The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Betrayal on the Bayou | 6. Cops to Canaries

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

This is the story of how Chad’s team gets caught. Rose Graham is a grandmother who becomes Johnny’s unlikely peddler for the drugs he’s been stealing from evidence. One fateful night, Rose goes to a lakeside restaurant and tries to sell cocaine to an undercover State Trooper. Soon, Chad’s team turns on him. Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of Smoke Screen ad-free right now. Click ‘Subscribe’ at the top of the Smoke Screen: Betrayal On The Bayou show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. A Neon Hum & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Rose Graham is with her grandmother outside Hooked Up Bar and Grill.

That's a spot on the North Shore, right on the Chifuncta River. Hooked Up is the kind of place that serves the staples of the bayou, fried catfish and crawfish etouffee. But Rose isn't there to eat dinner with Grandma. She's there working undercover for Ched's young protege, Johnny Domaine. Rose is supposed to meet a drug buyer

right there at the restaurant. She's sold to him before, and Johnny wants to check this guy out. He said, make sure you take a picture of their license plate. I want to run it and find out who he is. And I'm like, okay. This is fishy as hell, and it's not just the river. You see, Rose has been working for Johnny, but she's not really an informant. Johnny's been asking her to trust him because he's a cop.

He's been twisting her arm and lying to her. But he's been doing all that to get Rose to sell drugs. Somewhere along the line, Johnny went from being drug cop to drug dealer. We went to Rose's house, sat down at the kitchen table, and talked with her about it. Rose says she never knew what she was doing. So you thought you were acting sort of like a... Undercover cop or something, you know, doing a good deed for people. I'm a dumbass. This is January 2016.

Boobie's grand supplier, Jorge Peralta, is on trial at the federal courthouse in New Orleans. Booby has taken the stand to tell the jury what Chad wanted him to say, that he'd met Peralta. This would later lead to perjury and obstruction charges for Chad. The shit is about to hit the fan for Chad and his team, but nobody knows it yet. Across the lake on the North Shore, Rose is there at a hooked-up restaurant meeting a drug buyer. Her grandma's scared, so Rose says she'll go in first. I'm going to the restaurant to talk to him. You take the picture and come home. Her grandma snaps a photo of the license plate to send to Johnny.

And if bringing grandma along is any indication, Rose is not a savvy drug dealer. She's in her late 40s. She's white and blonde. She drops a surprising number of F-bombs. But she looks like Paula Deen. According to Rose, that's why Johnny picked her. He said, Rose, look at you. Who would ever suspect you?

He said, you always present yourself. You carry yourself as a lady. He said, who would present yourself. You carry yourself as a lady. He said, who would think you were selling dope? Rose finds the drug buyer inside hooked up. And they asked me, do I want anything? I said, sure, I'll take a margarita. Rose tells him about some cocaine she's trying to offload for Johnny. It's not much of a sales pitch, but it's what she's got.

I said, I don't know if you're getting pounds, ounces, grams, or however it goes. I said, it might be Comet Cleanser. I don't know. I was just told to ask you about it. They continue talking about what kind of dope Rose can get him. And I drank a margarita with him. He had something in his hand, dumb me.

What did he have in his hand? I think like a key fob or something. He kept flicking it, not paying attention. Like I said, I've never done anything or been in this kind of trouble before in my life, you know. So I don't know. He could have had a recorder on his face. I don't know. Yeah, it was a recorder.

Rose and Johnny are about to get a surprise. This guy she's trying to sell dope to, the buyer, he's an undercover state trooper. A couple days later, Johnny gives her a call. That night, he said, we got to talk. I said, okay. So he comes and gets me. We're in his truck. He said, Rose, I think we fucked up. I'm like, we fucked up? What do you mean? He said, Carl run the license plate and it's fucking state police. Johnny tells her that she's on the hook.

Johnny and Carl are implicated too. They ran an undercover cop's license plate in the middle of Rose's drug deal. Rose and Johnny are mulling it over in his truck when she gets a call. The state police got on the phone. Miss Graham, you need to come home now.

