Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Inside America's Largest Smuggling Family | Captain Kent Daniels

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Despite growing up inside America’s largest smuggling family and surviving years of dangerous runs through the Everglades, Captain Kent Daniels reflects on how the life nearly destroyed everything before ultimately changing the way he viewed survival, family, and purpose.⁣ ⁣ Captain Kent's links - ⁣ https://outlawsoftheeverglades.com/⁣ https://fishwithcaptainkent.com/⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS:⁣ 00:00 - Inside America’s Largest Smuggling Family Begins⁣ 02:25 - Kent’s First Smuggling Run at 14 Years Old⁣ 06:00 - Hiding $15,000 From His Parents⁣ 12:25 - His Family Discovers the Smuggling Operation⁣ 16:40 - Building High-Speed Boats for Massive Runs⁣ 17:20 - Buying the Legendary “Bluebird” Smuggling Boat⁣ 1:03:00 - The Brutal Reality of Smuggling in the Everglades⁣ 1:06:10 - Boat Sinks During Deadly Winter Storm⁣ 1:10:35 - Stranded for Days and Presumed Dead⁣ 1:15:10 - The Plane Finally Spots Them Alive⁣ 1:19:15 - Navigating “Green Doors” and Escaping the Law⁣ 1:21:00 - The Fear, Pressure, and Toll of the Smuggling Life⁣ 1:40:00 - The Smuggling Life Pushes Kent to His Breaking Point Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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wherever you listen to podcasts. We done the largest job ever to come into the United States by boat it was a hundred and twenty two thousand pounds it was done one night how many boats 19 there were one way's out of death or prison the islands we lived on uh we're actually about 12 miles northwest of chuck lusky and the only way you get to these islands is by boat in the same boats that we used to come that started in the commercial fishing this is the same boat when I was 14 years old that I got into the drug smuggling with

and when I said I got in it it was teetotally accident my father come to me one evening and we had to have so many pounds of fish at the fish house a week or we don't eat that's just the way it was

we had to have somewhere around 200 or 400 pounds of fish at night if we could fish anyway I left the dock and it was dark, and I was going to a place that we always fish, a place I knew. And I had crossed over the main channel from Chalusky, Everglades City Channel, which is Barron River. And this is the main channel into Everglades. So I crossed over it, and I went into a creek, and I come out the other side into what we call Gaston Pass.

And when I got there, a boat come up to me, and I slowed down and cut the motor, and he did too, and he asked me who I was. And I told him, he said, where's your dad? I said, he's home sick. He said, well, I need your boat. I kind of need the boat, too, to make a living. So you come with me, you make a living. Well, you don't understand.

If I ain't got about 400 pounds of fish at that fish house in the morning, my dad's going to kill me. You come with me, he says, and you'll have the 400 pounds of fish of that dog. I said, what have I got to do? He said, well, do you got to do this here? I was, how long is he going to take? He's just a couple hours. Now, keep in mind, I'm Southern.

This is my elder, and he is one of my dad's cousins. So you knew him. Oh, yeah, I knew him. So it wasn't a stranger. No, it wasn't a stranger. But to tell you the truth, I didn't know it was even going on, didn't know what it was. Right. And I just knew he needed the boat, and he looked at me, and he told me where to go,

and he handed me his hood, scrimanded, if you call it, and the one's got the eyes and the mouth in it. And he told me, he said, when you get here, he said, wait on a light to blink off the boat. He said, go to that boat. He said, put the hood on.

He said, I don't care if you see somebody, you know, if you hear somebody's voice, you don't know them, you don't speak. He said, well, they'll get done. He said, they'll tell you where to do, where to go. And they did. And when it got done with the,

boat they sent me in they told me going to chuckluskey bay and be behind this island here when i seen a light blink at a bridge to go to the chucklusky bridge and i done it when i got done they told me to go off into the bay bail water in the boat and almost sink it and uh bail the water back to get the residue out of it okay so what so when you went you you i mean you you skipped that part. You went to the boat. Yeah. They loaded it up with, what? Okay. That was with bales on it.

And then I, when I, they got done loading me, they sent me into the bay to wait for the light blink at the bridge. And when I got the bridge, they unloaded us. Okay. Everything. I never left the steering wheel, which wasn't a steering wheel, was a tiller handle. But I never left that motor. That's what I was told to do. When I got done, I still didn't have fish. Right. Now, you're talking a kid at 14 years old.

I keep jumping from 13 to 14. There's a reason behind it. Okay. Because I was 13, almost 14. And as this story goes along, you'll understand that women are kind of funny, especially my mother. Okay. And 14 sounds better to 13.

It sounded more, like closer to being an adult? I guess. Okay. Whenever I got done, bailed the water out of the boat to get the residue stuff out of and I went on fishing. I had 200 pounds of fish so when I come in I went to the fish house to weigh the fish out. And when I got there, I stepped off the boat and I walked up right to the fish house guy and I said, look, I said, I've got 200, about 200 pounds of fish I need to weigh out. He said, do you want me to put them with the 400 that you just brought in here?

I said, he said, or do you want me to put these on tomorrow's? put them on tomorrow. Right. What difference would have made where we put them? But my mindset was on 400 a night, so put that for tomorrow. I didn't know if I was going to be able to fish tomorrow or not. So how am I going to explain this?

So I got to the house and that fished and everything the next day. And about three days later, I come in the house and mother looked at me and said, son, Philip called for you, which was the cousin. of golf. And I want you to come to his house. And I said, I left the house. When I left the house, we live in one end there,

he lays the far end of it, back towards Chuck Lusky. And he lives in the center of town. So I go over to Phillips' house, and I knock on the door, and I come walking in. And in his, when you come in the door, left-hand side is a dining room. She's got a round table. And he's sitting there, and there's these bags all over the place,

and there's money, and then there's paper, you know, writing paper. And he sat in there, and I walked in. I said, you wanted to see me? He said, yeah. And he grabbed this bag, a little beer bag that you put the beer and keep it cool. And he says, here, here's your pay. And he threw it to me. I said, my pay.

Yeah, he said, you get paid for that. And I said, well, how much is it? He said, 15,000. I said, 15,000. I said, I said, 15,000. I say, I ain't never seen that much, much less heard of it. Now, you're a kid of 14. You got $15,000.

You live at home. Yeah, you got to hide it, right? You can't walk around with it. I start going back to the house, and I'm sitting there. My mind is racing. You can come up with many things of what you're going to do with the money how you want to do it and everything else if you're going to hide it all from your parents you can't show up with a new bicycle you can't show up with a new vehicle you can't

you got to explain so i got into the house i took the bag of money and i stuffed it in my pants and when i come in the door now let me paint the scenario of the door that i'm talking about it's a mobile home the mobile home faces the water so the front door is actually where the back door should be they wanted the front door face to bay. The back door, which was when you come in it, you come in a kitchen table to the right, to the left,

is the kitchen. Go forward just a little bit, and there's a hallway. It goes down to the bedrooms. And if you turn to the left, there's a living room. So I come walking in, and I went on back to the bedroom.

And I looked, and I said, okay. I put it in the job. jacket pocket. Can't put in the jacket pocket. Mother will come in there, go through everything if you wear the jacket one time. That's mothers. They always cleaned.

So I took and I lifted up the mattress on the bed and I put it under the mattress. And I'm sitting there and I said, I can't do that. Once a week, she comes here and flips the dang mattress and, and, you know, does all this air this out and air that out. I'm sitting there and I'm sitting on the end of the bed and there's two of us boys. and there's a dresser ahead of me.

There's three drawers on this side and three on this side. And I'm sitting there and I take the top drawer out and I'm filling the round up there and trying to figure out any place to hide in. So I put that one back in and I pulled out the center and was filling around. So man, this ain't a place. And I'm sitting there and I took the bottom drawer out and I just sat back on the bed and I'm looking, trying to figure out what to do of this.

I look down there here's this little piece of, fireboard on the bottom of it. I'm thinking of myself, okay, that's a good place to hide it. And we've always towed pocketknife. I still got one on me now, so if you're going to be a fisherman, you had to have it. So I took the pocketknife out, and I cried up that wood, and boy, that's a nice place. I took it, and I put it under it. And when I was at Phillips, and he paid me, Philip looked at me, he said, I've got a job going on tonight.

do you want to be on it? And I looked at him and I swear to God, my head was shaking no. But my mouth said yes. And so I had to look at dad, and I said, Dad, look, if you don't mind, I says, I need to take the boat. I said, I've done good the last time. I said, if you don't mind.

No, go ahead, son. Well, I'd done five or six jobs. this way and dad and him never knew it now I'm assuming that Philip cannot tell your father that he's involved you in this whole thing dad would not be okay with that no okay not at time my dad don't even know what it is but there's another reason why and it ain't that Philip wouldn't tell him he would he wanted daddy but now I was there and after about five jobs The women, back in them days, I don't know if they still do it now or not, they spring clean.

They, when they clean, they dust. They move ever a goddamn thing. So I was gone that day out playing around and doing whatever, and I come walking into the house. Daddy was sitting at the table, and I come walking out. Daddy, when I say drank, he drank vodka, and he'd take his Coke and sit it next to it, And he'd take that vodka and turn it up and take him a swig of Coke.

And he'd done this day and night that he was a pretty good drunk. And he had that. When I say drunk, Daddy, Daddy wasn't an alcoholic. He could maintain. So he was a working alcoholic, if you want to call it that. Functional. Functional alcoholic. And a lot of times, he could sit there and drink a cord of vodka or whatever,

and you'd never know he drank it. But he done it all the time. So I come walking in the house, and I come through the back door, and he turned the cocked eye at me. You know how they do. And when Daddy talked, he was Southern, and he was right-handed.

