The Binge Crimes: Night Shift - Borderlands | 8. Survival

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

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Campsite Media In a dusty field in far west Texas sits a simple metal building surrounded by the rusting shells of classic cars. Well, you're in Alpine, Texas, and you're at the biggest mechanic shop in the biggest town, in the biggest mechanic shop in the biggest town, in the biggest county, in the biggest state outside of Alaska. That's where you are. BAM Automotive.

Sue Nye has run BAM Automotive alongside her husband Van since 2004. Sometime before that, she lived not far away in the town of Marathon, just another dot on the map in the vastness of the Big Bend. In Marathon, Sue's mother ran a little country bar called Mel's, a place for locals. Cowboys would come in and get all drunked up and those damn cowboys would unload them horses out of them trailers and get up and ride them into the bar. Those silly cowboys would get there on those horses drunked up. Those horses would be sliding on that damn concrete floor. We'd be moving chairs and tables out of the way in case the horses fell because they're on a slick floor. Those cowboys would be drunked up. They'd be hunkered over the horn of that saddle laughing their asses off just riding those horses around the beard it was mel's barn why aren't they called mel's i guess my mother's name was melba oh okay

and in fact she shot herself in that bar yeah she uh i was 13 and she carried a pistol in her money box and so the night that she shot herself she thought she had shut the money box good. Of course, she had had a beer or two. And when she picked the money box up, it opened and the pistol hit the floor. And of course, she had it ready to go. Well, it wouldn't hit the floor. It went off and shot her in the stomach. So that almost killed her. So it didn't kill her. Oh, hell no. You're too mean to die.

Marathon was also Sheriff Rick Thompson's hometown. Sue grew up with him, and she told me even back in high school, Rick had made an impression. Everybody loved him. I can't remember who his girlfriends were. Hell, we all wanted to be his girlfriends. As the years passed, like so many of the people in the Big Bend, Sue's admiration for Rick only grew. Because he had everything in the world going for him. His family was just perfect. Him working as the sheriff. I mean, he had the world by the tail. And Sue felt the same way about another West Texas personality, Robert Chambers. And I'm telling you, Robert, never,

ever, there was never a time he came by the shop that he didn't give Van a big hug. He was just as sweet as he could be. Fun, very charismatic, persuasive, just a heck of a guy, really. What I found at BAM Automotive was pretty typical of a lot of the reporting I did on this story. On the one hand, there were people like Sue's husband, Van. I tried to get him to talk before Sue arrived. But as soon as I said the names Robert Chambers and Rick Thompson, he clammed up. Said he was too busy to talk. This wasn't because of shyness or some individual need for

anonymity, but according to Sue, because Van was part of a coordinated effort to keep quiet. It's unfortunate he won't talk to you, but he and his friends decided it would not be the best thing. They've all gotten together and talked among themselves, and they just don't want to talk about that time. And plus, being a small community and clannish, and you just don't talk about each other. On the other hand, there were locals like Sue, happy to talk, to give me a big West Texas welcome. But when it came to the actual information she was prepared to reveal, well, let's just say she stuck to what sounded like a script.

We all just loved Rick, just dearly loved him. He was just as sweet as he could be. He was always great to go. Always great to go. Good with everybody. Everybody loved him. Everybody loved him. Hey, Rick, you know. You couldn't ask for a nicer guy in the entire universe. And I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised about this attitude, really. Because the story of Sheriff Rick Thompson and the smuggler Robert Chambers isn't just a painful memory from the past. The legacy of those two men and that horse trailer full of cocaine, it doesn't feel resolved. Who else was involved? What else had they done?

Were there other secrets buried when Rick and Robert pled guilty and the government wrapped up its case? But there's another reason, too. Rick and Robert. They were both sentenced to life in prison. But by the time I arrived in the Big Bend to look into this whole story, you had to watch what you said. Because they were back. From Campside Media, the first season of Witnessed, this is Borderlands. I'm Rob D'Amico.

Chapter 8, Survival. When Sheriff Rick Thompson was sentenced in the federal courthouse in Pecos on a warm spring day in 1992, for a lot of people in the Big Bend, it wasn't just sad. It made them feel lost. Who were the good guys? Who were the bad guys? Which way was up? I heard this from just about everyone I talked to. Like Martha Stafford, the longtime teacher who remembered the sheriff doffing his

hat to the ladies of Marfa. It really was a defining moment for a lot of us. You know, it was, it kind of shook your faith. I'm more cynical probably because of it. You know, when your own sheriff brings in tons of cocaine, you know, into the town and leaves it unguarded. Hello. You know, I remember saying, well, heck, if he had called me and said, Martha, I need you to drive a horse trailer to Houston, I would have done it. He was the sheriff. You know, you wouldn't have questioned it.

