The Spy Who - The Spy Who Sold Codes and Cocaine | How to Free the FBI's Most Wanted | 4

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Christopher Boyce was sentenced to 68 years. He was supposed to die behind bars. Instead, in 2002, he walked free after just 23 years - and it was all because of one woman. Lawyer and author Cait Mills Boyce did the impossible. Speaking with Charlie Higson, she exposes how she dismantled a seemingly unbeatable case, the psychological battles she fought, and the shocking truth: she fell for her client. The FBI's most wanted became the man she loved - and later, the man she had to leave. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From audible originals, I'm James Bond novelist Charlie Hickson, and this is The Spy Who. Thank you for joining us for our final episode of The Spy Who sold codes and Cocaine. Christopher Boyce, along with his accomplice, Dalton Lee, were two spies driven by a youthful ideology. Infuriated with US foreign policy, Vietnam and Nixon, Christopher wanted to do something about it. He stuck it to the man by selling satellite secrets to the Soviets. Add to the fact the pair were often so stoned or high, they'd simply had no idea what they were passing on. The ignorance of youth allowed them to not think too hard

about the consequences of their actions. But the seriousness of their sentences, life for Dalton, 40 years for Christopher, meant they'd possibly be dying in jail. Following Chris's jailbreak and his year and a half, off-robbing banks and staying hidden, the man-hunt for him was at the time one of the biggest of the decade, meant that sentence ballooned to 68 years.

I'm talking with lawyer, author and former wife of Christopher Boyce, Kate Mills-Boyce. She co-wrote the book American Sons, the untold story of the Falcon and the Snowman. It tells the story of life after the arrest, the court cases, the appeals, and the falling in love. Through her dogged determination, ferocious legal mind and her sense of fairness,

Kate could see that Christopher Boyce and Dalton Lee were being treated unfairly by the US justice system. All she had to do was prove it, and it only took 20 years. So welcome, Kate. It's lovely to meet you. Where about are you today? I'm in Oregon. That's about as close as I'm going to identify myself for reasons, I'm sure you know. Well, we've done a lot of these interviews with all sorts of people

from the world of spying, and yes, some of them have had to be very secretive. I live my life out loud, but this is a very, very small area, and so I don't need people knocking on my door. And just to get it out of the way, what is your relationship with Christopher Boyce today? Other than having married him in 2002? Yes. Well, obviously there is that. Yeah. And are you still together? As friends. As friends. Yeah, we still have a relationship. It's been 45 years. It's hard not to have that

relationship. Well, let's go back to how it all began for you and how you eventually did get to meet Christopher Boyce. So we go back to 1980 and that's where your story begins with Andrew Dalton Lee. And that was while Chris was a fugitive having escaped prison. And you began seeing Dalton in prison as he became your client. How did that come about that you ended up representing Dalton? So what had happened very simply is that I was working in a legal aid office. And people had talked to me about this book, The Falcon and the Snowman by Robert Lindsay. They kept, you know, you really need to read this. I mean, these people, they grew up like you did in kind of the same location you did to hush people up.

I took the book. I read the book. And I read it in one night because I couldn't put it down. Oh, to Mr. Lindsay. And I was fascinated, more or less by the way, not that Mr. Boyce was treated, but by the way that Andrew Dalton Lee was treated in the book. I mean, here's a man who didn't testify, and he got a life sentence, and I knew about the drug passed and all of that, but to me, two and two didn't make four. So I got involved. I sent him a letter, and I said, you know, I've read this book. I'm very

confused, and, you know, I don't mean to take up your time, but can we talk about this? It's really mind-boggling to me. And kind of one thing led to another, and there you go. So you felt as soon as you read the book that there was a miscarriage of justice there, that this was someone who needed help, and that you wanted to help him? Yeah, I did. So how soon after you started corresponding with Andrew Dalton Lee, did you actually get to meet him and put together a plan? It was probably six months before I actually went up to Lompoc to meet him. I was in San Diego, and we weren't actually talking about dealing with the original sentence. We were talking about how to best go before a parole board. Okay. And what were you feeling about how likely that was that you would have any

success on that front? Well, you know, in order to do something like that, you have to believe you're going to be successful. I mean, you have to believe that or there's no reason to take that case. Yeah. I had already worked with parole and probation in California on a state and a county level, but I had never, ever done anything federal. So, and I mean, how did you feel when you met Andrew Dornley? Did you feel that this was someone that you could work with, that he would be able to help himself to get out of his predicament a bit? I have to tell you, right off the bat.