When he was serious, he'd always talk, and he'd bounce his left finger like that. And I come walking in, and he says, who in the God dang hell did you kill? Picked that bottle up and hammered it down and took. So I said, Daddy, he killed no goddamn body. What the hell's wrong with you? You drunk?

My mind didn't go on the money. I didn't know what he was talking about. He said, son, what bank did you rob? He said, I don't know if I can help you not, but if you tell me I do the best I can do. Daddy, I ain't rob no goddamn bank. What the hell's wrong with you? Here comes my poor mother out around the corner.

Do y'all remember the Army and Navy stores? Yeah. Do you remember the bags they had the paper bags that had little handles on top of them? Anyway, she found the money. She had put the money in the bag. So she'd come out around the corner and she looked at me. She said, where did this money come from and she dumped the money out on the table? And I looked at Daddy and I said, Daddy.

I said, I've been hauling pot. He said, don't start your God dang shit, son. He said, your God dang mama. been hauling pots and pans around this God-ding house. All her married, God-dain life, she ain't never made no money like that. And don't try to tell me you're a better fisherman. I am because you're not. Now, where in the God- dang hell did the money come from?

I said, I've been hauling marriage. What the God- dang hell is Mary Joonner, he says. My mother, she threw her hands, her head in her hand. She said, oh, God, Randall. He's on them drugs. is driving them kids crazy. He's going to die or go to prison. Well, half of that was right.

And we talked a little bit, and Daddy said, how much is here? I said, Daddy, I said, I don't know about $70,000. And he says, what do you make a night? And I said, Daddy, I said, we're making about $15 a night. And I says, but I didn't know how to say it or tell you. I said, but we got to get rid of the boat. I said, I've got to have a bigger boat. And he looked at kind of funny.

I said, Daddy, I said, the boat don't have a false floor. I said, and we put the stuff down in it. I said, it's getting wet. I says, and they don't like it. I said, down in Marathon, I said, the guy called Walter Thompson, he said, I know Walter used to fish around him.

I said, okay? I said, he's building a 24-foot fiberglass well boat called a Thompson hall. I says, it's already paid for. I said, trailer down there. And we had a truck back in the December, have them these. It probably out of the 60s. And it was a, I'm

wanting to say a GMC, it might have been a Chevrolet, all the same thing. Had three on the tree, standard sheet. The truck was so dang old that we had to have, we used it for crab and the fishing and hauling bait and stuff. Had a rope

from one side to bed to the other to keep it held on. It was so russed off. It looked like something like Fred G. G. Sanford would be coming down the road again. And I told him, I said, Dad. I said, you need to go to marathon. I said, when you get back, I said, take the boat, drop it off of the mercury dealer here in town.

And this is on Everglay City. And I said, here's enough money. I said, but you're not going to make it in that truck. So when you get over by Miami, Honstead, I said, go on in there and get a new. Staples Preferred Business Membership, built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about.

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That was easy. Back then the trucks wasn't about $5,000, daddy, he left. And a day, two days he come back. And I come up in the Yucs. yard and here's this truck. And I'm sitting looking at it. And I'm thinking myself,

I thought I told him to get a new truck. So I go inside and he's sitting there looking at that. What do you think about the truck, son? He's a nice truck. He says, Dad, why didn't you get a new truck? He's son. He said, this has got AC. He said, the windows even roll.

And he was rightly happy. The truck might have been four or five years newer than that one, but it wasn't a brand new truck. Right. not a problem he was happy with it and uh so we got going he i had been uh back into hall of pot once they got the motor on it the mercury was a motor that uh didn't last uh around everglay city and chuck lusky our mud has small shell in it and it's a little bit thicker and that sand is stuff it would stop up the water ports from the water pump and i would burn one up a month if

not too. So we had to switch over to the Johnson and the avenue. And that gave us the power, and they was decent motors. The 235 was one that you better have a big gas tank on. The reason we call it the 235. They come up with the 225. That made a lot more power. And we could put $4,000 to $4,500, maybe $5,000 on a wellboat and still plain. Then later on we graduated over to the T-craft, which was built for us out of Titusville. The man that built this boat had built the Seacraft, and he took it, and he split right down the center, and he widened it and lengthened it to 24 foot by 10 foot wide. Two motors on it, we could make somewhere around about 70 to 80 mile an hour,

and we could put somewhere around about 6 to 8,000 and still make anywhere, anywhere, from 40 to 60. Okay. It all depends on. It was shallow running boats, flat bottom pretty much. And I'm the only one that's ever been across the water to Columbia and the Daniels family.

I had a 75-foot boat, and that's one we didn't talk about. She was 75-foot. She was nicknamed the Bluebird. Her real name on the side of it, her Christian name, was the Lacey Lady. And I had two 1292 Detroit D.

that was rolling out of almost 1,200 horsepower. And another crab boat that I had was a, was a 49 foot, 41 foot Torres Hall. And the guy that built it was out of Key West, Mr. Torres. And when I bought the boat, the 75-footer, I bought her in Marathon at a bar, sitting at a bar called Farablanca. and was sitting there, and I went over to look at a boat that was to sail, and when I looked at the boat,

I couldn't buy the boat, just didn't like the boat, not the way it looked at everything, and it wasn't for me. And I was sitting at the bar, me and a couple other guys, and this fella come walking in, it was quite a bit older to me, and he had a couple people with him. And he sat at the bar, four or five stools down from me, and he turned and looked at his crew or the people with him and said if I could find some poor sucker to buy that boat

I'd sell him to him lockstock and barrel well I'm sitting down there looking for a boat and I turned to look at I said hello I said I'm sorry to hear your conversation I said it loud enough I says uh where's the boat at he pointed that to one day he said right there I said what is it he told me the length and the size and or the length and uh who made it and it was a number one and a mean

and I said okay and I said why are you getting out of he said because I'm tired he said now fish this year ain't caught no fish he says and he said I'm just don't want to fish no more he was older and I said okay and I said what do you want for he told me I said well you give me an hour and a half he said yes so I picked up the phone and I called a cousin of mine down there Steve and I says you take my plane and fly to Everglay City for me. And he said, yeah, and I says,

I'll have somebody meet you at the airport. I should bring it back to me. So I called my dad, and I said, I need a favor. And he did, and I says, it needs to go to the airport. And I was going out with a girl, a little girl called Lucinda. I told Dad, I says,

she's going to come down and get it, and just give it to her, and it was in a bag. I said, Dad, I said, it up. I said, tape the top down, tell her not to look at it. Don't tell her what it is. We may never see her again. I'm going to say this here. And this part you get it out. She was a blonde. Right. And she was a bubble blonde. Sorry. And this woman, you could tell her something and she would do it to the teeth. You tell her not to look at this or she'd actually what she'd do. And she took it to the airport. And whenever they were Steve. got there she handed him the bag and he left and she left and when he got over there he uh come

walking in he said you want to count this in here you want me bring this in here or do you got a room i looked at a guy i said you got a room he's yeah i do he said let's do it at the room so we go there and get in there i just opened the bag and i said dunked the money out on the bed and i said count it and i'll be it back to you he said don't need to count it i trust you i said all right i says uh i've got to take the boat to Key West to get it documented. Documentation is a way that a boat don't have numbers on it at a certain length. It has a name. So the boat has to switch paperwork over to me from them or whoever the boat's name going in.

So when I got down there, I had to fly down to start with me and him to sign papers. Then they got to look at the boat so I'd come back and got it. So we flew down, signed documentation. Whenever I was standing there, Torres come up. He said, what are you doing here? And I told him. He said, all right. And I said, I had the boat back here in the morning.

So I had brought the boat headed back to Key West. On the way back to Key West on the Gulf side, I come across an island. And ahead of that island just offshore of it was a bunch of fish that rose up. Now, there's me and three other people on the boat. And the nets on the boat. And I look at Johnny and I says, that's kingfish. He said, yeah. I said, you all want to have some fun?

So we struck the kingfish. I paid $75,000 for the boat. Back then, I believe the fish was about a dollar, $1.10 a pound. Okay. How much fish do you get? $70,000. $70,000 fish? Pounds of fish.

Put it on the boat. She was heavy. We took her straight and short to Pine Island, got there and offload of. the net on the dock, told the guy to get somebody pick them, cleared the net, and we'd be back. Left there and we run on the boat on down to Key West, and there probably wasn't much alcohol involved in it, you know, how that goes. We sat down at a bar and we bought it, so let's go ahead and tell the truth.