You would have done it. Even Rod Ponton, the famous I'm-not-a-cat lawyer who represented Robert Chambers in the case, he sensed a shift. A lot of the emotions that the communities out here had about the Thompson and Chambers case, it was more than just Chambers being a big drug lord, so to speak. It was bringing down the icon of West Texas, Rick Thompson, and showing that his feet were made of clay. Sort of in the old frontier ethos was the self-image, I think, a lot of the ranchers had, and they were still trying to hang on to that image, that portrait of themselves that Rick Thompson was emblematic of. He was the ideal of that spirit.

And when he fell, that image cracked like a portrait being dashed to the ground, which would let everybody have to reflect on whether or not their images of themselves was accurate or not. It was the end of the era. Boom, the curtain closed. Bitter pill for a lot of people to swallow. And that bitter pill, it didn't just hit the people who it admired the share of. This case left everyone with a taste of something corrupt, something unjust,

including the guys who should have been the big winners of it all, Dale Stinson and Kelly Cook, the federal agents who had taken down Chambers and Thompson. I wasn't even 30 years old yet, and this is a huge case. This is what would be deemed a career case. You'd think for Kelly Cook, this kind of case would lead to promotions, accolades, heck, even a parade. But he told me his fellow officers weren't exactly eager to celebrate the fact that he'd exposed a crooked cop.

And maybe that's because Rick Thompson, the sheriff of Presidio County for 18 years, yeah, he might have been guilty, but it was almost like some local guys were asking, what gave Dale and Kelly the right to take him down? There was some resentment from some of our co-workers and we kind of both paid for it, I think, you know, because people that came in to work for Dale after all of this, I think they were influenced and didn't respect him the way they should have. And for Dale, the disrespect from his colleagues wasn't the only problem. He'd taken down a big time smuggler and a corrupt sheriff, but had it stemmed the flow of drugs into the U.S.?

You can probably answer that one for yourself. Dale felt the DEA's approach to the war on drugs was increasingly futile. He was going after small fish in a big pond. So, the true believer took on a higher calling. He quit the agency at the age of 51 to become an Anglican priest. And as for Kelly, well, Kelly was at the start of his career when this all went down. And he was a local boy, liked by the same West Texas cops who might have thought Dale Stinson was an uptight schoolmarm of a fed.

But even then, it didn't go much better for him. The same thing happened with me, you know, after my bosses left, a new boss came in. I think he was influenced with people that were just resentful that I did this and they didn't. And they kind of shunned me from the local DEA office. I got transferred to El Paso after all that and you know it certainly wasn't my desire but that's what happened. So like I say there was a I think it was a curse and a blessing.

It is what it is. So at the end of the day the guys who had exposed the corruption no one wanted them around. That was the legacy of the Thompson and Chambers case. A kind of silent curse over the Big Bend. As for Rick Thompson himself, he became kind of a ghost. Not dead, but seemingly gone forever from the region. People could remember him however they chose. And then, in April 2018, something unexpected happened.

Other stories we're still keeping an eye on this afternoon. A former Presidio County Sheriff convicted of drug smuggling is said to be a free man today. Rick Thompson has been in jail since 1992 for his role in smuggling a midnight haul of cocaine. He and another accomplice received life terms. 26 years after Rick Thompson heard Judge Jerry Buckmeyer give him a life sentence, one that it seemed would condemn him to spend the rest of his days behind bars, he suddenly became a free man. All thanks to a change to federal sentencing guidelines

for nonviolent drug offenders under President Obama. It enabled the sheriff to successfully petition for early release. He was out. And so I tried to do what no one had been able to do, to get him to talk. The full extent of Rick Thompson's relationship with Robert Chambers, the story behind his old nickname, La Puerta. There were so many unanswered questions about what the sheriff was really up to