We're at your house waiting on you. You and Domain need to get here now. This is the moment that Chad's A-team begins falling apart at 85 miles an hour. So far, we've seen Chad's misconduct. It's complicated, entrenched in the DEA mission. It's hard to tease out the right from the wrong. Chad is about cutting corners to be a star agent. This next story is different.

This is about Chad's handpicked team, Johnny and Carl, going rogue. You've heard a lot about the system. Now let's tell you about the dirty cops. You're going to hear exactly what Johnny and Carl have been up to. And as a warning for listeners, this episode contains descriptions of addiction and sexual misconduct. Chad says this all happened behind his back, that he didn't know anything about it.

Whether or not you believe him is up to you. Either way, Chad is screwed. Because this is the Fed's leverage. This is how they're going to get the A-team to turn on him. I'm Feynman Roberts. And I'm Jim Mustian. From Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Smokescreen, Betrayal on the Bayou.

Episode 6, Cops to Canaries. That night, after they get the call from state police, Johnny and Rose return to her house. According to a police report, when they get out of Johnny's truck, his hands are shaking. Johnny asks if he's going to jail. He tells the cops it isn't what it looks like. But of course, it's exactly what it looks like. Rose is arrested right there at her house.

Johnny voluntarily comes along for questioning. And by the end of the night, Johnny is placed under arrest too. Johnny, a federally deputized task force officer, Chad's hand-selected protege, is locked up for drug dealing. But soon, Johnny gets a proffer letter, or what prosecutors often call a queen for a day. That's an agreement to tell law enforcement everything he knows,

with a deal that the information can't be used against him later in court. Johnny, you understand why you're here today? Yes. We have these interviews between Johnny and the state police. Nothing you say and you'll be held against you, criminal. We have these interviews between Johnny and the state police. In them, Johnny sounds uneasy. Remember, Johnny's in his 20s, and he's had a rough time of it. His mom died a few years back, and his dad left when he was a kid.

According to Carl, it seemed like he was lost. Over the past couple years, Johnny's become a rising star on Chad's DEA task force. It almost doubles his salary. And if Johnny continues to work hard, being on the task force would be the first step to becoming a full-time federal agent. But Johnny did some really bad shit and is now being called to task. Johnny's future is crumbling before his eyes.

Take deep breaths. Hey, slow down. Hey, Johnny, look up. Nobody in this room is here to judge you. Okay? There's no reason for you to hang your head. We're just having a conversation. We're trying to get to the truth.

Okay? Johnny holds it together and tells them everything they want to know. I guess let's begin with your relationship with Rose Graham. How did you come to know Rose Graham? We was making C-I-B-I-S from her. This is the story of how Rose and Johnny met. An informant tells Johnny and Carl that Rose was selling pain pills from her house. It's not really clear whether Rose was in the drug game before Johnny came along.

In any case, Johnny, Carl, and another task force agent show up at Rose's house with a search warrant. It's a small team. It was just three guys. We knew they were middle class. You know, it wasn't much threat with them. Rose and her husband had just come home from shopping, and they were unloading their truck. Here's Rose.

Unmarked cars, or whatever you want to call it, just swarmed us. They just come with guns just aiming at us. And my husband in 2013, he was in a bad accident. So he had half of a kidney and half of a lung. After they pushed my husband down on the ground, I'm like, whoa, whoa, that's my husband you just pushed. He only has half of a kidney. Stop. You need to stop. We're going to cooperate with whatever you want. We didn't even know what the hell was going on at this point, you know? Carl tells them to get in the house. They close the door. Click, click, nine millimeters to our brains. I said, where's the money, the safe, and your guns? Rose says that one of the officers put a gun to their heads.

Johnny says it wasn't him, and he never saw it happen. And my husband said, ho, you already got us here. We're going to cooperate. Just, what do you want? We want you to lead us to your safe. Next thing I know, they're in my bedroom just tearing it apart. Carl and Johnny search while the third officer watches Rose and her husband. The third officer is young, around Johnny's age, and he has no clue what's going on. He looked at me and he whispered, he said, this is bullshit.