I really liked him. He was a very personable person. He was very intelligent, very intelligent. And I think that the original book, Falcon and Snowman, kind of undercuts that. And they treat him like he's some drug-addled idiot. There was nothing drug-addled and idiotic about Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee was a very brilliant man. Still is.

So in terms of getting parole, how much of the sort of resistance to that from the prison authorities was coming from the espionage side of things? And how much was the drug side of things and how much was how he was behaving in prison? So the way that this works out is at the time of sentencing, both Andrew Dalton Lee and Christopher John Boyce were sentenced under a 4205B2, which means that, basically, they were parolable at any time. Okay. Because it's not actually the Youth Act, but it's close enough to it. So knowing that they were parolable at any time, that's when I decided to step in. But it's like a salmon stream.

It's like swimming against currents that are absolutely unreal. Because it's not just about how they're doing in prison. That has nothing whatsoever to do with it. It's about the basis of the crime. And it wasn't the drug crimes. It was the espionage. and the conspiracy to commit espionage. Yeah.

So how old was he when you first met him? Dalton? 25. We were all kids. I think I was 22. I'm not now. I mean, that's amazing that you ended up in that whole situation. Did they think of themselves as spies, as it were?

Or were they were just people who would... They were kids. Yeah. I mean, literally, they were kids. I think Dalton looked at it as, and maybe the reason. that he got involved with it is because he had an active drug business. And I think that he figured that maybe that was a way to make a living or he could use this as a way for contacts in Mexico.

And there was no sentimentality involved in this. It was a business kind of a deal. Yeah. Whereas Chris looked at it from a different angle. So, I mean, was Chris more idealistic than Dalton? Dalton was part of youth for Nixon. Right. Okay.

He was a Republican? That answers that one. And yet I still liked him. So Dalton at this time, because it's quite interesting, you know, the relationship between them and how that broke down, I suppose, when particularly when Dalton was arrested. And he refused to talk about boys, didn't he wouldn't even utter his name, referring to him only as my co-defendant. Right. I mean, did he talk to you about the sort of moment that their relationship? ended, their friendship ended, and why?

Yeah, I know the moment that friendship broke. And the moment that friendship broke was when Chris Boyce testified against him. Okay. Dalton didn't take the stand. And so Dalton hadn't implicated Boyce in any of this? No. You'd talked to Dalton about Boyce. So what sort of an impression did you have him at?

How did you think about him before you met him? I didn't really talk to Dalton about Boyce. Really? No, because it's something he wouldn't do. Even to you? Honestly, throughout that entire time, he never went into any detail about Chris. He did not want to discuss Chris. He did not want to know what was going on with him.

He wanted that cut completely out of his life. And I get that. How important was that to you, to what was going on with you? It was crucial. It was crucial because in order to take somebody into a parole hearing, there's two defendants here. So you have to be able to discuss both actions. And while I believed, and ultimately I proved that Chris was more culpable in this matter, I needed to know all of that. I didn't need him to indict Chris Boyce for me.

I just needed him to fill in the blanks and he just wouldn't do it. Not at all. Not to try and save himself. Yeah. So when you first met Dalton and started working for him, Boyce at the time was on the run, robbing banks and taking helicopter lessons, which I must say is an extraordinary sentence to say out loud. So what's the idea that these lessons that he was going to help Dalton escape from prison? What was going through Boyce's mind at the time here? It's really hard to say. I think that Chris bore a lot of guilt from the entire affair, not just because of Dalton's conviction. But because he rope Dalton into this to begin with, and he did rope Dalton into this. Dalton didn't just suddenly jump up and say, gee, I want to be a spy.

I mean, as you say, they're still very young. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we're talking about a bunch of kids because what was voice at that time must have been 30 or 31. But he went to prison at like 22. Yeah. So, you know, you don't really grow up once you go to prison. Yeah. If you've had that amount of your younger years taken away from you from being in prison,

that must make it a very difficult thing to deal with. At what stage during this did the film of the Vulcan and the Snowman come out? 1983, so it was probably in my third year of my relationship with Dalton and working for Dalton. And the film came out, well, Chris reached out to me because by this time Chris and I were talking on the phone. Chris reached out to me and said, they're going to call you, they're going to make this film with us or without us, so it's better to cooperate. And I felt like I was backed into a corner. And the next thing, within probably an hour, I would say that Sean Penn called me.