in the years before his downfall. And in the silence that still hangs there lie suspicions. Suspicions that have taken on a life of their own. I wanted to ask Rick about these. I wanted to hear his side of things. I wasn't going to take him at his word. How could I? But I wanted to see if talking to him could help me separate truth from legend. There is one very clear example that speaks to why that's important, the story I first told on this podcast, about the teenage Lico Miller and the night he came home to the border village of Paso Lajitas

to discover Robert Chambers holding his father hostage. When I first heard whispers about it, I'd been told a very different tale, that Sheriff Rick Thompson had crossed the Rio Grande that night and killed Lico's father. That's why I tracked crossed the Rio Grande that night and killed Lico's father. That's why I tracked down Lico in the first place, to find out what had happened. And when I told Lico in that first conversation what I heard, there was a brief silence on the line. Then his reply, no that isn't true. I saw my father three months after that night.

But even in Lico's telling, there were big questions about the sheriff's involvement. So I wanted to ask Rick, were you really the guy who handed Lico and his brother over to the Mexican police? Because Lico admitted his memory of that guy didn't actually match the sheriff's physical description. That guy was thin and wiry. Rick was big, tall, husky. But that inconsistency doesn't mean the sheriff wasn't part of the action that night. A DEA agent later testified in federal court about the incident, and he said, yep, Sheriff Rick Thompson and Robert Chambers were both involved in the hunt for Lico's dad that night in Paso Lajitas. So I guess it all comes down to this point. Rick and Robert were working together. That's a fact. But what was the full extent of that work? And what was Rick's motivation for doing it? Did Rick think helping a guy like

Chambers was the way to make the border safer? Was he sliding down a slippery slope, telling himself that bending the law was his only option in a lawless land? Or was he just shamelessly stuffing his pockets the whole time? I needed to know. I sent the sheriff letters. I called two of his sons. Had nice chats. Texted with them about my reporting. Told them about the show. Explained why I hoped their dad would tell his story. They were helpful, polite. Said they passed on messages. and I believed them. But every time, the answer from the sheriff was the same. Silence. Finally, I sent him a letter asking for comment on all the information and stories in this show,

three weeks before the release of our first two episodes. Again, nothing but the whisper of a tumbleweed blowing in the wind. But in this silence, the sheriff hasn't quite disappeared. Nothing but the whisper of a tumbleweed blowing in the wind. But in this silence, the sheriff hasn't quite disappeared. Rick gets out of jail, goes to Midland. He's working. Got a new lease on life, per se. Customs agent Kelly Cook might well have assumed Rick's sentencing would be the last time he would ever see him again.

But then, in February 2020, Kelly's dad died. The obituary came out in the newspaper, and I asked my mom, I said, hey, do you think Rick and Barbara Jean will come to this? And she just kind of looked at me and said, uh, no. I said, oh, you know, okay, I'm just curious. Kelly's dad, the old game warden, had been friends with Rick long before Kelly busted him. But as the funeral service approached, Kelly thought, given all that had happened, Rick wasn't going to show to pay his respects in person. But at the funeral... Sure enough, during the middle of this, in walks Rick and Barbara Jean. And I wasn't nervous. I was kind of anxious. Like, okay, you know, I hadn't talked to Rick in,

what was it, 20, 26 years or something like that. So I didn't really know what to expect. I wasn't going to avoid him. And I was kind of curious, anxious to talk to him because I thought, well, shit, man, if he goes crazy, at least I got plenty of backup. He saw me and he walked over to me. He stuck out his hand and said, how are you young man? And I said, I'm doing, I'm doing okay. Considering how are you?

And he said, I'm very blessed. I'm very blessed, man. And I think a lot of people, that was the first time they had seen him. A lot of, a lot of law enforcement that was the first time they had seen him. A lot of law enforcement officers. And nobody knew what to expect, but it was almost as if he never missed a beat. You know, he's back in that community. He's shaking hands and he's telling stories. And it's like he never missed a beat.

And that was kind of weird for me because I kind of thought, well, but you've missed a lot of beats, you know. More after the break. 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.