Got down there and Torres seen me, and he'd come up down there and he says, 75-foot, I said, yeah. He said, I just salvaged a boat. and he says it has what they call hydrofoils under it he said to be illegal he said we can put it on your boat

I said what would it do he said it would raise it he said bust a wind or bust a suction let wind air come under it he said it'll take that boat he's how fast it's run I said about 24

he said about 40 I said really he said yeah and it wasn't it wasn't high as we know it. It was actually what we come to know as trim tabs. Bow, back quarter from bow,

38 inch by 18 inches wide on each side, and it would lift the bow. Aft forward a quarter, 18 inch by 8, and it would lift that butt end. And she would break suction on that water, and she would move 42 miles. an hour running light. It was a mackerel and kingfish

boat, so it had the ice holes in the front, three of them. And another friend that took care of the boat, Billy Tyner, he looked at me, he says, there's some work we need to do this boat. He was a good fiberglass man. So he stepped in and he cut

boxes off under it, refiberglass, and put a false bulk hat in front where it looked like it was solid wall. And to move it, you had to lift it, pull it, and do something else to it to get that bulkhead to move. And it was all foam and fiberglass. You could put $25,000 under the deck of that boat and you couldn't find it. And you never knew it was on there. With $25,000, I could still make about 36 miles an hour with it. And she was

a boat. So I would use it to go across Columbia. I've been there a couple of times. We're all sure. So this is all you're doing now. Are you still fishing? Oh, we'd still work. We still all of it. I still stone crab. We never, no matter what,

even when I got in it, even when I had the money, when my dad asked me he could get in it. And I told him no, there ain't no sense of getting in it. It's because I was told this. It ain't if you get caught. It's when you get caught. Your butt's going to jail. two ways out of it, and that was death or prison.

We still commercial fished. Pompinode mullet, microfished, whatever it took, and we still hung nets. We still built crab traps. We still stone crabbed. And this was a way of life just because we was doing this

didn't stop us. But what everybody didn't realize was it wasn't just us. We was doing it for everybody. If there's people that was our people or not, and they're having a hard time. We gave them money to get out of it. You know, we didn't. We, we, we didn't do it for ourselves. Yes, did we benefit, my God. Did it change our way of life? Yes, it did. Did we get greedy?

Yes, we did. Everybody does. But if you would go back and look at Aberglades City and Choccoloski, there was nothing for the kids to do. There wasn't a park. That part. That part, part of us in town was the smugglers, we done it. The fire department. There really wasn't a fire department. There wasn't no community center. There wasn't no skating rink. As of about a year ago there was,

and everything was built by us, donated the money, and we had a rich man in town that was also a realtor. So we would go to him and say, hey, here's some money. We want this bill for the kids, so they got stuff to do. So he would donate his money so it looked legit. Right.

And he's got. Right. Yeah, he's got the cash, which he doesn't have to declare. No. Right. Every church that there was, Chuck Luskey, every day city, Lee Cyprus, would get a non-a-donation. Sometimes it would be around Christmas. Sometimes it might be Easter or just before school started.

And sometimes it might be just a donation to just a church itself. Look, this is for y'all. Or either it might come, I said, make sure the kids has got Christmas or Easter, or school clothes, or books, or whatever they need. It wasn't just about us. We've done it to help the community. I'm sorry. So right now, you're still just working with your uncle.

It was your uncle, right? Or cousin. What's that? What was that, Ken? The initial, the guy that initially got you into it. You're... Philip? Philip?

Was it your uncle? Was he your uncle or your cousin? My dad's cousin. Your dad's cousin. Okay. So at this point, I'm still working to jobs with him. Okay. So, and at this point, what you're doing, you're just going out, you're meeting a boat, you're loading it, bringing it back, dropping it off.

He would tell me before we leave where to go to. All right. But who are you meeting out there? Are these Colombians? No. Are they just other commercial fisher? That part of the trade is a myth. Now let me explain this to you.

Well, if we went to Jamaica or to Columbia, the biggest part of everything was Columbia, they didn't bring it to us. Okay. They grew it, and they packaged it. Somebody would go down, and they would look at it and say, I need this amount. And they would take you to a field. And they said, all right, this is this. And then if you smoked it, they'd let you try it. Right.

And then you say, okay, this is what I want. whatever you wanted out of this field. If you wanted 25,000 pounds, out of that field, yours would come. Then at this point, you wouldn't be the only one. At this point, you had to figure out a boat of some sort to pick it up. A lot of times a shrimp boat, a lot of times one of the bigger crab boats. A lot of times it might be a freighter that's coming across. If it's a freighter or a bigger boat, we would have to go out into the shipping channel and pick it up.

It might be 200 miles, 250 miles. At this point... In my mind, I'm picturing you just still in the Everlays or just outside the Everglades. You're going way out. Oh, I didn't realize that. Very, very, very few times that we get to run 50 miles or anything like us here. If you've got that close, they can bring it on to us. But the Colombians, Colombians didn't run the boats.

They didn't come across. That was our... Visit BetMDMDM casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGEM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. People. And let's just say that a boat went across. and he was coming back a shrimp boat, trawler, or whatever. We would meet him at a certain time,

and he would make a radio contact with us or with whoever, and we would go out and meet them at night, and we would listen for the motor of that boat, that exhaust. If it was a crab boat, and it loaded the exhausts, coming out of the bud in would be under the water and it would make a bubbling sound. If it was dry exhaust, it would come out the top like a shrimp boat.

Well, it would be just like a car, but a loud car without a muffler on it. But Colombians, they might have come to Miami, but they didn't get into all that. Now, the cane of stuff, yes, but if I left Columbia with a load, there was people that would follow it all the way across.

Now these people, they might not make $1,000 a year. So they might pay them people $150,200. And they might be over here for a week, two weeks, or six weeks. Whenever the job would come across, it was their job to make sure it got the land. If it didn't get the land, it got busted there. They would be busted with it. But they were not part of the United States, so they'd get exported back. till they couldn't get in no trouble here.

If it made it on in, then they would go to where the pot was stored. And when it got to that point, anybody that had put money in it would come down and pick their stuff up. We got out here to a boat. We had, and it was coming off a freighter, you would have lot number.

In other words, if you was first on the lot, you might have a thousand through whatever. You might be picking up 250 bales. It all depends on the size of them. If it was 80-pound bails, you might be picking up 300 to make your 25,000. Over in Columbia, the Columbia and gold, you're going to pay about $10, $15 a pound.

Over here, they were selling for $350. So there's a price difference. Yeah. You know, but the old myth about the Colombians, no. They was making their money that away, and they didn't make it all in pot, the cane of stuff, and that's what we refused to haul. We would not put anything on the boats at all if it wasn't.

If I was looking at a bail and it had a different number or different color on it, now what people don't realize, the bales, how they compacted them, is the garbage compactors we used to have here back in the 80s. Yeah. Well, that's what they used. And no paper, plastic bag, they'd put in it, and then they'd close it up and tape it up,

and then they put the crockersack on it. Would any place, this country, that this stuff come from, the crockersack, had their colors on it. Columbia, green, yellow, and you, whatever, black, let's say, but it wasn't. that was their colors. And then it had the number on the bail because everything was numbered.

The lot numbers was on it. And that's how you knew. And if it had a different number or a different color, and it hit my boat, that's the one I'm cutting open. Right. And if it had ludes in it or if it had cocaine in it or some other drug, it went overboard. We didn't play that game at all.

Okay. Okay. So how long were there, I mean, how old are you at this point? I started whenever I was 14. I went to prison when I was 24. Okay. My father and them got in it in 1976. They was in eight years. How old were you then? I was 16. Okay.

Whenever I'd done it, whenever they got in. I had come home one day after Daddy had went to Miami, got the boat and everything. else. I'm making this sound like we was doing a job every night. It was, and it might be a job tonight, and it might be a month, it might be two months, and it might be tonight and one tomorrow night back then. Everything didn't start getting real busy until the 80s when Operation Everglades and everybody started getting busted. Then it started getting busy on us. But daddy, I had come home and I looked at

and I said, where's dad at? So he went Cooper fishing with Totch Brown. I said, no, he didn't. I knew then he got in it. What I didn't know was that Totch.

Who was Totch? Totch was another man that was in it. Their daddy's first cousin, Buddy Daniels, was the godfather of the smuggling.

In other words, he got in it in Fort Pierce. He was a micro king fisherman and a pretty good one. And over there it got hot. He told him, he said, look, guys, he said, I got a better place. He said, it's a lot easier to run. I got people over to take care of. So he brought it into Everglades.

His right-hand man was Todd's brother, Peg. Peg got sick and died with cancer and 76. Pegg was a real good man. I mean, I thought the world of Pegg, even though I was a young, and he always took time with you. Totch was a man, a wannabe. I'm not going to sit here and put the man down, but he wasn't a man that Peg was.

Did Tots Hall Pot he did? Was Pots to a godfather? No. No, not at all Buddy Daniels was. but anyhow Totch did Hallpot and he did set up some jobs and out there when Totch had the heart attack

buddy come to dad and said I need you so they took him out to the boat and told him said look take the boat to here there's a GPS or back then was Lawrence he says and you can go there he says and they'll meet you

well daddy being who he was and coming up, not having the money, living on the islands, and he'd come up in the time that finding food was hard. Why do I want to stop at the boats? I just bring the dang thing to the port. I'll float it right there.

Okay. He brought in to Fort Pierce to the marina. And does you not understand that this is something they're looking out for? This is daddy. Daddy Daddy was one D-1s whenever he'd done something He would

The end in and he kicks in And sorry for saying it You could have took a five gallon bucket And laid his in it I mean he just He was just a man of man And even Tots said it in his book He said he had the biggest balls at all

He said that man Brought it right in And when the head guy come to him He said what are you doing here He said, well, there ain't no sense involved with them other boats. He said, back then vans up here, let's unload it. And they did. So he looked at it.

He said something to him. He said, oh, my God, he said, how much money did I just save y'all? Right. That was his way of looking at it. And so Daddy got in it. And when Daddy got in it, one of his brothers, the youngest one, Craig, now this is the part of the story. I didn't finish at the bridge. Craig, when I pulled up there offloading,

Craig was loading the van. He was what we call a grunt. He would be inside the van, and people would walk the bells to him. He'd load van and send it out and load another one. And we didn't know we was on the same job for years. I mean, about 10 years ago, maybe 15, me and him was talking, going somewhere in the truck, and he looked at me.