And I told him, it was point blank about it. I said, I've had no conversation with Mr. Lee about this. I'm not going to discuss this with you until I discuss it with Dalton. And if Dalton says, no, that's where we're going to stand. I'm not going to try to finagle this. And Dalton called that night, and I told him what was going on. He hung up on me and then didn't call me back for probably almost a week. And then after a week, he came back, and what did he say?

He came back and he said, I would be willing to talk to them. So what was your feeling and what was Dalton's feeling about this film? Was there a thought, if this makes them famous, it might help their cause, or was it more, oh, my God, this is going to throw a lot of heat on them and the authorities are going to double down? So the way the parole commission works very simply is, one of the things that they grade on is publicity. Right.

If you keep hitting the newspapers and you keep doing interviews, you're not getting paroled. And this movie was scheduled to start filming when Dalton had his first parole hearing. And I was livid. I agreed to sit down with Sean Penn. I agreed to talk to him about what the plan was and to try to explain all this stuff to him.

But Dalton still then gave permission. He did after I talked to Sean. So did that reassure you talking to Sean? I mean, surely that was still not going to affect the issue of extra publicity or whatever. At the time that this was supposed to come out, he would have been between hearings. So it would have been okay. And I could stall this off a little bit with an injunction. I mean, just as a sideline, it's quite interesting.

I don't think I've ever known anyone who's become a character in a film. What did you think of Sean Penn's version of Dalton? I mean, did it bear any relationship to what he was really like as a person? No. Not at all, no. I think Sean did a fairly good job, but I can tell you that there's no way that Dalton was ever that sort of whiny, cringy human being. To see Dalton, you have to understand that this is a man who every hair is in place. He is prim and proper.

and even in prison, before he would come into the visiting room, his clothing was pressed to the point where you could literally slice bread with the seams in his pants. I mean, that much a perfectionist. But that didn't fit the Hollywood idea of what a drug dealer is like. No, no. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And I told Penn all that. But I also wanted it to be more of a cartoonish appearance rather than the real Andrews.

Dalton Lee. Because at least if we did that, I could say to the parole commission, hey, they did this of their own accord. Yeah. You know Dalton. You know he's not either. Right. And the same with boys? I think Tim Hutton did a good job. Right. But I mean, eventually, and it took almost 20 years. Almost 20 years, yeah. He did get a successful parole hearing and an early release. He did. What had changed by then? What it changed by then was the fact that I did exactly what he told me not to do. I wrote a letter to the judge, and I said, I'd like to take this opportunity to reintroduce you to Andrew Dalton Lee. And then I wrote an entire synopsis on all of these years in prison, the fact that he was the first prisoner in the federal system to take and pass the dental board.

So he became a dental assistant. he passed the test with the highest grade they'd ever had. So, you know, I mean, this is a guy who actually could do something on the outside. He could benefit people, not languishing in prison for the rest of his life. And I said, would you help? Would you write a letter? By this point, I had already gotten the prosecutors to write favorable letters for Dalton's parole because they were now in private practice. So I sent that off to Judge Kelleher, the sentencing judge. I didn't hear anything. A month passed. And I was in my office that day, and my phone rang, and it was Judge Kelleher. And he said, what is it you're asking me to do? So I explained it very carefully. Didn't say yes, didn't say no,

just said, I'll call you back in a couple of days. It took about four or five days, and Kelleher called me back. And that's when it all started. Right. I started to build a case. Kelleher wrote a letter to the United States Parole Commission saying, this is the first time in my entire career, my first time on the bench that I've ever written a letter on behalf of an inmate. But I truly believe that Mr. Lee is not the same person that I sentenced in 1977. So after 11 years of doing these parole hearings,

he's finally given his date for an early release. You then write to Boyce to say, let's do this with you. So, Kate, Dalton is now free. what then made you decide to help voice out? I had not talked to Chris in eight years, maybe eight years, maybe 10 years, because I knew there was nothing I could do for him. And to maintain that correspondence with him, I think, would have been heartbreaking for him and for me. There was no way I was going to offer somebody hope that I knew for a fact I couldn't carry through on.

