, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I knew a couple guys that had him as he did the appeals.

He did a lot of appeal work. Because he's a very good. constitutional lawyer. And Roy is the man. In the courtroom, right? He's a performer. Let me tell you something. He said, he was such a great guy.

Yeah. What a great attorney. But anyways, so Roy couldn't help him and this guy went to jail. He died in jail for a heart attack. So I didn't want to have to worry about him anymore. because I knew if he if that guy had come out I'd have to worry oh yeah so while working this was back when you could actually get found guilty for a murder and and go to state prison and get out five or ten or 15 years later it's insane good behavior yeah yeah what was the guy's

name, oh gosh, Robert Young was a guy. And in Miami, he got arrested, too. And he went to, remember, he got arrested for multiple murders and, you know, made a deal and went to jail and went to prison and got out. He got out like 10 years later. It was like, he's just like, he got three murders. But Janet Reno was the chief prosecutor, was the state attorney in Miami. And she had never, never had given immunity to a shooter in Hamasad. And she had to in this one, the one that we did get a milker. And she called me, she says, you're going to be the end of my life. You're going to, I can't believe that you're making me give this guy immune.

I said, the only way. I said, let me tell you something. This is not going to be the first guy. I mean, he's the first guy, but he's not going to be the only one. Because if you want to go against these guys, you better start saying. thinking the same way we do against the mafia. Because there's no other way. So in the middle of all this, I had told my first wife, I said,

listen, she was really worried when I was working narcotics. And I said, don't worry about it because when I get there now, when I'm in the homicide, when I get there, they're dead. Yeah. They can't do anything to me. Well, I forgot that homicide handled kidnappings. And one of the first cases I got was a kidnapping of a young kid who had been infronted a whole kilo a kilo cocaine. A kilo was going for $50,000 in those days in Miami.

So someone confronted him, the kido kid. And he got ripped off. Somebody stole the kid from him. And so the Colombians wanted their money. He couldn't get it. And they kidnapped. So in we go. And we're working the case.

I'm talking to the... And you get a phone call after that? I mean, you would think that that's kind of an internal, kind of an underworld kind of thing that nobody would call you. Someone called you and said, hey, they kidnapped this kid. No, no, we got a call from his wife. Uniform responded. Okay.

And it was a kidnapping, so they called us. Okay. Uniform called us. So we went there and she told us what happened. And she said that they've been calling him to see how she was. was doing collecting the money and they told them if we don't collect the money and we're going to to kill your wife too so I get there and I tell these people that I am I'm the girl's uncle by marriage and I'm helping her put together the money and I keep talking to it I keep calling

and I finally I told the guy that we got the money here he said okay I'm going to go so I said the guy's supposed to come here. But I thought, he had told me that he was, someone was up in Palm Beach. And I believed him. And I go outside to have a cigarette. And I see this car pulls up.

And one guy gets out, another guy gets out, and a young guy starts walking towards me. I'm saying, he's just like, that guy looks familiar. It is. He's a victim of the kidnapping. And the only thing I had time was to lean into the door and yell bad guys.

Okay, to my guys who were monitoring the calls. The Colombian shows his gun, he's got it on his right hand. And I pulled my browning, and he opened fire. And I shot at him. And he shot at me, and I shot at him. And we were both shooting around the poor guy, who's kidnapped. All of a sudden he drops.

And I thought, oh my God, either to the Colombian or I, he killed this guy. But anyway, the Colombian stays off running to his right, and he runs right into an apartment where the door is open right into our command post. So like 10 guns are pointing out of him. He drops his gun, he gives up. Matt, when crime scene came

in. What happened to the kid? Did he get shot? No, he never got shot. He just, listen, you got bullets

going one way and going the other way and you're in the middle and so he just fainted. Okay. Down, you know. When the crime lab gets there,

that one of the technicians Tommy Carroll says, Lieutenant, where are you standing? I showed him what I was standing. And he said, look, and right

at my head height there's three hits three projectiles hit the wall right behind my head right at head where I was standing

that's when my legs started shaking and you called your wife and said I'll be home I'm on my way home and that was no big deal not it was a quiet day it was a quiet day my wife

my wife saw it on TV before you recalled before I even called she took that well did she take that well? No I didn't take that well, don't know no because two months later I would get divorced

yeah so good girl, good lady she didn't sign up for this she just didn't sign up for that no no So throughout this whole process of my working in organized crime bureau and working narcotics at the VIN unit level

and now working homicide and then taking over a CENTAC unit. CENTAC unit was you have to understand in any police department, homicide is the elite Yeah Okay No one is more elite than homicide In any police department

So CENTAC Was an elite Within the elite And I started Getting investigated

By almost every entity I worked with I got, I started getting investigated. People started making allegations. People that had put in jail for 15 years started making allegations. And so they had to take open a case and do an investigation. And so I was investigated by DEA, IRS, my department. Yeah.