I'm like, what do you mean? He said, I don't know what they're doing, but this is bullshit. They need to let y'all go. Carl and Johnny find guns, prescription drugs, and money. And then Johnny comes out and he said, this is our money that y'all bought, that was drug bought money or whatever he said. I'm like, I don't sell drugs, dude. I'm a rat holder. I save money.

If I got an extra $100 or two, I'll put it up. Next thing I know, I took that money too. Johnny and Carl took a few thousand dollars. They didn't pocket the full amount. Johnny says that was a strategy that Carl taught him. He'd always turn something, you know, would never keep the whole thing. He always said, if you don't turn in nothing, it looks crazy. If they always turned some cash over to evidence,

they could fudge the exact amount they seized. It was their word against an accused drug dealers. That made it easy to skim off the top. Next, they were on to the pills. The narcotics, what did y'all find there? Oxycod the pills. The narcotics, what did y'all find there? Oxycodone pills. I believe Valium pills. Was it a large quantity?

It was a good bit, yes, sir. What would you consider a good bit? It was over 100. So y'all took all of that? Yes, sir. It's the same strategy with the drugs. They turned some into evidence so that it doesn't look suspicious. It probably took 60 to 70 pills, maybe more.

This story, how Johnny goes from the kid who had it tough, who people say will one day be a better agent than Chad Scott, to the guy stealing money and drugs, it only makes sense when you know a couple things about Johnny. The first, he never officially passed his background check to become a task force member, but he was allowed to start working anyway.

Here's our DEA long-timer, Skip Sewell. The sheriff's office has a limited budget to do backgrounds. It's not like the federal agencies who can do a detailed background. They do a cursory background and hire Johnny not knowing about his past. Johnny made a lot of cases working narcotics for the sheriff's department, so Chad recruited him onto the task force. But a federal background check takes a really long time. Say a task force officer gets assigned to DEA.

He comes over from a sheriff's office. Well, the sheriff's office, I don't want to say washes their hands of them, but, hey, you're gone. You're assigned to DEA. He comes up to DEA, and DEA says, wait, not so fast. We've got to do all your background stuff. You can't do anything until we get all this stuff done. And it can take months to do. In the meantime,

you've got a guy that's not really supposed to be at his department, and he's not really supposed to be at DEA. So he'll come up there a lot of times, and he'll just sit for hours on end. But it's a bad design, and that's why Johnny was down there working with DEA on cases before he was ever sworn in as a task force agent. And that slow process might just be an annoyance if nothing comes up in the background check. But in Johnny's case, they did find something. While Johnny's background investigation was going on, we determined that Johnny had a lot of outstanding debt,

bad credit cards that he hadn't paid off, student loans, all kind of stuff. Why is credit a problem? Because you don't want the task force agent dipping into the defendant's money when they arrest him to pay their bills. Johnny had to get out of debt. And if he didn't, he'd likely get cut loose from the task force. Well, the aid team had just the solution. They start cutting Johnny in. Carl sometimes takes money and drugs from people they arrest

and distributes to whomever he thinks should get a cut. And he starts breaking off a piece for Johnny. Johnny says he has a cousin who will sell the drugs for him. They also have a bunch of wallets, guns, cell phones in their DEA desks. These are personal possessions they've taken from people they've arrested. They regularly route through this drawer to take a little petty cash out of the wallets. And Johnny starts getting a piece of that too. Call it corruption, but it's all intended to help Johnny fix his debt problems so that he can pass his DEA background check and get formally deputized.

This abuse of power, it's called conversion of property in the federal parlance. They'll later face charges for it. They hide this misconduct from their supervisors, who at the time included Skip. OK, so thing number one is that Johnny's in so much debt that it's putting his career on the line. Carl is giving him money and drugs to sell to help him fix his situation. That's bad, but it's not Johnny's worst problem.