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their Cabernet Sauvignon and their flagship wine, Isoslees. I cannot wait to enjoy these with friends and family, especially with the holidays coming up. Speaking of, Justin Wine makes great gifts for friends, family, or colleagues. They have curated gift sets and even custom etched bottles, which you could add a message or logo to. It's very fancy. Shop all of Justin's exceptional wines at justinwine.com and be sure to use promo code JESSE20 to receive 20% off your order today. That's JESSE20 for 20% off. I was standing with Kelly and Dale on the side of the road a little south of Alpine next to the big property Robert Chambers once owned. That's where he was arrested. The guys that actually came out on that team did go in, but Dale I never did or I didn't I didn't either

I did this was the property where Robert built his enormous horse stable it's still there the place where he was gonna flatten the top of the hill to build a big house that looked like a pyramid but she never got around to doing I mean that's a great location. Oh, it is. You can see the log coming from miles around. It was always rumored or alleged that Robert's cash was sunk on these livestock ponds on his property, that he had taken large PVC pipe and just stuffed as much money as he could in them

and sealed the ends and sunk them in these ponds. And of course there was no way to verify that. The livestock ponds are still here today and still undrained. They were never corroborated enough where you could have got a search warrant. It was it was probably one of the urban myths linked to the guy. There were so many urban myths attached to this guy, separating fact from fiction, and getting enough to have a search warrant,

nigh into impossible. There were things about Robert that Dale and Kelly just couldn't explain. He'd sunk tons of money into the property. The stables, plans for that pyramid house, intricate rock fencing that was said to cost $100,000. And yet... It just always amazed me that Robert put so much money into the surroundings and continued to live in a beat-down trailer house.

That's why I think so much of his money went here. But he was content living in a hovel. Kelly and Dale were pretty sure a lot of that money was left over when Robert Chambers went to prison. Robert's cut for the horse trailer smuggling alone was going to be $500,000 from the cartels, with another $500,000 going to the sheriff. The feds did eventually seize a sizable amount of Robert's land and properties, $284,000 worth to be precise. But there's no way that was everything, considering the tons and tons of pot and cocaine Robert smuggled over the years.

So the question becomes, where did those millions of dollars in drug profits go? I didn't kid myself that I was going to find that money, but I was more interested in another treasure hunt. I wanted to find Robert Chambers himself, and that's how I ended up driving down Pinto Canyon Road. The road begins as Highway 2810, just on the southwest side of Marfa. It's wide and paved when you leave town, and it stays that way for 32 miles as it crosses a wide expanse of high desert. But as you head up a mountain pass, the pavement ends, the road narrows, and the hairpin turns begin. Soon, you've left any semblance of civilization behind and entered a world that feels older

and harsher with a road that seems to hang by a fingernail on the side of the craggy cliffs. I was driving on that treacherous stretch because I heard Robert Chambers' brother Johnny was likely somewhere near the bottom, still living on the family ranch. I thought I could get stories, maybe an introduction, but Johnny wasn't returning my calls. People said that Johnny was like that, though. Just show up, was the advice, and bring a couple cases of Bud Light. If you do, he'll have more to say. After making it down from the canyons, I followed the

road along the river to its dead end in a border town called Candelaria. It was a place Robert knew well as a boy, a mishmash of small houses and trailer homes, a poor, isolated outpost where people have to fend for themselves. There once was a schoolhouse here where Robert's mother taught. Mexican kids would run across a footbridge over the river to attend class. And a small store sold some essentials. Bread, eggs, ice cream. That's all gone now. The feds destroyed the footbridge after 9-11. To make America safe from terror, they said.

It was not far from this point in the river where the Mexican drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes had handed off a ton of cocaine to Robert Chambers one night in early December 1991. The ton that would soon make its way into the Presidio County Sheriff's horse trailer at the fairgrounds in Marfa. But that was a long time ago, not even a memory for some people in the town. The first person I saw was a young girl. I asked her about the Chambers Ranch. She gave me directions in Spanish.

Sigue el camino, she said pointing. Luego ve a la derecha, luego a la izquierda. My Spanish is limited, but I understood. Head out of town, right, then left. Her directions were good. I got there as the light was getting low, to a place where it had all started, Chambers Ranch. But the gate was locked, and when I called Johnny again, no answer.

I was stuck there with an 18-pack of Bud Light. I hate Bud Light. So I wasn't going to get an introduction to Robert from his brother or anyone else, so I figured I had only one option to track him down, knock on his door, and hope for the best. Unlike Rick, Robert hadn't had to rely on a federal sentencing reform to get out of prison. He had got a deal with prosecutors by agreeing to testify against the sheriff if the case went to trial. When he was released from prison in 2005, there hadn't been any news reports like there were for the sheriff.