I wasn't going to make any promises. I didn't even want to allude to it. So I focused on getting Dalton out, and that was my key to every. everything, and then I went merrily on with my life. But it started to weigh on me. So when Dalton was finally released, at that time, I was dealing with my own angry issues, which was cancer. So I had stage 3B cancer, and I was really trying not to die. So that was a big thing. The day Dalton walked out of prison, I sent Chris a letter, and I said, don't even know if you remember me. I know it's been a very long time, but I'm just letting you know that I got Dalton his parole. Maybe it's your

turn. And I included my phone number a week later, which would have been the period of time that he got the letter. He was on the phone. So in 1996, you started representing Christopher Boyce. And at this point, he'd contemplated suicide. He'd been in solitary confinement a lot. He'd been moved to Supermax prison with no windows. He'd been beaten unconscious. Two of his cell neighbors had been stabbed to death, and he was diagnosed as a psychopath. So when Boyce was sat in front of you, I mean, did you see a man beaten by the system? I mean, did he come across as how he was presented by the prison authorities? Chris was never beaten by the system, and it was never institutionalized, never,

because he kept his mind active. Books were his saving grace. But when I first started on his case, he was not at the Supermax. He was in Minnesota on a federal compact. in a state prison because he had done his testimony with the Senate subcommittee. He made an agreement that he would do the interview with the Senate subcommittee if they would move him out of Marion. So, yeah, no, he was in Minnesota and he was fine.

So he was in a better place, physically and mentally. Right. Yeah, he got to play handball every day. He got to read. He got to work in the library. He did all that kind of prison job stuff. Right. And I mean, so when you took his case on,

how hard did it look to you at the time, knowing what you'd gone through with Dalton? Did you have a fairly good idea of success, or were you thinking, I'm taking it on because this is a battle? I'm taking it on because it's a battle. Right. It's a battle I want to win. And I have an extremely huge ego when it comes to this. I am not going to step back. If I've started something, I see it through.

I don't start projects and then walk away from them, which is why I don't do crafting. But it was so crucial to me to get this done. On one hand, I had this fear that I was going to die. Yeah. And on the other hand, I thought, well, there's nobody that could take my place and do this because he'd already had years worth of hearings. He'd hired lawyers. He'd hired everybody like that in order to do his hearings. Everybody failed. But I knew I couldn't fail. I had no time to fail. And why didn't you tell Dalton that you were representing boys? I finally did. I finally did. I told him, and we didn't speak for about a month. So I drove down there, and I said, this is ridiculous. You know, you and I have been together as friends for almost 20 years. This is crazy. And he didn't want to talk about Boyce, but he said, well, you know, I forgive you and I understand and I do understand. I didn't really need the forgiveness. Yeah, I mean, it's a weird, I mean, was he, in his mind, was he thinking he didn't want Boyce to get out, or that he felt that he had this strong bond? with you and you were, well, for one of the better word, cheating on him, as it were. Well, he did have a strong bond with me, and I think that that was part of it.

I absolutely believed that that was part of it, because we were very close. But I think that the other part of it was he didn't want the blowback on him. Right. Because every time somebody says Chris Boyce, then automatically it's the Falcon and the Snowman, and then automatically Andrew Dalton Lee's name comes up. He wants his life. He wants to be private. And I haven't spoken to Dalton since 1999.

and he deserves his privacy and his peace of mind and to be left alone. So when did the professional and personal lines start blurring for you and Chris, if that's not too personal a question? You know, it's so funny because I believe it was when I was going through cancer treatment. Yeah. I flew back to Minnesota in 97, so I was still undergoing some pretty drastic treatment. I had already had a radical mastectomy. I was not a well person. I was not a well woman, but I wanted to work with his parole stuff.

You know, I just, I needed to do it. I needed to get it done. So my argument with myself was a pretty simple one. This guy's been in prison for all of these years. He spent his entire youth in prison. He's now in his late 40s or mid 40s, and I've been out and free and happy, and I have a choice. I can either do chemo right away or I can work on this parole. I couldn't do both at the same time and I knew that. So I opted to work on the parole instead of doing chemo, which probably ultimately caused the four further recurrences, but it was what it was.

So yeah, that's when we got together. So a very complicated time for you. Yeah. It was not a really clear time because I was on a lot of medication and I was trying to work full time. And at the same time, it was trying to do his parole. In September 1997, you get the parole hearing decision. So what did that exactly say?