He said, you know, I think I was the first one. I said, what makes you think that? He said, well, I was on the job at the bridge of Chuck Lusky. I said, you mean the one that the feller done this? He said, yeah. How do you know about that? I said, because I was on a boat. I said, where was you at?

Craig's 10 years older than me. Right. I'm a captain. He's a grunt. Right. But Craig is known as the first Daniels that got in it. Daddy created the family and got into the marijuana smuggling. His brother Darrell, which was 15 years old whenever he moved from Florida to Pennsylvania,

and he met and married a woman whenever he was 20 or 21 in Maryland. And he had the first kid, then he started coming home. And so Darryl really didn't know a lot of the country, but him and my dad fished together and everything. And Darryl was a man that had numbers. I'm talking about he was, when it comes to numbers and figuring this out, he was good with numbers. Mathematical genius, just right on top of head.

You asked him a question. It was just this way. So Daddy would run the jobs on the water and set it up. By the way, Daryl would take care of the land part, setting the jobs up, collect the money, and Daryl liked it. The rest of us, being family, was all equal. somebody come to me and said, Kent, I got a job. I want y'all to do it.

Well, at this point, I run that job, but the whole family done it. Being equal, and the six brothers, and then out of the six brothers, Duane had three boys. Two of them was in it. One wasn't. Daddy had me and then had the younger brother, Dino. Dino got in probably about 78, 79. and that was the only ones that had kids old enough.

Darrell son, Troy, was a lot younger than us, probably about seven years or so. And Craig, his kids were just babies, two or three years old. Cheryl, his two boys, was also about ten years younger than us. so they didn't get in it and they wasn't around. They share on his wife divorce, so they was with the mother. The Daniels family made up of 29 people. When you call the Daniels family, you're talking about brother-in-laws. Right.

You're talking about uncles. You're talking about cousins. When I say cousins, I'm talking about first and second cousins. I ain't talking about distant cousins. If you weren't family, you didn't work for us. And this is what made us the family. This is why nobody could catch us. It's because we kept everything between us.

The other crews and Everglades and around Chocoloski, where we was out of, they had to run here and run there. We didn't. Funny story, we had done a job, and we had the whale boats. and when it comes to us, commercial fish has always been the first. Actually, it's going to be part of a store. Then I'll go to the other one.

And we was going down to do a job, and we was going down south. And the job we was going to do was down at the Shark River. My uncle, my dad's right-hand man. We all kept nets on the boat, mullet nets. And it happened to be,

in the middle of winter during run season. Darrell going down, he sees this bunch of mullet by about 3,000 pounds. All right. What does he do? He's got a million pounds. He stops and fishes it. He strikes that goddamn bunch of fish.

What the hell are you going to do with the fish? He has to lead the net and the fish. Go get the pot. Everybody brings it in that he's got to go back down there and get the damn net. fish. Why? That's the mindset of us. We're still commercial fishermen. And we always, every year I fish commercial, every year I still crabbed. My boat, the Gulf Pride, would leave the dock in craft season all the time. Might not be on it, but I had somebody running it.

We had done a job, and it got hot, so we put the boats up a canal river. And they was hid pretty good. Mullet season, run season was in for the mullet, rowing season. So Daryl, naturally, he gets itchy to go catch a mullet. So he gets on a john boat him and one other guy, and they go up, and they unload his boat onto everybody else's boats there. Brings his boat out to go mullet fishing. Okay.

A tourist sees him come out. He don't see them. So the John boat comes out, and when it does, the tourist runs to the park station, brings them back to it. The job gets busted. Why? Because Darrell wants to go mullet fishing. No, I understand that, but I'm saying that they just saw... The people saw Darrell go in.

Right. All right, with a John boat. Okay. And he goes in there. They're in there for a while, and they hear this noise in there, and they hear us talking. And then Daryl comes out with a mullet boat and the John boat. There's boats up in it. So you just put two to two together.

So they go right across the bay to the ranger station and say, look. We think something's going on. Yeah, so they go or find the boats. So they take the boats to the ranger station, to everything up there. Now, we got a job coming in, not that night, the next night. So we got to have the boats. We can get no boats. You go get the boats back?

We go to the ranger station and we got other boats. Some boats, not many of them, that we could barry. So we got beneath four or five boats so we get in the water and we swim up there

and it's at night so we untie the boats. The keys are in them. We swim the boats out to the bay. The other boats is going to bring gas to us when we get to where we're going. We steal the boats back, go do a dang job with the boats, bring the boats back afterwards,

push the boats back up in there, tie them in one big wad, and leave. And nobody watching these boats? They just had them. They had nothing on it. They took all the doper stuff off from it. This is back before they had cameras and stuff and all that.

So no. No. But it's just something that you done. I mean, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that a lot of your law enforcement wasn't in our back pocket. Right. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that they wouldn't bribed out because a lot of them was. I can't say every one of them.

90%. That helps. Yeah. It helps the 90%. Yeah. You know, it probably your head sheriffs and stuff, probably not just around Everglay City, but a few others. other places too. Everybody was in it some way or another.

We was not the only crew. There was other crews. There was us and probably four more other crews, three or four and every glades and one on Chakalusky. The one on Chalusky, the Weeks crew, if we needed extra boats, we used them. If they needed extra boats, we used them, or they used us. And it was out of way, and we all knew each other.

There was a difference in the crews. They had their own people that worked with them. Ours, we had ours, and that's the ones that worked with us. We didn't change crew. We knew each other, we trusted each other, and it was a family. This is one of the reasons it made us who we were. When we went to prison, we were the first family since the James or the Dean brothers. a hundred years that never went to prison for the crimes committed against the

United States government we also are the ones that done the largest job that ever to come into the United States by boat and was imported it was a hundred and twenty two thousand pounds sixty one tons it was done one night how many boats does that take 19 19 and all of them was not haul was not had Maryland One was used as watch boats and runners. You never load every boat. If you do, one boat tears up, what are you going to do with the other? Yeah.

You've got to have somebody get it. If a boat tears up and the laws on, you've got to have somebody go by and get them people off that boat. You never bring in all your stuff. You never send all your stuff out to the end. You always hold on enough for your pay so you don't get messed out of your money. If you send everything in and they know it, why do they need you pay you?

They can rip you off. Are you hearing about people getting busted? Are other people getting busted? Oh, yeah. Okay. What happens when you hear, like, what's happening? We still got a job to do. Right.

If you're... You're not concerned about it leading back to you guys. We know we're going to jail. Okay. We know it's going to happen. I know, but I mean, you can still be concerned. Like, you can still like, if you feel... You go through the grapevine or you find out that, you know, these other guys just got busted.

You can, you know, are you then looking like. Let's look at it like this here. I understand what you're saying. Okay, you're one of the family. We got you on a bigger boat. You're bringing in the to us. There's no way you know what's going on ashore. Right.

There's a drug bust that happened. What are we supposed to do to leave you out there? Right. I mean, we can't do that. You're our family. Hurricane, tropical storm, cold, rain, it, snowing. You're coming off that boat. I don't care if there's law in it.

Good example. We had a job, and we was in, we was a side pavilion, a little bit offshore. And this job was set up, and we didn't know it. and the boat brought it in was a schooner, and it was called. I bleed the Popeye. And we're going back to somewhere around about 78 or 79. So we get there, and the youngest brother, Dad's Craig, he'd come to me, and he said, come up here to cabin with me. He says, you know radar better than any of us do.

I said, okay. Why I knew it is because I had worked on on the purse same boats and different things and I also knew sonar So I got there and I said what's going on? He said is that birds? I says on the radar? Yes so I got to adjust in it

And I said no boys that ain't I said they got us surrounded So we go back out air and tell everybody I said look They got us around it We got to get out of here Now we don't leave nothing all the drugs all the marijuana off the boat all the guys are off the boat the boat the boat is anchored at this point

we leave we start heading towards pavilion there's one thing a lot of people don't realize when you say off the boat i'm sorry you're to you guys throw over the the on to the we got our boats tied alongside of this boat okay and a captain is never supposed to leave the helm but naturally i was never done what i was supposed to have done. Right. I guess I've been an outlaw even in the middle of that. But it was a good thing I did or

would have got busted. Whenever we took and offloaded that boat, we loaded it on to the wellboats that we had there. And one, we got everything loaded. We started leaving. You had the big boat. You got the Coast Guard.

You got the back then the Marine Patrol, the park rangers and the county cops coming in to you. You got some insure. The radar did the coast guards got is shooting this boat.

They know that we had come to this boat. Now, their radar can't shoot through that boat. So, like I tell them, I said, y'all ease the boat towards the beach. Keep this boat behind you so the radar can't hit you. Whenever you get to the beach

where you're running down side of the beach about 20 foot off from and put her out on top, don't start any white water. White water is foam off the side of the spray of the boat. They can pick that up. So when you get to the beach, you start turning down and your boat blends into the beach.

Radar won't pick you up. They can't see it. Even the foam because of the white sand. So we was a mile and a half away when the Coast Guard popped the lights on and come on the loudspeaker and hollered. Oh, don't know about it. moved, we got you all surrounded.

I, did you, you didn't, you didn't halt, did you? We was a mile and a half away. Oh, is that? We was gone. Okay. We was already gone. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so it's a decoy?