The state police follow up on the drugs from Rose's house. Y'all took probably 70 or 80 pills and sold them? Yeah. Do you remember who you sold them to? This second thing Johnny has been hiding from his team. He tells the state police. I was taking pills when I was 15 years old. I took them until I was 23.

Johnny has been addicted to opiates since he was a teenager. I graduated from college. I moved back. I told myself that was it. I was hooked on them. I started out with the sheriff's office, and then, you know, I relapsed. This is what Johnny hides from Carl. Carl would hold on to the pills. I'd tell Carl they were from my cousin, but I wasn't giving him money out of my pocket to buy them. So you were buying the pills, but you weren't telling Carl they were for you?

Correct. So Carl was getting pills from either a search warrant or a traffic stop, putting them in his vest, and then eventually selling them to you. Yeah. Back at Rose's house during the search, Johnny and Carl have taken her money and her drugs. And now Johnny gives Rose an ultimatum. He said, you're going to work for me.

I'm like, work for you? What do you mean? He said, you're going to work for me for one year., work for you? What do you mean? He said, you're going to work for me for one year. That's the reason why we're not going to put you in jail. You're going to keep your mouth shut and you're going to do what we tell you or you will go to jail. You might recognize this speech. This is an abridged, tailor-made version of the kind of talk Chad might give one of his informants. Rose, Boobie, they're both off the books. Not signed up, but they're still under an agent's thumb.

Chad uses the informality of their relationship to get the most out of Booby. Put a lot of drug dealers behind bars, pump up his stats, get a truck, and Johnny uses this power for drug dealing. Soon, Johnny starts calling on Rose to sell the drugs he's been stealing. Apparently, she thinks she's working as an undercover informant. Johnny gives her a giant bag of purple-tinged marijuana and some handy advice.

He said, you go sell to him, but don't let him look in your eyes. I'm like, huh? He said, don't let him see your eyes. I'm like, what the fuck? I don't know what he's talking about. So I'm like, okay. And then we're dealing, and the guy looks at me. He said, hold up, take those glasses off. And I'm like, what the fuck?

And I'm like, well, he said, you got pretty eyes. I'm like, bitch the fuck? And I'm like, well, he said, you got pretty eyes. I'm like, bitch, go on with yourself. For about four months, Rose sells marijuana and pills for Johnny. They're spending a lot of time together. Rose finds that she really likes him. When you and Johnny were getting closer, what did you see in him? I wasn't getting the shit at home that I was pretty and, you know, just a nice talk or, you know what I'm saying? It just kind of made me feel good because I'm a fat and ugly woman.

And this guy's cute and telling me all these nice things that I want to hear, you know, that I've been longing for. My husband and I was fighting. I was losing my grandbaby to leukemia and my brother at the same time. And my husband and I, we just went off the deep end with each other. And we started fighting and Johnny led me a good game. I fell for his ass like a fallen damn brick off a 20-foot story building. Yeah.

You and Johnny had a romantic relationship? No, but it could have been, but it never, we never, it got close, but not that close. Johnny came to her house, stole her money and her pills, forced her to work as a drug dealer for him. And in response, she fell for him. It's a fucking mess. After I fell for Johnny, I hadn't heard from him for about a week.

And I kind of got depressed. And when he called me, he said, Rose, I need to talk to you. He said, can you meet me? I think it was Christmas or Thanksgiving. I was making fudge or whatever for my holidays, you know, because I cook. I'm like, let me finish my fudge or whatever I'm doing and I'll come. My husband got livid. You're fucking leaving and going to see him.