It said no. It's plain and simple. It said no. Federal prisoners, old law prisoners, those convicted before 1987, they have a hearing every 24 months. So every 24 months, Dalton's parole papers said exactly the same thing. To release you now would depreciate the seriousness of the offense. Nobody ever really knows what that means, but it's their catch-all phrase. So that's what we got back on Chris. He was devastated. He was just devastated. So that's when I flew back and I said, you know what, we're going to work on this appeal. We're going to get this done. I'm flying back there. You need to help me. That's what I did. You appealed the decision. I did. So I had 30 days from the time that they denied it to write an appeal. So I had to do a lot of research in a very short period of time. Because what they were looking at was the fact that, There were the bank robberies involved, which was after he escaped.

So they already had a three-year sentence on the escape. So basically his time on the escape was done. But the bank robberies, the parole commission, thought that they had been sentenced consecutively to the espionage sentence, which was 40 years. So he got 25 years on the bank robbery sentences, which would have dragged it out to a 68-year aggregate sentence. I knew that wasn't happening because the federal judge in Idaho. As part of his sentencing, he told Boyce, he said, I have no choice because of the sentencing act. I have to give you the full amount of the sentence, which is 25 years. But I'm hoping that at the end of all of this, you will be able to have a life. That triggered me. You don't wish somebody to have a life if you're giving them a 25-year sentence that is running consecutive with a 40-year sentence and then another three-year sentence.

So I called for the court transcripts. I got the court transcripts, a sentencing transcript. What he had said was they were to run concurrent. So they ran with the espionage sentence. They had already run and been completed because it had been the 25 years with the time off for good behavior. It's amazing that it took you to go in there and go back and say, well, look, this is what you said at the time. Yeah. So what I did was when I did the parole brief and the appeal brief, I included all of those pages from the transcript. I included everything. I said, first of all, his co-defendant with a life sentence is out. Second of all, these sentences are not consecutive. They're concurrent. He's done his time on the bank robbery. And in fact, if we look at the 4205B2, which still holds, he's already finished with this sentence. Right. And so you won the appeal. You were the first person to appeal the Parole Commission and win. Yes, we got the appeal granted, but it was probably a month, more than a month, before we knew that. We just never got any response. And then you still had to wait another six years for his release. Five years, yeah, yeah.

And so through this time, you're starting, well, for want of a better phrase, to fall in love? Oh, yeah, we'd already fallen in love, I think. You'd fallen in love. Yeah. Before submitting the parole appeal, he had sent me a birthday card, as he always did. He always sent me cards like letters every single day while he was going through cancer treatment to cheer me up. But he sent one for my birthday that said, happy birthday to my darling wife. Presumptuous. Exactly, yeah, yeah. And he told me that. I said, what the hell? And he said, well, I just assumed if we're successful here and I got out of prison that we'd get out of prison that we'd get. get married. I'm like, wow. But you did? We did. We're still great friends. We are. We're still

terrific friends. And you're still dealing with the breast cancer. Which then by this time, it got into my brain. Gets seracer and seriousness. I'm still here. Yes. Now, there's a good, the good outcome for both of you. So how is Chris dealing with all of this? When he was at ADX Florence. So ADX Florence is a 23 hour a day lockdown. You get one hour out in the yard without the general population. You're never allowed in Gen Pop. So you eat in your room. You do everything in your room. There's no gym. There's none of that stuff. So he wrote a lot of letters. I got a lot of letters during that time. And he was allowed a phone call once a month. It was very difficult because I knew he was going through this depression. And he would send a letter and he would say, I really don't. have anything to say. You know, he would comment on current events or whatever, but he really had nothing to say because there was nothing around him. It was in a cell where he had a concrete bed and a toilet and a shower thing and a very small narrow window. That was it. So Dalton gave you a great piece of advice when he was your client to look into the names Pitts and Nicholson. So who were

they and why were they so significant in this case? They were significant because Nicholson was CIA, I believe, and I believe that the other man Pitts was FBI. And so they, obviously, because they were government jobs, had signed an oath of allegiance to the United States. Well, that was one of the things that affected Chris, is that he worked for a CIA subcontractor, TRW, in the Black Vault. He never signed an oath. They never gave him an oath to sign. That was something that the parole commission kept pointing out. And in fact, it never happened. Okay. And Pitts and Nicholson were convicted of selling secrets to the Soviets. They absolutely were.

And they were government agents, and so they sold these secrets. And Nicholson was still in prison, but Pitts had been released. So they had dramatically lighter sentences. Yeah. Well, Nicholson's been convicted again. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. So was that useful, that information as another lever?