No. We took everything off the boat. Yeah. We headed to the beach. Right. In the boats, it was loaded, and took all the people off from it. And then we got to the beach, we got out on top. Because the radar won't pick you up on the beach.

So we run down the side of the beach. Okay. Then we got cut over. And when they popped the lights on and holler, Holt, don't nobody move, we got you surrounded. Really? Right. We're a mile and a half away.

At this point, the race is on, but it's a proven fact who's going to get away. We know the country. Park rangers, when they were back in them days, they wasn't allowed to be there, but three years. That's not enough to really know the layout. No.

You can learn part of it, but even to know every oyster bar and everything else, even today, a storm come in and things are going to change. A man that tells you he don't run aground has just told you a lie.

We swam every inch of it. That is our backyard. That's our playground. When I was a kid, one of the games we played was tag. Mm-hmm. out of outboard boat. At the bow tagged you,

and we would be swimming in the water. Okay. So we didn't say we were smart kids. We just said we played. When did the DEA come into existence? Because at some point, I know this has more to do with like, coming in Miami when it just became a blood bath down there,

when these guys were having shootouts, stuff. Then they ended up creating the DEA. right like it it but it was more right i don't know what year that was but at some point they started taking this like super serious they was always there they uh just wasn't called the DEA what was they it was called DEA FBI and everything else there's something about it that y'all don't know and uh I'm fixing to show you something and uh because there's something that you need to see before uh or I say I actually said this on uh another other one that I'd done here not long back.

And when I said it, the man freaked then I had to prove it. So I'm going to go ahead and prove this to you. Before... I believe you. Well, I know you will, but what I'm fixing to do here. I mean, it's going to freak you out. To start with, I want you to read that name right there if you can. What?

Ginger Billy? No. No. Right there. No, George Bush Sr. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. What's that name? George Bush Sr. What's that name?

Yeah, President George Bush, right? What's the name? What is it? Scarford, Sharford? Do you understand he's forthright to Hitler? Is there a real last name? Oh, oh. Okay, this here. How do you say the last name?

Did I say it right? Shrush. Sure. Yeah. Okay. It's here. Now, I showed you that to take you to this one. Now, this is all off of Google, off the Internet.

It ain't something that I'd done. Anybody can find it. And I want you go ahead and read that. Okay. George H.W. Bush, biggest drug lord ever. Okay. Reagan was one of your better presidents, correct? I've always thought so.

I did too. If the government would not back the conscious war with them, where did the money come from to pay for the conscious war if the government didn't back them? I mean. And then you figure out who was Barry Seals. Yeah, yeah. We interviewed, we've interviewed a couple of guys that were pilots with Barry Seals. you know, bringing in drugs for it.

Of course, you know, the CIA. Me and Barry was good friends. They used us and the other drug smugglers. We just interviewed Roger Reeves, by the way. Okay. Okay. All right. The documentary that we got coming out and you can take this out if you want to,

because this had been said for the last two years, and I told them I wouldn't even acknowledge it. They said May to 15th, but yet we still got. They've got a film festival in Fort Myers coming up on the 23rd. After that, I've got an hour and an 11-minute documentary on the family and everything, and my mother's in it, and my uncles and stuff is in it. And it's real good, but whenever you figure out what actually happened back in the day and how long the law has been involved in it, they didn't want to stop it.

to stop it was cutting their funding off. We didn't know it. We thought we were smarter than most anybody. We didn't realize we was being used. But we were. They was using us to bring in their money. Right. To back the Contras.

I didn't find this out after I went to prison in federal prison. I've done four years the first time. But in there, the people that you meet are actually good people and they're in there for different reasons and some of them are not bad people some are real good people

and there was one that I met in there that looked at me and says do you even know what y'all was doing or why y'all was doing? I said, well yeah, I took everything away from us and this is how I started learning about what went on and everything else and this is why I started researching it

and this is why I know what I do on this It ain't hard to find if you want to Google or research anything. You can find every bit or find out what you want to know. DEA, FBI, and everything's always been in it. They started with Miami because Miami was bringing in harder drugs than people knew. It wasn't just about the cocaine. ever drug has a medical purpose.

It all depends on how you use it. It was one of the dangerous drugs it is. Even that one has a medical purpose if it's used right. But it's also, if you get around it, that's just like an interview yesterday that I'd done with David Shealy on the boat. He looked at him.

He said, if you found a bail or something floating, he says, would you pick it up? And he says, most of your drugs He said, he's got medical purpose. And he said, if you picked it up, you took the pocket knife, you cut it open, and a wind blowing. He said, at this point, you just killed everybody on the boat. And like I looked at him, I said, it wouldn't even be worth it. It would carry too much weight.

When I say weight, too much jail time. And there was also opiates and stuff that was coming in. And the hard stuff, it wasn't, to me, it wasn't worth. It was worth it. Right. I wasn't there to kill people. The marriage, we used it, my family did, being in, if we had a toothache, they would bowl it and they would make a sab out of it, or jail,

and you'd put it on it and they'd kill it. Insomnia, where you couldn't sleep, smoke it. Different pains and different things, if you had somebody that was, that wasn't eating, smoke it. Right. You know, different things. And they had different use for it.

They would take the leaves and the green ones, and they would take it and wad it together. And if you had a ball or something on your part of your body or a bad place on your foot or a pain, they would put that on it. So we knew that the marijuana wasn't going to hurt you. Right. didn't figure anyhow.

And somebody asked me if I thought it hurt. And I didn't. Asked me if I was ashamed. No, I'm not ashamed of anything I'd done. Do I think it was right? No, it probably wasn't right, but I'll say this. Liquor wasn't right, and they still brought it in. Yeah.

And if they'd have left our drugs to being grown and what God put out there, none of this would have happened. They had a war that they was wanting to fight and they wanted to fund it. Can I say Reagan done it? Can I say George H.W. Bush done it? No. Your government done it. People says that was an easy job.

It's one of the hardest jobs I ever had in my life. The nerves, the weight. you're constantly lifting anywhere from 80 to 120 pounds. Now, you're offloading from a boat to another boat. All the time, you didn't bring it in. And there was mosquitoes. There was weather. There was rain.

There was heat. There was bugs. There was law. You get out here and it's hot on Chuck Lusker at Everglades. You can't bring it into there. Okay. You got it set up to go there. That's where your vehicles are, but you can't bring it there.

So what do you do? you put it in the mangroves. How do you get it there? Well, you have to pull the ball that close you can. You've got to put men overboard in the mud, and then you had to hand it, and then the mangrove's roots are so close to it. You can't walk it.

And then you've got to put down tarps and stuff to stop this stuff from getting wet. If it gets wet, it's no good to them. So you had to build a platform, and then you've got to leave somebody on it and come back in a day or that next night if you can, sometimes it has to stay longer than that and sometimes you had to go out and get it and take it to somewhere else

we brought it up to 41 we've had brought it up to different places out there on U.S. 41 up Turner's River we've took it out there by the port of the islands on 41 the Ranger Station in Everdly City a lot of stuff it was delivered there the bridge it was a fun life

but it was a scary life We had done a job, we sunk a boat, me and my brother-in-law, a whale boat. And we had went to marathon and got a twin-engine Robalo. And we had bringing in a job from Cape Sable, which is actually a Shark River, which is down in that area by Flamingo. And the boat, we was on the twin engine, we got to come back. and my youngest brother, Dino, had probably just got in it. And whenever we got it going, he had the whale boat,

didn't have many bells on it at all, because I could put everything on that twin engine, and there was other boats. The deal was that if anything happened to one of the boats, we'd come back for it, that nobody got left behind. We just wanted to make sure that everything got back down to what we needed that, put it in the trees. So on the way back

Steering Busted on that boat And a younger brother Come up and I said look Take this boat And let's unload what you got And we put About seven more bells On that boat

With his crew and Me and the brother-in-law I was going to cut straight across And get the rest of the boats Offloaded and then get back down And get everything off that boat I told him to just go on shore.

When we got going along, Northwester broke down, and that was a mile off shore, many islands. And when the Northwester started breaking down, when I say breakdown, it started blowing, and started turning cold, it started blowing northwest. The waves started coming up, and the rain. Well, the motor had water in the gas,

and whenever it did, there was no weight on the assing to this boat. and when the motor shut off, the bow started going down to the rear end, started coming up, because there was water under the deck that we didn't know about, and you would steer from the bow. So when it started coming up, the bow started going down, started coming up. I run to the back and started throwing the bells off, and whenever the boat done it, the bow went down, and she started flipping over upside down. Now, the water is cold.

This is December to 28th of 1979. This is the coldest three days that we had of the winter. I'm talking about this is free, going to freeze. It's going to put snow and ice in Carrier County and out there on the islands. So we grabbed the bail. Now, we had jackets on this stuff. We grabbed the bail and we swam in. And when we got there, we drugged the bell up and put out there on dry land.

Now, keep in mind, there is no drugged. drugs on the boat, shoved everything off. That was the first thing you tried to do if something happened. That way, if they found the boat, they didn't find the drugs. That night, we got out of the water. My brother looked at me, he said, we're going to freeze today.

I said, no, we're not. I said, crawl around and find a couple of clamshells. And we did, we got clamshells. I said, now dig a hole in the sand up on the bank a little bit away from high watermark. I said, deep enough that you can cover yourself. So we did.

