The Underworld Podcast - The Legend of Bum Farto and the Florida Keys Cocaine

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Something about Bum Farto, Key West’s fire chief, stunk. And it wasn’t just his red suits, bling and lime green company car. By the early 70s Florida’s farthest-flung outpost was a lawless drug enclave. And Bum was smack bang in its center. ((NOTE: This isn't just our best episode, it might be the podcast episode ever, in the history of podcasts.)) When the state’s governor dispatched a multi-agency task force to Key West, however, they stumbled on something far darker than an errant Farto. Out poured a world of murder, mafiosi and massive shipments. What happened next remains a mystery to this day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. It's 1973 in Key West, Florida. The southernmost city in the contiguous U.S. Farthest inhabited outpost of an archipelago that curls like a string of pearls from the Everglades and Miami to the Caribbean Sea. In Key West's case, just 90 or so miles from the north coast of Cuba. That is no insignificant fact in the wild ride we're about to take. It's a tale that many argue never really ended, and they're right.

See, Key West has always attracted crazies, misfits and flimflang men, sox, raconteurs and raggedy-shirted Malkins. Ernest Hemingway lived there for three years in the 30s, with the second his four wives. In 1972, it had become the home of songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who'd indulge in the pulsing lit scene alongside Tom Corcoran and Truman Capote. As you might expect, such a blunt rotation requires some good quality dope, and for the afters, a little powder to keep Big Nick Tongues wagging freely.

Thanks in part to Cuba and in parts of the US Navy, Key West has both in abundance. So often do weed shipments wash up on its. it ensures that local fishermen that were taken to calling them square groupers. The harder stuff, almost all of that, is from Columbia, with a little Peruvian product sprinkled in for good measure. By 1973, so ludicrously easy has it become to score gear in Key West that folks slap bumper stickers on their fenders, urging fellow drivers to quote, smoke Florida seafood.

The mob were in Key West too, of course, But the big players, the Traficantes of Tampa, with the Italians from up north, they're happy to sit in the shadows and let local sling on the streets. Key West's most fun-voyant hustler is none other than the local fire chief. A red-suited, rose-tinted glasses wearing,

gold-loving, smooth-talking civic hero named Joseph Bartow. You heard that right, Farto. Joseph folks had come over from Spain and, pretty admirably, refused to change their name. What's more, Joseph has a nickname, one handed to him as a young boy, by men who, incredibly, had no idea what his surname even was. Bum. Yes, bum Farto.

He's not silent, and he definitely ain't violent. But Key West's blinged-out, swashbuckling fire chief turned street dealer, is about to be dropped into a world of people who most certainly are. Florida's government in Tallahassee has finally gotten wind of Farto and he's pissed that his southernmost city has become a lawless drug enclave. He orders an investigation, which soon folds agents from local police division and alphabet agencies. This is the birth of Operation Kong. And before long, its agents are hunting down torturers, murderers, mafiosi, and massive shipments of gear. There's a foul smell in the air in Margaritaville.

and it's not just bumfato. Welcome to the Underworld podcast. And welcome to the weekly podcast about global organized crime that peels back the onion of the mainstream media, dissects lying serpentine politicians and stabs fake media right in their soros funding facts. Only joking, people say that already is. I'm Sean Williams in New Zealand and I'm joined today by Danny Gold in New York City. How's NYC? Heard there's election going on over there or something?

I mean, the only thing I've been able to think about this week is bum, Fardo, you know? It's the only thing on my mind. It's a great opening, by the way. I think everyone listening should know we only did this episode because of the guy's name. Like, I don't even know if we thought about doing this, but you looked into it and you were like, oh, there's a bunch of intrigue and drug dealing before, so why don't we actually, like, go through with this?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you would have just heard the cold open. So there's, like, there is quite a lot more to this bum that meets the eye. or bum eye or whatever hideous pun that you're going to hear a lot more of anyway. First, a special thanks to you to subscribe to Patreon. You've literally provided more financial backing to me than my own family

ever has, so I love you more than them. I think at this point we just posted something on Bangladesh, going crazy after revolution there. You did a cool one on Venice and mobsters in Colorado, which is, well, we're always ahead of the news curve here, aren't we? So, yeah, there's plenty more coming on that. And