I think he done put it together, you know. And I'm like, well, I got to go do this. That's why I'll just tell him I got to go do this. Rose leaves to meet Johnny. And he looks depressed. And I'm like, well, I got to go do this. That's why I'll just tell him I got to go do this. Rose leaves to meet Johnny. And he looks depressed. And I'm like, what's the matter? He said, I fail. I'm like, are you OK? You want to go to the doctor? You fail. He said, no, Rose, I fail. I'm like, you fail. So what are you talking about? If you don't want to go to the hospital, what's the matter? He said, I'm falling for an older woman I'm like this pop's getting pissed I'm like who the fuck is she he said you dumb ass I'm like okay and then we start talking

and he shows me this thing a hard white round thing it's got a dip in the middle and I'm like what's this he said something we can make a lot of money with. I'm like, what is it? He said, it's cocaine. I'm like, okay. He said, once I do this, and your year's up and my year's up, he said, I'm getting the hell out of this. He said, I'm tired of it. He said, I don't want this life anymore. I'm like, what kind of life? Because at the time, I was still thinking he's the police and he's doing the right thing, you know. He said, I'm just tired of it. I want out of it. And I said, okay. This is the cocaine that Rose would try to sell to that state trooper it hooked up. The day after that ill-fated margarita, a state trooper shows up at Rose's house while she's in Johnny's car. Well, the next thing I know, my husband's calling me.

Where the fuck you at? I'm bitching at him. I'll be home when I fucking get home. And the state police got on the phone. Miss Graham, you need to come home now. We're at your house waiting on you. You and Domaine need to get here now. I'm like, yes, sir. And I told Johnny. He said, we fixing to fucking run. I said, the fuck you? I ain't running. I'm done. I said, the fuck, yeah, I ain't running.

I'm done. I'm done. At this point, I was done. I said, I'm going to take my lick. They don't try to make a run for it. But not long after Johnny's arrested, the state police are already changing their focus. How much time do you have on the job? Three years. Three years? January 8, 2013.

The thing that I have a difficult time seeing, believing, that you created that monster in that short period of time. You're the young guy. You're the fish, okay? You were taught to do things the wrong way also. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay. But I can't put words in your mouth. I need you to explain that to us, okay? The day after Johnny's arrest, the state police asked Carl to come in for questioning.

Carl's strategy is deny everything. Have you ever seen anything with Johnny? Heard him say anything? See him do anything that raised some concerns with you? You know, ever since I heard he got arrested, I racked my brain all day wondering why he would do this. And I know Johnny had some money issue problems, and that's the only thing that I could come up with. He ever ask you for any financial help?

No, I've actually offered the man financial help. You know, he said, no, he said, I'm good. I'll take care of myself. I mean, I've been floored by it, seriously. I've been sick to my stomach all morning for him. Here's a young kid that's done everything going for him. The guy on the DEA task force within two years of being on the job loves the job, and he does something like this. I don't understand.

Within 48 hours, the state police have a meeting with Johnny and Carl's boss, Tangipoa Parish Sheriff Daniel Edwards. We talk with the sheriff about how it all went down. Basically, we're getting told this is what happened. This is how Johnny got arrested. And I remember a comment being made by one of the state police

guys that says, you know, we've been after Chad Scott for 10 years and this is finally going to lead us to him. Remember when we said Chad made enemies in law enforcement? Well, it turns out some of those enemies are now investigating his team for corruption. And as soon as they get Johnny, it's an immediate bridge to Chad. And I had to interject and told him, I said, listen, I'm going to say this up front and in front of everybody.

If the evidence in this case leads to Chad Scott or anybody else, I will help you, you know, get there and do it right. I said, but I think it's completely irresponsible to, within the first 48 hours of investigation, to say where it's going to lead you, and I think that's problematic. And, of course, when I said that, there was a lot of backtracking going on, but it was a problem. Chad still has friends like the sheriff. And the sheriff is not just any ally. He's the governor's brother.

By now, Chad has caught the attention of the feds. This is all about shutting me down. That's all it's ever been about. Because I work fucking circles around it. This is a professional attack. And they're trying to figure out if Chad is corrupt. This is bullshit. I've been at this too long. And I've never been accused by one defendant

of any of this shit. Ever. And I arrest more people than anybody in New Orleans. And I'm disgusted. Could the sheriff and the governor also be mixed up in this? The feds are trying to figure out how high up it goes. The federal investigation we started this podcast with has just begun.

Johnny confesses to a long list of misconduct. He knows a lot about Carl. They work together very closely. But Chad? Johnny has suspicions. But he didn't see much with his own eyes. And then Carl will kind of make statements about Chad. You know, some of it's just greedy.