And we took and broke tree limbs and put in it the leaves. And I said, get in there and cover yourself up. I said, this sand will keep you warm. And did. And we laid there that night. Next day, we got up and got to moving around. Every boat that would come by would come in shore of us

because it was still blowing. So any boats would come by I was in shore so I told him I said we need to leave this island And it's a plover Little plumber and then buzzer key Plover to little plover Is not that far apart I would say probably a 16th of a mile

So If that far We The wind was blowing northwest so all the water was gone There was some there, but not a lot. So we didn't have to swim. We could walk in. It was on a low tide.

So we started going across. So we got a little bit damp about halfway up from our knees to our waist. And we got over on a plover or a little plover. And we stayed there that night and still the boats were coming and shore. At this point, Coast Guard was called. Okay. Because we were missing. Well, they found the.

boat on the second day and all the family, not all the family, Daryl, Daddy and everybody was out here and Daddy, they found the hat floating, a cap. So Daddy got the cap and he brought it back and he looked at my mother. He said, Joyce, he says, is this Kent's hat? And she looked at it and she said, that's Kent's hat. She said, he says, we've lost him. So we found the hat in the We found the boat upside down. Said the water's too cold, according to Coast Guard, they'll never make it. They're gone.

Anything you know about our family, if they ain't got a body, they will constantly look for you for the rest of their life. So that night, we slept on a little plover. We left there and I told him, I said, we got to go to Buzzard Key.

So we went to Buzzard Key, the third night. And we're sitting out there and Buzzard Key, there is no beach on it. Water comes up with just a mangrove island. And it's rock, cap rock.

So I told Ricky, I said we're just going to have to find a way to fork in a tree and sleep in it. So I found a fork in a tree. And I started breaking limbs, laid it on that, making a bunk out of it.

Well, I found one limb I didn't have to break. It was laying over a good heavy one. Big around, I set it down. My brother-in-law, he looks up and he finds him a Y in a tree, B. He gets up and that's where he's going to sleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder. Your focus, your mood, even your recovery. Ghostbed is here to help you fix that. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's comfortable, during and designed to actually help you rest. Every ghost bed mattress features premier materials, proven cooling technology, and their exclusive

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limited time. Just go to ghostbed.com slash Cox and use promo code Cox at checkout. That's Ghostbed.com slash Cox, promo code Cox. Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed in the world. Some exclusions apply. See sight for details. It's there. Very smart man, I'll give him that much. I'm laying down there, and I'm thinking, I'm saying, boy, this ain't bad.

I'm laying out flat. Somewhere around about 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock at the morning, the tide was high. That limb that I picked up, I didn't have to break. and it broke it broke it laid my fat ass back in the water cold so i'm sitting there next i'm just there ain't no sleeping after this for trying not to freeze a death and my brother-in-law probably didn't laugh too hard i figured i he would fall out the tree he wouldn't laughing so hard but i couldn't have played anybody done the same thing so next morning i walk out on the end of the rock now the jacket I have on is a suede leather with a wool collar the mold wants to get

heavy and thick one and the sun's out and it's feeling pretty good so I actually have the jacket over my shoulder and I'm at this point grabbing crabs or whatever I can find and to eat we're going to cook them and I look up and there's boats running but then ain't nobody seeing an airplane comes by. And at this point, we're out here four days. Don't you say, how come they're not fighting you? Well, because they're not thinking that I'm alive, and they're not flying that way.

Darrell, he's actually coming down, and he's flying to Shark River, and he's going to come back because the wind out of Northwest blows across. Like, Glover's here. It blows across, like this. So the bodies would have been out, but he was insured at this point, and he had another one of my brother-in-law's with him.

Paul, Paul's out of Minnesota. But Paul, he has glasses, and his glasses is as thick as coat bottom. Right. At the bottoms of them. And Darrell flying, and he's sitting passenger, and he comes over a buzzer key, and he looks down there, and he says,

Darryl? He said, wind's blowing pretty hard, ain't it? Darrell said the wind ain't blowing all. Paul, he said, the plane ain't jumping. He's what makes you say that. He said, well, that goddamn tree down there is moving kind to good. So Darrell dips his wing. Here's Kent.

Flagging with that jacket. He said, that's not a tree, Paul. He said, that's Kent. He said, that's Kent. So he dips his wing. I'll holler for Ricky. I said, come out here. I said, he's seen us.

But Ricky come running out. Daryl goes, and he turns, and he comes. comes back and he flies level, well, getting chills talking about it, flying level water, and he looks over at us and he does like, it's here, thumbs up and he goes, okay, and I go, okay, that's good, we're good. And he sees Ricky. So he flies out, he turns, he comes back, and he says, and means I see you back in a minute. He's going to get a boat. He goes. whenever he does that a boat sees

Darrell do this this boat is not hunting us he's hunting the drugs that has hit the water he ain't no more word about us so the fella's name he's dead

it's Sheldon Pike he died some years back and the first thing he'd done when he come up he said where's the pot I said you got any cigarettes he said yeah I said you got something to drink

yeah I said well you give them to us I said let us on that boat and I said I tell you where they're at and so he did and I says on the end of plover I said there's one bell I don't know where to others

is called throwed it off I said we kept one to swim in with and he started bringing us in I said oh you got to do I said Daryl be with us in a minute but Daryl made it to us

and we got on the boat with Daryl and we come in and got to the house and sat in there and we all sitting there talking I said well

I said well I said and it's something me and my brother-in-law talked about. If you're dead, within seven days, they'll have a service for you. It's over with. My family's not going to stick around with it. Life moves off.

So we got to talking out there, and I said, Ricky, I said, if we start swimming in right now, I said, it would take us probably four or five days to get in. I says, we could probably show up to the church and be at our own funeral. Nice. So we got back and us sitting there and we got the mother and dad and everything,

you know, all the shock and everything wore out and nobody was dead. I looked at them. I said, well, this is what I told Ricky out here. I said, if we had started swimming in, I figured it took us about four to seven days to get in here. I said, I figured I'd be at my own funeral. Now telling that one, my mother and father over my life of smuggling and a few years after, has had five phone calls on officials of me being dead, all set for one. And Darrell, daddy's brother, was coming down 29 and seen a pickup truck of white one,

the forward flipped over in the canal. The body laying on the side of the road that had the top covered up, the blue jeans and the black pair of boots. And it was my body type. So he called dad and told him I was dead. There ain't no doubt about it. I'm looking at him. What?

My mother, and I mean, somebody said something. I said, I guess I'm a cat. I had nine lives, so I still got a couple more to go. My mother, God knows, I don't know why, that woman's been through it with me. Ever great here, that woman's got her head, I believe I put there. But how would you like a phone call that your son is dead? No. And I tell you, rough.

guys, not only that, let's stop and think about something. You're running the area. It's tight, narrow canals, oyster bars, sandbars, mud, rock, and trees. And you're running it out to dark. And you had to know the country and the water so well that you got to know ever turn that there is to even get away because there was something even in the book that we put in there called the green door. A green door is a creek that the mangrove trees had grow over.

And you've got to know exactly where it is going. Are you being chased, you turn off from it. Let's say the tide is coming in. With the foam off your boat, it's still going to keep going. And if the tide's falling, it's going to take it and carry it back. So the foam ain't going to be where you turned in at. And a lot of things people don't think about, whenever people shines a spotlight

or a light, they shine in their line of vision. Right where you're looking. So when they look where I went to, they see leaves. They look

if they shine in the water, the light hits and it glares so they don't see the opening. We hit that thing and the bowel hits the limbs and it shoves it in and then it closes behind us. The mangroves are evergreen, and it's a hard wood, but it's also a rubbery-type wood when it's younger. And the leaves ain't going to fall off from it.

They're thick and they're heavy. That's your green door. We never toaded guns on a boat. Never have we toaded guns. They did. Have we been shot at? Yes, we have. Every night we leave the dock.

I would get to the boat. and I would take the key time my hand hit the key and I don't mean drinking I'm talking about pure nerves I would start dry heaving because of the nerves of it because we're living on the island and we're having to leave this island we can't get this boat out on top too much noise

so we had to idle across Chuck Luskey Bay which is about a mile and places of some a mile and a half when you're going along and you're idling any boat can come upon you any boat you're sitting dead especially on low water if you're digging mud so you're trying to stay as quiet as you can

you're trying to get across the bay so you can get in the inner island so you can get this boat out on top and you're sitting there and your nerves and everything is just that bad and ain't just me everybody pretty much does it and whenever you get there and you get across the bay and you start giving that boat power and that wind starts blowing in your face and through your hair.

Then the power you can feel of that motor. And whenever you control of that boat and you know at this point you've got the power in your hands, you know they're in a boat going to get upon you. They can't just come to you. Because you've got a lot you've got to think about. When you leave the dock, if you draw attention to yourself

and you get a boat that follows you, you're going to bring that boat right to your people, and you're going to get your people busted. That's something that you don't want. They come in, they never called us on a boat. They never called us with marijuana. They never had the opportunity to. Did they chase us?

Yes. Did we get away? Yes. Did they shoot at us? Yes. Was any of us hit? Maybe. All right.

I would just say it like that. We didn't leave the dock to kill anybody. We left the dock to haul barrel to make a living. When I got in and I was told it ain't if it's when there wasn't me two ways out of death or prison.

My mother in the documentary tells a story where the house that they had had a porch all the way around it, wrapped porch. She would get out on the porch and she would pray and she would cry and she would pray because people has to understand it's not us just going through it we know what the hell's going on there we know if we're getting

chased we know if we're in good weather we you we know if we're having to take it easy but we also know if it's hot if a boat's broke down if they're shooting at us the wives The mothers, the sisters, they don't know this. They're sitting at home. If a boat comes by the bay running fast, if a helicopter, if a cop comes on the island with lights, what's going through their mind? They don't know. It was bad on them. It was bad on us, but it was bad on them.