He was just another felon walking out through the gates one day, back into the world. I was told these days Robert was living somewhere in North Texas, working as something called a landman, where you acquire property for a pipeline company to build on. I drove up to the address I had for him, in a small city about an hour southwest of Fort Worth. It was a little bungalow tucked into a small cul-de-sac.

It was the only house I saw in the neighborhood with a no trespassing sign. I walked up the front pathway, knocked on the door, and a big guy opened it, over six feet tall, with meaty arms. His hair was buzzed, with the same scruffy beard he'd had in the pictures, except it was now gray. Robert Chambers, the scourge of the Big Bend, was now towering over me. Standing on his porch, I told him who I was, the story I was reporting. He didn't wave me inside, but he didn't slam the door in my face. He gave a half-disgusted grin and said, That was a long time ago. I don't think there's really anything more that needs to be said about it.

That was pretty much what I got from Robert that day. I asked a few more questions, but his answers, they never got more revealing. When I asked him why the sheriff would risk so much to smuggle drugs with him, he replied, Desper desperate people do desperate shit. After that, he muttered, I gotta go, and shut the door. I was left, standing there with my pen and a mostly empty notebook. After my short visit to Robert's house, I managed to find his cell number, and I called him.

He didn't pick up. I left a message. He didn't return it. I texted. Nothing. But I kept trying. And then, one day I called and for some reason, probably a mistake, something different happened. Hello?

I grabbed my recorder and put the phone on speaker. Hello, Mr. Hello? I grabbed my recorder and put the phone on speaker. Hello, may I speak to Robert? This is C. Hey, this is Rob D'Amico. I spoke to you on your porch quite a long time ago, and can you hear me okay? Yeah.

At first, Robert made it clear he didn't want to talk, just as he had that day on his porch. But sometimes interviewees say they don't want to talk, but they still want to tell you something. And as I kept asking questions, that something started to come out. Robert seemed like he wanted to do what a lot of other people in the Big Bend wanted to do, defend Rick Thompson. He didn't have a fucking thing to do with what I was doing. Nothing.

He got fucked up on that last film. That's it. And that's a time period of what? Two, three months versus 15 fucking years. Are you serious? They're trying to fuck him over. Look, the guy, he's a good man, and he served that community, and he did it by any means that he needed to do.

He took care of those people over there, and they should respect him for that. You know, I do. He's still my friend today. He will always be my friend. And that's it, dude. You know? What Robert's saying here in defending the sheriff is basically

the thing that they got caught doing together, the drug bust, that was it. A one-time deal. And, uh, I will stand up for him tomorrow. He's a good man. And anybody that says he's not, don't know him.

That's all I have to say about that. No one in law enforcement told me that Robert and Rick's partnership had been a one-off. People who had dug into this story like Dale Stinson and Kelly Cook, they were pretty sure the smuggling history between Robert and Rick went back years. And I told Robert that. I just wanted to let you know that I've since interviewed, you know, dozens of people, mainly law enforcement and, you know, federal officials and so forth.

Those fuckers lying, I'm going to call you on it, dude. Well, they've said their story, and this is from multiple sources, is that he was dirty since 1986 and before. Well, if he did, he was with somebody else, and if they put him with me, they're lying motherfuckers, and their goddamn information tells to show you I basically told Robert what I had. I told him about the details Dale and Kelly had told me about building their case against him. There's some great stories about what they supposedly did to surveil you.

All the time. Phone booths and wives driving cars and all kinds of stuff. I don't know what you're talking about. Well, they probably didn't tell you. I don't believe I ever saw one of those motherfuckers standing next to me because had he been there, that would have been

his last day on Earth. The longer we stayed on the phone, the angrier he was getting. Like he was about to blow. Going to literally fly off the handle, like Nancy Burton remembered him doing. But then he'd pull himself back. He'd simmer down.

Then the anger would flare up, like oil in an overheated pan. At the end of the day, it was my responsibility, and I take full acceptance of that responsibility. And I fucked it up because I entrusted my right-arm guy, who was a fucking snitch, for the goddamn DEA. Yep, Robert was still fuming. Not about anything he'd done wrong, but about how Sam Thomas had turned on him. Become Dale and Kelly's key informant and tip them off to that horse trailer full of cocaine. Every few minutes, Robert would say,

I need to go, dude. I need to stay on the line. I'd ask one last question. Robert would answer. Then he'd let me sneak in another question. But after about ten minutes, it was clear I was out of lives. Leave me alone, Rob, he said. But he wasn't quite done. He had a few final angry words. And perhaps, in his mind at least, they were the most honest words he had for me that day. Because Robert said this whole story, it all boiled down to this, a cautionary tale.