You know, if we take something, it's just me and him. So he kind of isolated himself, where he only trusts kind of one guy, which was Carl. The next step for the FBI is to break Carl. Within a month of Johnny's arrest, the head of the New Orleans DEA is removed from the office and recalled to D.C. Chad has moved far from his turf and reassigned all the way up to New Jersey. And Carl is arrested on counts of abuse of office and conspiracy to distribute cocaine. But the feds have a problem. Carl is not cooperating. He's not rolling on his longtime partner, Chad.

So investigators need to learn all they can about Carl so that they can ratchet up the pressure. And Johnny is singing like a canary. Douglas Bruce from the DOJ. If you can go back to the very first time or when you first learned that Carl Newman was using drugs. That would have been that New Orleans trip. It was early 2015. This is before a lot of stuff. Before the team was aware that Johnny had ever used opiates.

Before Johnny was cut in on stolen cash, and months before they raided Rose's house. I don't want to say it was a Friday night because we just got done doing a deal.

According to Johnny, that other task force officer, the one around his age, was talking about going out. He'd like to go out, you know. I was more reserved. You know, I ain't going out. You know, Carl stated he'd go. I said, well, you know, if he'd go, I'd go,

just because I was out to know him, you know. Johnny says they're all out on Bourbon Street drinking. It's Carl, Johnny, the third officer, his wife, and a woman Carl is seeing on the side, who turns out is an informant. Dating informants isn't supposed to happen. Anyhow, the night gets weird. The tone shifts.

Yeah, they're all kind of drunk. But it's something else, too. Somebody had slipped ecstasy into their drinks. They rent a hotel room, and somehow they all end up in the shower together. Ecstasy can blur the lines of consent. That's especially true if somebody slipped it to you. I mean, to be on ecstasy was just, you know something's wrong, but you feel so good that you can't, you know, if that makes sense.

It's hard to explain. It's hard for us to say, you know, because I don't know. Exactly. So it's hard to explain. You know you're drugged, but the euphoria is so great, and you're so excited, everything feels so good. Of course, when there's other women and there's other men in the room, you're going to be touching, you know, the females are going to be touching the men. Women are going to be, you know.

It's hard to tell what lines were crossed that night. The third officer is up all night in the hotel room, thinking about what had happened. Waking me up the next morning, you know, Johnny, we got to go, we got to go. I'm like, you know, what you talking about? You know, we got to get out of here, we got to get out of here. So hurry up and get dressed. The third officer figures that they must have been drugged. And after they're out of the hotel, he tells Johnny.

I was more of the, it's going to, you know, don't think like that. You know, it's going to be all right. And, you know, I already had a relationship with Carl. I said, you know, I'll call him and I'll figure out what's the deal. Johnny gets a hold of Carl and asks him what happened. You know, I said, what's the deal? You know, Carl stated, you know, he put ecstasy in the drinks and all that stuff. This point is controversial.

Carl told us that he provided the ecstasy, but Johnny was the one who drugged everybody. But in interviews with the feds, Johnny was firm about it being Carl. When Johnny talks about it, he seems upset and confused. The next morning, we were so shocked that we were drugged. It was almost embarrassing. You know, it was almost like, I can't believe, you know, you was almost hurt. So it was, anytime we look back on that experience, it wasn't necessarily like a happy experience. It was kind of like, I mean, anytime you get screwed over, you know, it hurts, you know,

you get mad about it. Now, that didn't mean Johnny stopped hanging with Carl. Johnny made a choice. He covered for Carl, and he lied to the third officer, who by all accounts was an honest guy who was freaked out by the situation. Michael Gannon, the guy with the Boston accent from DEA Internal Affairs, asked him about it. You knew if he knew Carl did it, it would have potentially been a problem. Correct. So you just tried to sweep it under the rug?