What are the allegations? Corruption? You're taking bribes or what? Yeah. But, I mean, they took two. Two years to investigate all these things, and I was found not to have done anything wrong. Right.

In one case, just when our Internal Affairs Department closed the investigations that they had on me and gave the report that I was not suspected of any wrongdoing, the FBI came in and said, listen, we've had these allegations, but we haven't had time to work them. So they had to go back and start working. And that's what I decided to retire. Before...

How long had you been on the force at this point? 13 years. Okay. So when that started happening, when I was cleared in the first two investigations, the county manager, the assistant county manager, in charge of police. asked to meet me at the airport at the top of the airport at the restaurant

on top of the airport in Miami and he came in with the mayor Mayor Hayalia who was a friend of mine and he said have a drink I said I'm in uniform I can't do that so he calls a waiter he says you may a coffee cop and put some Johnny Walker Black in there with a couple of eyes and

so anyway we he says, look, I spoke with Windsor, who was then in charge of internal affairs. He says, he says, there's nothing. And what I want you to know is wait six months or because I already announced my retirement. He says, I want you to take your retirement back. I want you to withdraw it.

In six months, I'm going to promote you to major. And I'm saying this in front of Raoul, so you have a witness. Raul The mayor High Alias also named Raul Very popular name in Miami

So I said You know what Have you heard what the FBI did He hadn't heard I said well they just came up With this new investigation So you know what I'm not going to take it anymore

I'm out of here I'm tired When I was taking out of homicide because they had to because I had, they didn't want to have me on their investigations doing all these other investigations. So they transferred me to the airport. I went, I was taken to, I was put in the hospital for about six days because my autoimmune system shut down. The way the doctor explained to me, the way the doctor explained to me was, I was as such a,

high level of stress in homicide that my autoimmune system was used to feeding off the adrenaline. When I went to the airport to a stress level of zero, compared to 15 from 1 to 10 in the homicide, my body, my own immune system shut down. If you had a cold and you walked two blocks away from me, I would get a cold. get that cold. That's how weak I was. Right. And so, you know, I didn't want to, I was too young to die, you know, so I retired. What did you do at that point? Like, what do you, how do you go from being a police officer? I had two friends who had been, who had worked with me in narcotics in the Organized Grand Bureau. One had retired in 1981, the second had retired in 1982.

And I was going to retire in 83. They had created a private investigative agency named Intercontinental Detective Agency. When I joined it, we changed it to ICDA investigations. And we started that in 1983. I bought them out in 1988. And I had it until a year ago. What type of investigations? When we started, we were doing criminal defense.

I did the criminal defense of the Colombians who murdered Barry Seal. Okay. Okay. Okay. And these are the guys that caught up with Barry Seal at the halfway house. Were they... Salvation Army in Baton Rouge. When I left the department, these guys were doing criminal defense.

And so I started doing criminal defense. And we were able to charge pretty well, because of my experience, I mean, my job working for the defense was no different than my job working for a prosecutor. My job as a defense criminal investigator was looking at the case that they have built against the client and see where they had messed up. And that was very effective. And I started working with Roy. We started working cases together. What about the Cubans that killed Barry Seal?

How did they do? What's that? The Cubans that shot Barry Seal? Colombians. Sorry. The Colombians. What happened with them? Those guys had zero chance.

Right. In Lake Charles, Louisiana. All right. Okay. Let me tell you something. I got there. Then I realized. Well, wait a second.

Colby, do you know what happened? I know because of the movie that he got, I don't know why, but someone came up and shot him in the, in his car. Yeah, well, he had cooperated and he'd cooperate against all these guys. And obviously, they're all going to jail left and right, left and right. So at some point, they, somebody, they put out a hit on him. And the judge fucked him over by saying, And Judge in Louisiana, what happened was Barry got caught, okay? And I mean, he got caught with a load.

So, so. It's not good. No, not that good at all. So anyways, he flips. And he starts working with the Southern District of Florida in Miami. When that district in Louisiana had been investigating him for years. And they got pissed when he flipped. and went to work for the district of South Florida.