How long does this go on before you get busted? Have you been, it sounds like you've been busted a few times. We got busted. No. The family was only. busted once. We never got busted. They never called us. We pled guilty to a conspiracy.

Conspiracy, a lot of people don't understand what it is. Me and you and one other sitting around talking and about doing a job, let's say. Me and you agreeing to it to do with the job. The third person is saying,

no, I don't want nothing to do with it, but they don't go and turn us in. But they can spy But they didn't turn us in, so they get as bad as we do. Right. That's conspiracy. Three years before we got out of it, our lawyers, we contacted the lawyers and told the lawyers to tell them if they wanted us not to come into stop postile, tell us, and we would surrender. We was wanting out of it.

So, okay, did you know that you knew that other people were getting busted? Did you know that they were looking at you guys? Or you just decided you made it? They was always looking at us. Right. Okay. We just, we got tired of it. We wanted out of it.

We was told there wasn't but two ways out. That was death or prison. Right. Well, the easiest way was prison. And they come in in operation. Now, this is a, this is a good story. When they come in in in 1981, they come in, they close the road off. They come in at night.

early morning and they come in like a thief. They busing in people's house. They kill people's dogs. They took men and women out of their bed naked. I mean, the man and his wife and everything else, not just one or a few of them. The night they'd done this was 1981. Okay.

There was a job offshore. We don't leave people. We went and done the job. We got the drug, the marriage, off the boat. We got the people off the boat, helicopters and everything else flying around. All right. Law on the water. We come in.

Whenever they jumped me, I come in and my hand on the boat asked me, he says, do you want me to start throwing this? You don't throw nothing. I had a Marine Patrol and a park ranger. I started up a pass called Fishhawk. Fishhawk pass has got oyster bars in it. When I started up in it, both the boats was chasing me. And there was Orster Bar in the center. Now it's got trees onto the mangroves.

He didn't have them then. So I would act like I was going one way. And when the boat would start kind of go around me, I'd come back. And the other would cut to the side to one run of ground. So I kept going, left the Park Ranger, on up a little bit. and the center is Orsterbark goes pretty much all the way across it. Well, when I was heading up, I know the deep water's on the right, so I cut to the left.

And when I fate left, I come back right, so he's going to come out around me to cut me off. And he runs a ground. He runs a ground. Now, being young, around about 19-year-old, I'm a smart ass. I was just going to say, you feeling pretty cocky, right, at that point. So what would you do?

I mean, I don't know. You keep going. You unload it. You find someplace. Well, you could. Yeah. What's the fun in that? What are you taunt them?

What? You swing back around and taunt them? I'm going ahead a little bit and I slowed down to my crewmaster. What are you doing? I said, what's this? I turn around and I get 100 yards or so away from them. I pick up the spotlight and I put the spotlight on so they can't see me. I said, y'all boys all right?

Yep. We're fine. I said, okay. I said, I'll see y'all later. All right, we'll catch you later. And I turn and leave, and we bring the stuff on in, and tide's falling, so he's going to be there a while. Nobody got hurt. We brought the stuff in, put the stuff on dump trucks, brought dump trucks in, dumped the dirt off from them.

Had a bico sitting there. We put 5,000 pounds on each one of them drum trucks. It was 25,000. Put dirt on top of it. Put the skirt, the screen over top of it, sent it out through the roadblock. That's nuts. That's nuts. The drivers would leave about 5.30 in the morning.

And handing the drivers last night, you good, let us look in the back. Nothing but dirt. Rolled on through it. Okay. So, and this is while they're raiding the town? Yeah. Okay. So they don't, but they don't catch you then.

They grab you later. They don't grab you at all during that raid? No. Is that the raid where they came in and they took like 80% of the town? People don't understand there was two raids. Okay. One in 81 and one in 83. Yeah, I actually did know that.

I remember when we interviewed taught. The 83 one, they come in to get us. The first name that the government gave us was the saltwater cowboys for the way that we could run in regular water. The second one Was the ghost people Okay okay Now you see us and now you don't They surrounded that boat

And we got away They said it's impossible That we've seen the boats come We know the boats didn't leave It had to be ghost people So And I've got two books out Right

And one of them is called The Ghost People Of the Everglades Oh good And the other is called, in the shadows of the ghost people, the Everglades is strictly about that. It tells about the marijuana smuggling the time I got in it and time we got out. A funny story. We done a job, and there was 20,000 pounds.

Sorry. And we brought this in and a tropical storm. And it had just started raining. So we brought it in, we put it into a house. a two-story house right on the water. And the funny part about the house, and we put it in the garage, then it had steps that went up from the garage to the second story.

Or you had a set of steps that went outside and you go up. Well, we left it there through the tropical storm, and it got to rain, and I mean, hard, and a fellow come to us, and he says, the cops had got your place over there. So what are you talking about? So they got your place. We run over there, not run over, we got over there, and we got to sit around shores the devil.

In a minute you see somebody come out. So we got our boats together. We went back over, tied to the dock in the rain, through the garage, took everything back out of it. While we was doing it, me and another fellow walked up the stairs. We was walking up. The other fellow was ahead of me. and there was a cop outside smoking a cigarette and he looked at him

he said you seen anything he says no the cop asked my buddy that he said no he ain't seen nothing he says okay he said right I'm going back downstairs so me and him went back downstairs they was inside the house of top we took everything out of the house back into the boats and come around the other side of the island that sent it out

Yeah, kind of ballsy was. Yeah. All right, so when the first bus comes and they grab a good chunk of the town, right? You guys don't get caught, but a bunch of people do get caught. They, yeah. Right, they get taken away. There is. When they come after us in 1983.

three is that when you went you went to them first and said listen we had already went to them yeah and then what they just they they weren't interested they want to make a show in right yeah yeah yeah they don't want you come and turn yourself in this right here that makes them look incompetent right they want they want the headlines not just that it makes you look like good guys that you're sorry you want out of it now whenever we went to them our lawyers did said look The Daniels said they're done. We actually stopped hauling about a year, year and a half. And then something happened.

I don't remember what it was, but people come to us and said, look, this has got to get in. We got to have you. Because every time somebody went out, they was getting busted or this or that, and there was so many people pointing fingers at each other at this point, because the ones that was going to jail, was going through trial, and everybody just got pointing fingers at each other, trying to get out of whatever it was they was doing or had done.

Whenever they come in for us, we stayed true to the name, the ghost people. We wasn't there. We knew they was coming. So we turned, and I was sitting in the Florida Keys. I had a house down there also in Marathon. and a bunch of us had went to the bar that night, and we made it back at the house about 1.30 that morning. And I laid down in the bed,

and my sister, youngest sister, was staying at the house, taking care of the house whenever I wasn't there. And she'd come beating on my door, and she said, you need to look out the window. And I looked out at the window, and it wasn't nothing, but all cop cars up and down the road, not in front of the house I was at. I had an airplane at the airport.

So I got a kid that I was raising, boy Woody, and I told him, my son, I said, just grab some shit and let's go. So we did, and I got hold of a pilot that was over there, and his name was Harold. And I said, Harold, I says, you want to fly this plane? I said, I need to go back. Yep. So we got heading back, and we actually got. got in Naples because we wasn't going to Everglades because we knew what happened.

So when I got into Naples, I told him, I said, touchdown, come to a roll and stop, but don't stop. Keep going to about 15, 20, mine, I'm going to jump out. And I did, and I had called my aunt and her new husband after my uncle got killed in an airplane crash. She remarried, and they met me at the airport, and I went to their house, and she had went a house that I had out in Golden Gays and got me clothes. And I took a shower and everything.

And he said, what do you want to do? I said, I need to go to my lawyers. Because I knew that's where everybody was going to meet up. So we did. And we got Robert's office. He looked at me. He said, just sat down. He said, you want something to drink, nerve pill or anything?

I said, no, I'm good. He says, Cheryl, Craig, be here in a minute. They're on the way up. I said, okay. I said, they didn't get them. said, ain't nobody got. Said, not out of y'all's family. I said, okay.

So we got there, and he told us, he said, look, it's Friday, I'll have you out this afternoon. Well, we got in, but there wasn't no getting us out that afternoon. I was waiting until Monday. We had to take a bus trip to Miami, and they put us in a holding facility we called. It was called the Bird Cage. It was just nothing but chain-leak fence right in the center of a building,

pretty much jail and courthouse. It was pretty comical anyhow. How many people were scooped up? There was 29 of us there. And we got arranged and come back. It was six months before we went to prison after, I went to jail after that. And the judge just sentenced us of Rutger.

He was a fair judge. I'll say that. I mean, he sentenced us under the old guidelines, which that's one we fell under. My brother, Dino, he looked to him and told him, he said, we're going to adjudicate you as a minor. He said, you're going to go home. You ain't going to do it day. Dino was probably 21-year-old at the time and probably just turned it. He looked at the judge.

He said, no, you're not. he says you're going to treat me like a full adult like a man that I am. He said, you ain't going to pin me with no snitch. Okay. And he didn't. He got this time, he got four years. And some of them got seven years. Dad and Daryl got 13 years apiece.

Daryl got an extra three years for tax evasion. Now, let me tell you why we didn't. Okay. We pay taxes. On the money? On every dollar? It's some of the money. Some of the money.