And try to protect Carl and try to protect the whole thing, you know. Carl said, hey, I just did it, you know, because I thought it would be fun and all this other stuff. And, well, look, I can handle that, you know. It hurt me, but I'll smooth it out. When you listen to hours of Johnny talking to the feds, two stories stand out. Johnny tells the feds about the first time he says he broke the rules. He and Carl

busted a meth dealer and took the dope for testing. At first he was really excited because it was a lot. Hey man, we got over on him. You know, but you could just tell that it looked like salt rocks, you know, it didn't look like real ice. It tests negative. It's fake meth. The dealer had tricked Johnny and Carl. Investigators ask about Carl's reaction. I mean, he would have just laughed, you know, but kind of like rhetorical laugh, like, you know, yeah, you're right, it's bullshit, you know. Johnny is pissed, but he remembered something

another task force member had said before when they got fake dope. Make it test. As in, make it test positive for meth. So Johnny decides to give it a try. You know, and I kind of said, you know, I wish I could switch or some shit like that. And Carl looked at me, saying, you know, I was waiting to see if he was the real police. They go to the office, where they can swap it with real meth from evidence. While Carl was switching in the front office at Tri-Parish,

they got a big window, you know, and he told me, watch the driveway, make sure nobody was coming down. And I was so nervous, I was walking back and forth from Ms. Carroll's office to the front, you know? I mean, so this is like a first time that you really do this stuff? That was really like the first time, you know, because I remember Carl was on the phone and he was behind me. And I was thinking, you know, he was calling somebody to say, you know,

this kid's dirty or whatever. But that was, you know, it never happened. For the record, Carl says that Johnny was the one to switch out the dope. Point is, Johnny was corruptible, and he's professionally ambitious. Faking the evidence here will make this a federal case, which would look good on his record. But this tactic is not something Johnny invented.

When Carl takes Johnny under his wing, this is the world Carl's showing him. The second story we're going to go into takes us to rural Kentucky. And this story is important because it shows us the kinds of information they were digging up about Carl and what the feds were planning to do with it. Johnny tells them about a spot Carl liked to visit every year. Carl would say he was going up there for work.

But, you know, in reality, you go up to a guy named Chucks, which was, I guess, his mistress's uncle. So he asked me if I wanted to go. By that time, me and him got pretty close. Johnny tells the feds that Carl would change out the license plate on his work truck and bring drugs up to Kentucky. So the feds make a trip up there to dig up some dirt. DEA Internal Affairs talk with one of Carl's mistresses.

Is this going to be used against me? We're not using this against you. We're used against him. Yes. Let me explain something to you. By Carl being a police officer, by giving you drugs that he got from DEA law enforcement purposes, and then engaging you in a sexual relationship is a misuse of his office. It's a misuse of his authority.

We are not allowed to do that. So this is not against you. You're a victim, not a suspect. But she wants nothing to do with it. And whatever they might be saying here, a lot about her will come out later in court. I have no affiliation with this. I'm married. Right. Yeah. Well, if I have a very Old Testament husband, we'll explain all that to the prosecutor. But like I try to tell you, I wouldn't worry about having to testify in court over this because I highly suspect that it will be a plea agreement. We're trying to get Carl to roll on somebody else.

So the stronger case we have against him, then the better chance he's going to play ball with us. It's not Carl we even wanted somebody else. So, and certainly not you. So that's how the game works. What the investigators are saying here is that no matter what she might tell them, they're only really interested in the information because it will help them nail Chad. So to seal the deal, they tell her a little bit about Carl's history. I'm not trying to be here and upset you, but this guy was all over the place with women.

Really? Yeah. So I don't know what he would have said to you, but I need to know those things because that's stuff I know. And I'm not trying to keep it from you. I'm not trying to upset you. I'm just trying to be honest with you. In the end, she talks with them, and she tells them about Johnny and Carl's visit to Kentucky. His reason for bringing Johnny up was, I guess he'd come off a case maybe or something, best I remember, and he wanted to see Kentucky.