Oh, okay. And the... I didn't know that. I didn't, I never, they never explained why the judge screws him like that. Oh, yeah. So anyways, they, they started working with them. It's funny because in the middle of all this, this is in 1984, I have another client who says that he's dealing,

with Pablo Escobar, and he wants him to go to Nicaragua and set up the same thing that he had set up in Colombia for laundering money, and that the people in Nicaragua were government ministers. So he records a conversation with one of the ministers in Nicaragua and gives it to me. I called a couple of friends in the CIA that would you be interested in this?

Absolutely. So they came by, picked up the tape. I was already retired. They came back and picked up the tape and took it and they had it analyzed and it was the voice of minister named Tomans Borges. So the information was good.

The Nicaraguan government was getting involved with Pablo Escobar. We were told, or the CIA was told, to lay off the case, and they were not told why. And the reason why was because Barry had flipped and was already cooperating, and he was going to record and photograph all these people involved in Nicaragua

loading a plane with Pablo's car. Barry gets to Nicaragua with his plane This was wooden bolsey, son of a bitch Oh yeah The camera broke The camera the CIA set up The FBI set up in the airplane broke It wouldn't

Functioned automatically To Barry turned it to manual And he's leaning punching the shutter button inside the plane taking the pictures of the Nicaragua Pablo Escobar and everybody

and that's why I couldn't go the CIA couldn't go through with my plan anyways they catch him he flips starts working with the southern district of Florida

he does the thing in in Nicaragua and the southern district of Florida became Barry's best friend, okay? Because they were so happy. And so they made a hell of a deal with him. Well, he still has a case pending in Louisiana.

So he goes before the federal judge and the prosecutor there insisted, insisted that he sentenced him at least to a halfway house, sentencing Barry to a halfway house was sentencing him to death because the moment that Colomius

found out where he was where he had to be every day at 6 o'clock in the evening that was it did you ever see the it was an HBO version of his story it was with Dennis Hopper

plays him? No, I didn't. Did you see the movie? I heard about it. Did you ever see the movie American Made? Can you see any of these? No, I didn't know. So the one I like about, what I liked about the Dennis Hopper one, which was made 40 years ago.

Okay. Was that when the judge, so first of all, like the DEA agents and everything, they were supposed to show up. so they could talk on his behalf. And like he's looking, and nobody's there. Yeah. So he's going, like, what's going to he's talking to his lawyer?

He's like, I don't know. They said they'd be here. I don't know. What am I supposed to do? And so then the judge, of course, yells at him and lectures him. And then when the judge orders that,

seal stands up and he goes, well, you might as well execute me yourself if you send me to a half-old. What are you talking about? I have an agreement. Like, he's like, I don't have any agreement with me. That's right.

And they sentence him. Yeah. They don't go over that. Same scene in American Made. They never really explain. They just, they just sentence him, and he's there at the end of the movie.

What was Dennis Hopper's movie? It was, it was, um, called. Oh, gosh. I don't know. What's the guy's name? Dennis Hopper.

And I believe it was an HBO movie, or at least I saw it on HBO. I know, I'll just. But it's a great scene because they really explain. And, you know, the part you talk about in the, um, Double-crossed.

Double-crossed. So the scene with the plane, they... What do you mean, the double-cross? No, double-cross is the name of the Dennis Hopper film. Okay, okay, yeah. But the scene with the plane, where they have all those photographs of the guy, he's, and he's actually, like, another thing was that the camera was loud. It was.

And he was like, what the hell you... The motor got working, yeah. Yeah, he had to turn the thing. Yeah. But he does. He takes the pictures, everything. They definitely do a good job in the Dennis Hopper one explaining that also. They didn't do a great job in the movie.

The other one, yeah. I kind of like the Dennis Hopper one, but they've got some great. Both of those have some great scenes. They're both great movies in themselves, the different parts of it. But, yeah, it was just, it's just so funny because, you know, if you want people to cooperate, you have to, you have to take, care of them. Yes.

You know, otherwise, they're going to be like, nah, you got Jimmy killed. No, I knew a guy that cooperated with you. Bobby got murdered. You're Bobby, or you sent him in jail for 15 years after you promised you would do this and this. That's right. You know, so. And it was a shame because I liked Barry.

Barry was the special forces kind of a guy. I think he was a Green Beret at one point. So he was, he was a good man at one point, you know. but the temptation. But you also, I think you would explain that working for the state, like he had actually made the pitch to work for him, didn't he?