It's to tell these youngsters and these stupid motherfuckers that make the wrong choices in life and get off into something where there is only two options of survival. One, you're going to go to fucking prison. And number two, you're going to die.

There are no three options. That's it. I watched it all my life. And that's it. All right, I gotta go, man. It would be the last thing Robert Chambers ever said to me. All right, Robert, you take it easy and have a good night. More after the break. Catherine Palmyra wasn't allowed to be in contact with her old friend Robert Chambers

when she was the secretary for Rick Thompson. But as soon as she quit, she and Robert started talking again. And as the years passed passed they kept talking. He would call and usually just to check and see how my daughter and I were doing and I have over a couple dozen letters and sweet cards that he sent me and here's one. It's a Valentine's card. Don't think that Robert isn't a romantic with a nice picture of himself.

Catherine's take on Robert is totally different from some others I've spoken to for this podcast. People like Nancy Burton, who remembered Robert transforming from a friend into a man she experienced as a violent and abusive predator. Or Lico Miller, who encountered Robert only briefly as a mortal threat. Catherine's take on Robert? Well, it's tender.

Like the letters Robert would write her from prison. Sweet letters, just checking up on us, and I would write him back, and then he called periodically. They were Christmas, Mother's Day. I hope you and Sophia have a wonderful Christmas. He has nice handwriting. There's a beautiful signature. You know, here, I'll show you the one where he sent a picture of himself. He signed these cards, Super Friend Robert Chambers. And Catherine didn't think she was the only one getting them. He cares about a lot of people, and this is how he talks to people.

He just wants to know how you're doing and if you're okay. And he always says, give yourself a big hug and a sugar. Catherine didn't just think Robert was a good friend. She thought he was kind of an extraordinary person. She'd written up a reflection that she asked if she could read to us. Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson once said of Robert Chambers that had he gone the other way, he would have been one of the greatest lawmen Texas had ever seen. At the time, he was sitting at the end of my desk, talking to a number of other lawmen in the room, and none of them disputed that.

Here was Joaquin Jackson, this famous Texas Ranger, saying basically the same thing Rick Thompson had at his infamous press conference. Cops and crooks are just about the same caliber, except one's got a badge. That's what was so amazing when I heard him say that, because that conversation had been in our office and nobody disputed it. And I think there are other cops that will tell you, you know, you have to think like a criminal to be a good cop. And you have to think like a criminal to be a good cop. And you have to think like a cop to be a good criminal. It's a two-way street. For Catherine, that was part of a deeper lesson about this story.

That two-way street of contradictions. Catherine had thought about this a lot. You will hear a great many contradictions to the story, and no matter who you talk to or how many people tell you this story from their perspective, there will be those contradictions that will be hard to square. But the truth lies within contradictions, because the truth of the story lies somewhere in the in-between. Even if Robert were to tell his story and tell the whole truth start to finish, no holds barred, no one would ever really believe it because Robert has become a legend. And like with any legend,

people want to believe the larger-than-life story. They want to believe the fantastic story. And some of those larger-than-life stories are true, and some are not. But why they did it is their story to tell. I see what Catherine is saying here about fact and fiction in the lives of people like Robert. But to be honest with you, I think it misses a crucial point. Because the stories of people like Robert Chambers and Rick Thompson aren't just theirs to tell. As I chased down the history of these two men, I learned about so many other people who were swept up and harmed by the events they unleashed. For a start, Rick and Robert's families both had wives and children. And when they went away,

they lost their husbands and fathers. The families were forced to scrape by, forced to live with the fallout of the crime. And then there are the people who felt the impact of Robert and Rick's actions that can't revel in their larger-than-life stories, because they didn't survive those years. Who knows how many victims there were from the guns and drugs conveyor belt that moved across the borderlands while Robert and Rick were working together. There were the famous casualties of the larger drug war, the narcos, of course, like Pablo Acosta,

who died in a hail of gunfire, and the good cops, like DEA agent Kiki Camarena, who chased down drug smugglers like Acosta until they too met a violent end. But there were tens of thousands of quieter deaths, too. Occasionally in reporting this story, I'd hear about those quieter deaths, particularly the ones that hit home in the Big Bend region

that were intimately tied up in what was going on with Rick and Robert. Susan Woodward Spriggs, the woman who remembered Robert playing my cheating heart tour, told me about Robert's reaction to one of those deaths. He did call me when Trey died and was crying. Trey was Susan's brother, and he had been one of Robert's best friends. They'd battled schoolyard bullies as kids. Then Trey had worked for Robert years later as his right-hand man.