Okay. He'd never seen it. He brought him up here, and it's more of a relaxed lifestyle up here. A lot of people don't work. They four wheel and stuff like that. And in the spring, everybody goes mushroom hunting up here and it's kind of Carl's big thing is he always wants to go on a mushroom hunt. Morels? Yeah. And to bring Johnny and, you know, I guess see live hillbillies,

kind of a peep show, because it is kind of nutty, especially at my uncle's holler. You know, crazy hillbillies, no teeth. You know, big beer belly dudes on four-wheelers. Good times. Well, that does sound like good times. Johnny's trip to Kentucky seemed pretty innocent,

at least from her perspective. But the feds have heard from Johnny, well, a lot of things. That Carl brought drugs up there to be sold. That he used drugs to get women to sleep with him. Or exchanged drugs for sex. The feds aren't really interested in morels. They're looking for dirt. Do you think aren't really interested in morels. They're looking for dirt.

Do you think you did Molly with Carl? Yeah. Well, why do you say you think that? Well, I'm pretty sure it was a capsule. Okay. And he would have you take it? Yeah, we tried it. And do you recall if that like, um, your maybe your inhibitions more prominent or anything like that? Yeah. Well, explain that. Tell me what happened after you used it. And where were you? It just felt like somebody was grabbing you by the jaws and pulling you down.

Mm-hmm. You know, it was just an experience. This girlfriend said that everything was consensual. But molly or ecstasy or meth, those seem to have been Carl's favorites to use with women. There are many, many stories of Carl taking drugs from evidence and giving them away like Santa Claus. He also had sexual relationships with informants who he provided with drugs. Carl told us one story about hitting the town high on ecstasy with a woman he's seeing, right after his wife gave birth to his son.

A prosecutor sees him and thinks the woman is his wife. The prosecutor asks about the baby, and the woman plays along, says the baby, he's at home. The stories, they could go on and on. That Carl is kind of hard to square with the lovable lawman who drinks milk for lunch. After digging, prosecutors scare the shit out of him, threaten him with life in prison. Carl talks with his wife from jail. They said, you know,

we're running out after you, Carl. We're at the cage. And that's the moment we go to Carl. That thing winds up being 150. 150? Yeah. Did you say 150? Yeah, life.

Holy cow. How can they do that? They can do it. Carl's already been locked up for about a year, and he's about to break. All that stuff that they dug up about him, he's not going to be charged with. He's going to take a plea to reduce charges and testify against Chad. While Carl's in jail contemplating his life like a Dostoevsky novel, Chad has been suspended from duty.

So I was actually flying back from Kentucky. I was working for a law firm at the time in Kentucky. He's working for a friend, one he does competitive water skiing with. And flying back, walking through the New Orleans International Airport, and I look at the news screen in front of one of the restaurants, and I see Raid on the Tancho Perre Sheriff's Department and Hammond Police Department. Chad's ally, Sheriff Daniel Edwards, the guy who stuck by Chad, insisted the investigation into Johnny

was moving on too soon. He's got himself in the Fed's crosshairs. I mean, it stopped me dead in my tracks because obviously with what's going on, certainly has something to do with this case Chad's time is running out that's next time on smokescreen betrayal on the bayou smokescreen betrayal onal in the Bayou

is an original production by Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment. It was written and produced by Odelia Rubin. It was reported by me, Jim Mustian, and my co-host, Feynman Roberts. Our editor is Catherine St. Louis. She is also Neon Hum Media's executive editor. Our executive producer

is Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Theme and original music composed by Hansdale Shi. We also use music by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.

Our associate producer is Anne Lim. Fendall Fulton is our fact checker. Our production manager is Samantha Allison. Alexison is our fact checker. Our production manager is Samantha Allison. Alexis Martinez is our podcast coordinator. Special thanks to Stephanie Serrano, Mia Warren, and the third cohort of Editors Boot Camp, who gave us feedback on this episode.

And to our DEA consultant, Skip Sewell. We couldn't have made this show without the support of our legal team, including Lauren Pagone, Rachel Goldberg, and Allison Sherry. I'm Jim Mustian. And I'm Feynman Roberts. If you're enjoying the show, be sure to rate and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. Thanks for listening.