At one point, he got busted and and did he make the pitch that, hey, let me work with you on this? Oh, okay. Let me tell you what happened. During that investigation, I'm not giving up anything. As an attorney, Klan,

during the investigation, I found that there were different groups represented by the people who were here to shoot very seal like some people belong to one of, to Escobar, other group, to Ochoas, and like that. So they fooled the resources to get this done. They all had a vested interest in having them. The guy who was the chauffeur. Well, the getaway car was Cresilda, Cicelda's boy and the shooter at the dayland shopping center in Miami.

Right. So that was a guy, that was, that was a crazy story. The guy was dressed in Hospital Greens. Okay. There's this huge Columbia because he was like six something. They get away. They drive from the, from the Salvation Army. four or five blocks to a church's parking lot

they drop off that car pick up out of the car and they take off they go to to the capital so they go to Baton Rouge you know not Baton Rouge anyway they went to Baton Rouge

they go to the Holiday Inn by the airport and the FBI had gotten the description out the FBI stops this guy, New Orleans. They went to New Orleans, not by the Rouge.

So they stopped these guys at the New Orleans airport. They questioned him. And they let him go. What? They just didn't realize they had the right person? They didn't realize they had the right person. But he was still dressing in scrubs.

He gets into a taxi cab at the airport. He says, take me to the next, to the next capital. The guy says, I take it to Baton Rouge. Oh, no, no, no, no, Man Rucho. Take me someplace else. So they're driving.

There's a call. There's a, a bolo out for this Colombian. So they get to a gas station in the middle of the night. It's, you know, they got all this fog out there. And the taxi hits a deer. and the deer punctures the radiator. So when they got this deer, they stop at a gas station. And the taxi driver is making a phone call.

And Cumbamba, who is a Colombian dressing scrubs, is looking inside at the radiator and a cop sees him. And remembers the Bolo. So they get three or four units, they pulled up there, and they point their guns to the taxi drivers and taxi drivers says, geez, it was only a deer.

Right. So they arrested. They finally arrested bomb by there. They work in this. I found that when the hit went down, there were two guys across the street from the

Salvation Army taking hits, taking photos of the hit. In a camera, you know, and shh. They had the whole thing on film. Now it's over. They're hitting the FBI and the state

are hitting some of the safe houses. And they get to a safe house. And there's this camera there. And the FBI guy says, opens it back, takes out the roll and pulls it out and exposes it. And he laughs. He says, I wonder whose birthday who I just ruined

and the whole hit was there in that role of film this jerk off thing to do right just thinking he's cute yeah but those boys

had no chance in Lake Charles, Louisiana were they both get life you all got life well there was how many of them two? Were there two of them? No there were

a total of About four or five. Oh, okay. Yeah. Tell me about the book. Who contact? How did you get in touch with Sean? Sean Colby when he was writing the book, the Monkey Morales.

The Monkey Morales book, because the monkey was such a, he was one of my main informant. He was my main informant in Miami because he had access to terrorist guys and narcotics guys. all kinds of criminal activity. So he became my main informant. And Sean was writing the book with the monkey's son. And he contacted me to find out about Ricardo. So when he finished the book,

I got a copy of it, and I liked the way he wrote it. And so I called him and I said, you want to do this with me? And he said, absolutely. So. You worked on the book. When did it come out?

Came out in June. No, he came out in April, April. April of this year? Of this year, yeah. Oh, okay. I figured it. I thought maybe it had been a few years. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yeah. How long would it take to write it? Oh, with Sean, I have taken, I was, I started by myself. Right. You know, and I was not a writer. Right. I mean, I know I could write.

I can write. I've always been a very good writer. And I had a lot of pages done. But I needed somebody to tell me, sit your ass down and let's do this. Right. And that was Sean. And then he is, he's authored several books. So he is a writer.

And he helped, I mean, I couldn't have done it without him. And what's the book called? The book is called Kills. the lieutenant. And it's called that because he says that not only were the Colombians trying to kill me, I was trying to kill me, you know, everybody was trying to kill me, including myself. I was drinking a lot. And I quit that 14 years ago. So killing the lieutenant by Lieutenant Raoul, Jay Diaz, and shot Oliver. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so get notified of videos just like this. Also,

If you want to buy Raul's book, he goes over in much more detail, everything we just talked about. The book is on Amazon. It's on Barnes and Nobles. It's everywhere that you can find and buy books. It's also in digital. He's got an audible version and also soft copy. So we're going to leave the link in the description box. You can go there, click on it.

It'll shoot you over to all of those platforms. Thank you very much. I really do appreciate you watching. Also, if you are interested in being a lot of it, a guest. We're going to leave our website down there also. Then click there, go there, go to the Be a Guest page, fill out a form, leave a quick video. We'll get back with you. Thank you very much. See you.