He said he was the best little soldier I had, and that's a quote. What do you think he meant by the word soldier? I know he meant because of his business, his cartel business, his business of running guns and drugs and whatever across the border. Trey was his workhorse, I'm sure. But Trey eventually succumbed to that life, not dramatically in a shootout like Pablo Acosta, but slowly, from the very stuff that was making Robert and Rick rich. Infected with hepatitis C from heroin use, Trey's last couple years of relative sobriety were too late. He died at the age of 54. And for Susan, Trey's death wasn't her only tragedy. Her sister Emily was gunned down on the street in Alpine a few months before Rick

and Robert imported their ton of cocaine. Emily was just 29. Her husband was the murderer. He was a guy who used to hang out with Robert Chambers and his outlaws. I've always felt like I was dropped off at the wrong place. I found Buddhism, luckily, and it helped me with, it helped me not drink myself to death, you know, because I was on the road to that after Emily died. The violence of that time and place, it was staggering.

So many men and women in the Big Bend region died young, suddenly, horribly. But even though Robert Chambers was the ringleader of that world, a world also presided over by Sheriff Rick Thompson, Susan, when she talks about Robert, she sounds almost sorry for him, like he's another casualty of that time. He's, I think, trying to... I mean, he's got to stay on the straight and narrow, and he's probably not the same person because he was wild and free. And when you cage a wild animal like that, I think it changed him.

I don't think he's the same man he was. He's a lot more mellow because he's older. And I wish him well. I bear no ill towards him. We were all young and stupid. And what he did was step into that wild frontier kind of mentality to his detriment. Rick and Robert. I started this story by calling them a cop and an outlaw.

But they ended up each playing both roles, sometimes protectors and sometimes exploiters of the land they called home. Both haunted with memories of regret and the endless days and months and years of their imprisonment. The Big Bend is in many ways even more desolate and unsparing than when those men left it in 1992. Smuggling continues undeterred, even as the federal government has poured billions of dollars

into militarizing the border. The land itself, pummeled by drought, overuse, and our changing climate, has only grown less hospitable. But the unforgiving desert and the rugged mountains, the hard life, it's kept its hold on the free spirits who have always been attracted to this place. And something about that harsh environment kindles an unmistakable warmth in the people. As I knocked on doors and cold-called potential sources, asking them about the region's dark history, about its scars, I felt that warmth often. And the more I talk to people about the region's past, the more I become convinced

that as much as the Big Bend region feels timeless, something fundamental changed there with the fall of Rick Thompson and Robert Chambers. Gone is the mythical portrait of this place as the last bastion of the Old West. Lost are the fabled figures of the incorruptible lawmen and the roguish outlaw. They've both drifted away into the night on a cold desert wind. But that wind, sometimes it heats up, whirls into a roaring dust devil, brings to life the stories of these relics,

lawmen and outlaw, in barroom chatter and long talks through the evening, sitting on porches out in the high desert, gazing up at the brilliant array of stars that have always shined so dramatically above the Borderlands. Thank you for listening to Borderlands, the first season of Witnessed. Borderlands was reported and hosted by me, Rob D'Amico, and written by me, Eric Benson, and David Waters. Eric Benson is our supervising producer. David Waters is our executive producer.

At Campside, the executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher. Our field producers are Ryan Katz, Travis Bubenik, and Jesse Basham. Our associate producers are Leo Schick and Lydia Smith. Fact-checking by Alex Yablon. Special thanks to Rajiv Gola and Ashley Ann Krigbaum. Scoring and sound design by Ian Chambers and Rod Sherwood is our engineer.

Original music by Julian Lynch. If you enjoyed Borderlands, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. It helps other listeners like you find the show. And make sure to subscribe or follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And one last note. If you have questions or comments on the show,

feel free to head to witnessborderlands.com. There you'll find a way to message me or post your thoughts publicly. I'll also include some additional background and photos related to the show.