I believe that it was, yeah. I mean, you also got in touch with the KGB or the FSB, as it became known. do a damage report on what they did. I did. How on earth did you go about that? I kept trying to figure out how I could make this appeal much more, you know, powerful. I wanted something with a punch to it. And so I hunted down the address in Moscow, and I did.

I sent a letter. This is who I represent. This is what's going on. Is there any way you guys can help me? Is there some sort of a damage, you know, assessment? Anything. And then a lot of time passed, and of course I didn't hear anything. I had no idea what to think, and it was a whim.

It was just a whim on my part. But it is a really interesting thing to know, and it comes up a lot on this series of trying to assess how much damage the information that was passed over did. Right. But you did eventually get a response from them. I did.

It was about a month, and I was in my office, and the secretary came running back, and she said, there's a fax. When we still used faxes, there's a fax coming in for you, but I can't tell you who it's from because there's just like a picture of a building on it, and it's in some foreign language.

So I grabbed the facts, and I realize it's from Russia, and it's from the FSB. Wow. And I can't read a word of it. Once you got to the bottom of it, what did the FSB tell you? They not only didn't have a damage assessment, they didn't even have files on Chris and Dalton. So they hadn't, as far as they were telling you,

they didn't feel that this was really important. No. Do we, I mean, how much do we trust them on that? I trust them quite a lot because if you're going to convict somebody on the most damaging information that went to the Russians, that's great. But proof to me that the information went to the Russians. They were convicted on selling the perimeter documents, which was not just top secret, it was eyes only, which is the highest rating for top secret documents. The perimeter documents never got to the Russians. They never received them because Dalton was arrested with the microfiche. Right. Okay. And then the original pyramid or documents were used during their trial. And they had to be done in camera, which is just with the judge, no jury, because the juries weren't privileged to see them because of their security level. Do you still have the facts? Is it framed on the walls?

It's not framed on the wall because faxes over the years, you know, they fade, don't they? They do, and they go away to nothing. It's a shame because not everyone gets a fax from the FSB. I know. I should have photocopied it. So it seems that the Russians didn't think that Dalton and Boyce were at all important. They didn't even have a file on them, and they didn't manage to pass over any serious information. But I guess the American authorities wanted to present this as a much bigger crime than it actually was and lock these two guys up for as long as they could.

So, Kate, it's 2002. Christopher Boyce was released after almost 25 years in prison, rather than the 68 he was sentenced to. Right. What was that first day of? freedom like? His parents picked him up in Oregon at a prison over on the coast and they drove him to the Portland, Oregon airport where he boarded a plane and came to San Francisco. I had him scheduled to go to a halfway house where he would spend the first six months or early release if they gave it to him. I mean, my next question was going to be, were the two of you able to adjust to a normal life?

But I'm not sure from everything that you've said. Yeah, no, we actually were. Was that ever really an option? Did you think? A normal life? Yeah, I think it was. I mean, for me, it was a matter of safety. I think that we would have been safer if we would have stayed in San Francisco. Because, of course, being very, very blue, San Francisco, they wouldn't have been after who he was. They wouldn't have been pressuring him. They wouldn't have done anything like that. We wouldn't have had, you know, pickets at the door and that whole kind of thing. He'd have been able to find a job. We stayed for two years. And in 2004, we moved because he wanted to be able to fly. his falcons. He went right back to falconry, I think five minutes after we got off the plane. But yeah, I mean, we did all the things that married people do. We incurred debt. We bought a house. We had cars. We have dogs and falcons and chickens and everything that goes with it. And I think we were normal people. We were normal neighbors. Talking about debt there, I mean, I'd love to know. I mean, was there a big backlog of legal fees? How did it work on that side?

It's the biggest pro bono thing I've ever done in my life. Oh, my God. And I like to remind him of that occasionally about the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he owes me. You will take out the garbage because this is how much you owe me. He has a good sense of humor. That's good. Well, I mean, I guess you both have to have. And, I mean, you know, from what you've said about your health issues and that, you know,

I'd say the real world, but, you know, the real world that everyone has to deal with, which is so different to the whole world of espionage and prison on that. So that must have been very tricky dealing with all that. I had four recurrences. The first one when Chris was at ADX, Florence, I survived. I mean, what can I say? I survived. Again, you know, cancer's not a club I would have voluntarily joined,

but I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot about myself and my own level of personal strength and perseverance, and I think it's important. And I gather Chris had a scare as well. Chris just in the past couple of years, you know, getting old is not for the faint of heart. No. And Chris is 73 years old. So, you know, he's not that 22-year-old kid that, you know, is so cute and on the cover of the book and women wrote to.