Well, let me ask you something. Can they tell you how much money that you actually made? But if you go back in the day, and my mother, smart woman, go back in the day of the taxes, right-hand corner, it said, upper right-hand corner, is said illegal or legal money. It gives you the way out, so we pay taxes on it. it. We didn't get tax invasion. The brother did. Daryl did that his brother. We didn't. So this, when you say the old law, the old law is, is where you did after one-third,

you were eligible for probation. You didn't necessarily get it, but you at least, you were eligible. You had to go before the board. Yeah. And then you did 60, was it 65 percent? You, like, you could get 35 percent good time. You didn't, right. But you didn't, you didn't, you didn't good time or gain time. You've done two-thirds of your time. Unless you didn't get parole. Okay. Then you would do it day for day. Oh, that's horrible.

My first name being Randall, my dad's first name being Randall. Whenever we wound up later on, Daddy and Darrell went to Tallahassee. We went to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

The warden there, his name was Kent. K-I-N-D-T, he was a German descent. Good man. But he loved concrete, he loved block and brick. Okay. So, we were.

Right. And he was fixing to build another mechanical service building. And so when he, whenever he was there, me and him become friends because when I was a kid, my grandfather nicknamed me

Mr. Kent. Okay. Because the name y'all know me by his Kent. And he got on a drunk with my grandmother a few years before this. And to get out of it, he brought a parakeet home. And he had to bear his choice, his alcohol, with slits. So her mad at him, she named the bird Mr. Slits. Well, and me as a kid, I still stood back then just like I do now.

Bowed arm. My arms out. I could never put them to the sides. So when I was a young kid, my grandfather would come to the house. When I say, kid, I was two and a half three-year-old. And he would take the screen out of the window and pull me out. He owned a bar and restaurant. So I would sit in the bar and restaurant with him and all the other older people.

And this is where my history and stuff come from in my talking. The storytelling is him. at this point he nicknamed me Mr. Kent. So when I got to the prison, I was walking down to compound and the control center hollered Mr. Kent and come to

control center. Okay. I marched my little fat ass right on up there, bent down, I said, can I help you? They said, what the hell do you mean? Can you help us? I said, well, you hollered for me. We didn't call you. I said, the hell you

didn't. He said, what is your name? I said, Kent. This big fella walked up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder. He said, move out the way a minute. And he turned and looked at the guards in there. He says, what the hell's going on him? He said, he thinks he's you. He said, what? He thinks he's you. He said, they told him. He hollered and I come answer. He turned, I looked at him. He said, what is your name? I said, my name is Kent. They hollered from Mr. Kent. And I come here. He looked at me. He said, I'm the only goddamn Mr. Kent here. He said, you stand right there.

And we got done, he said, come to my office. Well, normally you go into the warden's office. It's never a good thing, right? Yeah. And we got in there. Next stops the shoe. Well, we got in there and we get the talking. And he mentioned something.

I asked him, I said, so I hear you're fixing to start a new mechanical service. Yeah. I said, well, that's a good thing. He said, you lay block? I said, I can. I said, but I'm not as good as my father and them. he says I says

Oh no I said I've got three of the best mason there is He said you got them Yeah I said where you got him Up your shirt sleeve In your back pocket He says In your pants

Where you got them I said they're in Tallahassee He said oh he says we got them Yes I said no you got to do Make a telephone call fill out a piece of paper You get them He said it's not that easy

I said, sure it is. And we got done, and I looked at him. I said, I'll have them here in two weeks. And we both laughed and it walked down. And when I walked out, I was walking down to compound inside the office, the hallway, and the chaplain walked out. He said, what are you doing coming out of the warden's office? Because, you know, at this point everybody's concerned,

because you just don't go into warden's office. I said, well, I said this and that, and I told him the story. and I told him, I said, yeah, I said, he loves to have block brick and stone. I said, my father and my uncle, and one of the other uncle is some of the best block masons and brickmasons it is. And he said, really? He said, well, where's your mother? I said, she's in Everglades City, Chuck Lusky. He said, your dad's in Tallahassee.

He said, yeah. And he said, tell me he visiting. I said, well, she has to come see Daddy. I said, then she comes up to see us. She has to get motel, and then the time she gets home, she got to do it again. He said, so it's a hardship. I said, very hard. He said, okay.

He said, come to my office. So I go to his office, and we sat there talking. I gave them their names and their prison number. He said, all right, let me see what I can do about this. A week later, a bus pulls in. Well, my uncle, my dad's right-hand man, Daryl, steps off. where the warden picks up the loud mic

and calls the front of her. He said, you get Mr. Kent tell him to come to my goddamn office. So I showed his office. He said, just who in the hell are you? I said,

what are you talking about? He said, you got your uncle here. He said, I couldn't do that. He's had you. I told you, I have him here in two weeks.

I said, my dad would be here in a week. He said, who are you? How did you do this? I said, well, when I left your office, I run into the chaplain.

He said, oh, my God, he got a higher grade and I got it. And I said, yes, I says, and it's a hardship on my mother, visiting. We later, my dad come up, so we got to be his people. Right.

And when I say his people, we was out here laying block or brick, they were bringing us sweet tea from the kitchen, cookies and everything else. So Mr. Kent and Mr. Kent become friends until I got out. When it come time to get out of prison, they walked me, my brother, Dino, and my brother-in-law, Ricky, into control, dressed us out, called the taxi, walked us out, put Ricky in, put my brother Dino, put me in, opened and never shut the door. Another one come out and said something. They reached in and grab me to get out. You're not going.

Why? My first name was Randall. I had a central inmate monitoring on me just like Dad. They didn't know which Randall was which, and they wanted to make sure they wasn't letting the one out that had the more time, which wouldn't hurt my feelings either way. Right. Because one of us would have been out. But anyway, after about a month and a half, two months, they got it straightened out. So I was released at that point. Daddy done nine years, and so did Daryl.

Daryl done a little bit more time, not much. Daddy stayed in Alabama, Montgomery. Darrell got transferred to Homestead. How much time did you do? I've done four years. Four years. And you were out on parole? I was out on parole.

I think I had, I think I was out six months on parole and everything. Because I didn't come straight out, so I didn't do a year or so out on parole. I'd done halfway house four months and I had a couple months, but also had a stand committed fine. So until that fine was paid, I was on it. But that fine got paid pretty quick.

And you went back to Everglade City? No, I would come out in Naples. I went back into laying block and stuff. And I was married before I went in. And I had the house in Golden Gate, so we stayed there until I come home. and the wife i found the little rat snake inside the house that wound that up so then we moved in and go to gate well i don't know what that means a rat snake yeah a snake she found a snake so you had to move yeah okay she wasn't quite the country girl she thought she was when he comes to a snake okay

me i just took the snake and got you know let the snake outside that was enough to give to move out the house anyhow I don't know what to tell her and her she was born and raised in Stewart Florida and a commercial fishing family but undoubtedly they didn't have snakes over there so what did you do after that you just and we laid block and then after a while me and her divorced so I come back and started commercial fishing as far as guide fishing as up. I actually went into running the equipment. There ain't a piece of equipment I couldn't run even back in the day. So I'd done a little bit of everything. It all depends on where the money was.

I'd go to it. What do you do now? I'm a guide fisherman out of every glades. Okay. It works out pretty good. I took an airbow hall, what they call the original Bobby Jones Cotton Mouth, which is fiberglass. And I gutted it, cut the sides down on the 8-8. inches and made a center console out of it. It's 18 foot long, eight foot four wide. It's a good solid boat. It don't rock

back and forth. And if you've got bad knees or hips are hard to get around, it's not hard to get around on that boat. I'll float in three and a half inches and I can run that boat part and mud behind the boat. I've got a 115 Suzuki on it. They run about 45. And how many people, this is, you bring

people out on the boat? I take people. fishing. I, uh, my fishing license is for four people. Okay. I,

I can put, uh, I can put six and eight on it, but I don't. If, uh, if there's a family of six and a couple of them's kids, yeah,

not a problem. I'll take them because normally the kids ain't going to fish. And if they do, they, they're, if they're, if they're under, uh,

what is it, 16, they ain't got to have fishing license. So, you know, it ain't no problem on that. Just just got her, her captain's license.

Did she tell you that? No, where'd you get her from, Jess? C school, I got you. See, I had a lot to do with the captain school in Cape Carl and around. We was the only school that was able to write the book and give you the test right there. But we did sell out to C school.

Captain Casey did. But yeah, from that school, I took a 100-ton master and wound up running freighters out of the tugs, crewboats, supply boats, underfooters, and then I went up. Then I took tests and took my license on up and climbed on tugs out in Louisiana, Texas,

and the oil field. There ain't nothing you can't do with them. When did you write the books? The books was wrote about seven years ago. I had a ghost writer, by the name of Barbara Tyner Hall. And we was going to write another book, but she wound up and married my brother.

Okay. And don't get me wrong. Whenever you get to be family, I don't do with family. I don't work like it with family. It causes hard feelings time to time, so we just quit the writing on it. And there is other books that's got to be wrote,

but I'll find somebody to do it. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button to the bell so you get notified a video. just like this. Also, we are going to leave all of Captain Daniels links in the description box. We're going to leave the link to Amazon. So you can go there. You can buy the books. We're also going to leave a link where you can buy merchandise. I really appreciate you guys watching. Please buy some merchandise. Please buy some books. Super fascinating story. Thanks again for watching

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