Thousands of women, I might add. He's not that guy anymore. I mean, he's got a knee replacement. And, yeah, he's actually fairly mentally well-balanced considering that he spent almost 25 years in total lockdown. Yeah, well, it's amazing that you both went through those things that would test anyone and have come out, well, I guess stronger, as you say. Yeah, we were married for 18 years. We agreed to separate and divorce. And I mean, in the very beginning, I really didn't want to have any part of this stuff. But you come to a point where you realize you've had like a 45-year

relationship with somebody as friends and then as husband and wife. And you have these experiences that truly nobody else has. Nobody else has been through what you two have been through. And so that was my thing. It's like I strived to have a good relationship with him. Now, in your book, American Sons, Chris says he has the freedom to be left alone. But I mean, how do you both feel knowing that the world is still talking about Boyce and Dalton? I mean, before we did this interview, I was talking to you and you said you don't do interviews anymore. So it's very good of you to do this one. But how Does that field? I mean, it's obviously never going to go away. It's a little quirky to me because, I mean, we're talking about something that happened 50 years ago. I mean, they were convicted in 1977. And I think a lot of it has to do with the various books. I know ours is a very good seller. I am about to release a second book. And sadly, that book is more what's happened after, I guess, the sequel. The aftermath.

Yeah, and part of the prequel, it's both. And we read this a lot in reviews. You know, this is, we'd really like to know more. We'd like to know more. We'd like to know more. And interviewers constantly, every time something goes wrong, it's like, well, let's reach out to the spy. I think we had a quiet period right up until Snowden. Yes.

Yes. Well, every time, as you say, every time that happens, it's, well, let's talk to you again. Well, on top of that, it was the snowball effect of Nicholson, who was reconvicted of more espionage charges. Was that stuff that had happened after he came up or stuff that came up? Well, he was in prison. He was continuing the espionage game while he was in prison. And the feds came to our house because this happened at an Oregon prison

and Nicholson happened to be at the Oregon prison when Chris was at the Oregon prison prior to him being released. Do you ever think about the past and just think, my God, what an extraordinary journey? No, I don't live in the past. I live in the current time and hopes for the future because I'm not getting younger either. And there's a lot of things I still want to do. And you're still keeping busy and doing new things, which is just amazing.

Thank you so much, Kate. That is so interesting. And there are a thousand other questions I wanted to ask if we'd have more time. But thank you for giving us your time and for going over. What is an amazing story? You're so welcome. It's been really interesting on this series talking to spies who have been at the of things. And what was interesting today, I thought, talking to Kate, was talking to someone

else in the story, who in many ways came in after the whole spying bit, if that's really what it was, had been done. And I found Kate a really fascinating person. I'm an incredibly tough and dogged, to have spent so long fighting for the rights of these two people. The other thing that came across so clearly is how young they all were when this happened and didn't have any idea what they were doing. It was a bit of a game for them. This is one of those stories that's going to keep coming back. And is that because it was such an incredible crime, which it doesn't seem to be in at all? Or is it the fact that it became glamorised, for one of a better word, by Hollywood, you know, once you throw in Sean Penn and it's not a story that's going to go away for a long time?

Thank you for listening and do join us for the next series of The Spy Who, hosted by Indra Vama. Next time we open the file on Larry Chin, the Spy Who, the Spy Who Outplay. for decades chin was embedded deep inside u.s intelligence then comes the golden opportunity richard nixon's secret plan to reopen relations with china information chin can place directly into mow's hands but the cia has a weapon of their own a chinese mole ready to defect how long until chin's gig is up follow the spy who now wherever you listen to podcasts from audible originals this is the final episode in our series The Spy Who sold codes and cocaine. This episode of The Spy Who was hosted by me, Charlie Higson.

Our show was produced by Vespucci, with story consultancy by Yellow Ant for Audible. The senior producer was Ashley Clivery. Our sound designer was Alex Port Felix. The supervising producer was Natalia Rodriguez. Music supervisor is Scott Fulasquez for Frisson Sink. Executive producers for Vespucci were Johnny Galvin and Davin. Daniel Turcan. The executive producer for Yellow Ant was Tristan Donovan.

Executive producers for Audible were Estelle Doyle, Theodora Laudis and Marshall Louis.