I'm also going to be in L.A. and New York in around a month or so from now. So if you want me and Danny to do a live show, which would obviously be brilliant, but, you know, maybe all 10 people will come. Then email us at the Underworld podcast at gmail.com. I'm missing anything? Socials. You guys know that already. Let's go on with a show. First, I should mention the elephant in the room, the name. Danny, Key West is actually to the south of the Florida mainland, not the west. Now, let's continue. That's just, that's just great misdirection right there. I mean, your stand-up career is getting closer and closer every day. It is. It is. It's,

it's getting a lot closer than it is now, which is not very close. And if you visit Key West of the 1980s, you might have noticed folks wearing t-shirts with a pretty odd slogan plastered across them. Where is Bum Varto? One shop allegedly sold 800 of them. A local star Jimmy Buffett would even play gigs in his Farto shirt. Over 40 years later, people are still asking the question. We all are, aren't we?

Did Farto follow through on his messy plans? I'm sorry, and go on the lamb in South. America or Spain? Or is he currently somewhere off the coast of the Bahamas dressed in a nice pair of inexpensive concrete shoes? Spoiler alert, we are probably never going to know. But the legend of Bumfato lives on. And not just because of his mad name. Well, yeah, I mean like Danny said quite a bit because of his mad name. But trust me, this story is way juicier than it seems at first glance. And to get right to the bottom of it, sorry again, we are going to head all the way back to July 3rd, 1919, Danny.

I know you love these subtle segues into the deep past. Because that is the day that Joseph Anthony Farto is born the youngest of three children in a house behind Key West's fire station with, according to a Miami Herald piece, a siren in his ear and a fist on a hook and a ladder. I can just hear a fact checker nowadays crying at a sentence like that. They mean he likes firefathers in case you didn't get it, guys. Joseph's mother dies when he's young and his Spanish father, Juan,

who'd come to the US fire Cuba many years previous, which actually I didn't notice now but his name is Juan Fato which is also pretty funny owns and runs the Victoria Restaurant which is right in the centre of town. But Joseph only has eyes for the fire brigade.

He's always hanging around the station running to get fireman coffee or shining their boots for small change. So often is the little Farto asking to do odd jobs that the firefighters call him bump and it sticks as far as sometimes do age 10 bum sneaks a bald a bright red truck as it skids out on a call after it got going he tells a report a years later i started ringing that bell on the end i knew by then they were going so fast they couldn't stop to pull me off i think

that's that's literally a thing that happens in seinfeld with kramer right doesn't he get stuck driving the the fire truck for a second yeah yeah exact same situation oh man maybe they got it from this. Anyway, as he grows up, Farto Jr. works a variety of other jobs, including Darkly at a local funeral home. But in his dreams, Bum is always ringing that bell end and getting pulled off by firemen. I mean, I'm sorry, that quote is ridiculous. I didn't concentrate on any of the content of it. And as a young man, he joins the station and he rises its ranks. In the meantime, Key West has become something of a lodestar for artists, writers and free thinkers who love to bunker down in dim-lit bolt holes and shoot the breeze. Ernest Hemingway is one of them. His

faux-French colonial home is still there as a listed monument today. And if there's anything a freethinker truly the digital nomad of his time enjoys, it is a swig on a bottle of something strong, preferably rum from nearby Cuba, perhaps even a cigar to go with it. Prohibition, schmoabition. Key West has got an army of rum runners, and the most famous of them is a guy name Joe Russell, Hemingway's boat pilot and sometime fishing companion. In case anyone listening is a Hemingway fan, Russell is actually the model for Freddie in his novel to have and have not. Anybody? Yeah, that really would have slapped in my English lit classes circa 2004. Yeah, you know, I've always wanted to go to QS. I think you know a small part

because of the way Hemingway used to write about it. Maybe this winter. I don't know. I actually had an ex who moved down there to be a scuba instructor years ago, I think. But there's also that new show on on Apple TV, the Vince Vaughn one, which is, you know, crime and and thriller and all that. It's actually, it's pretty good. I'm enjoying it. It's classic Vince Vaughn. What are you thinking about Vince Vaughn and True Detective? Because I, I don't think he's that bad and people just completely tore into shreds. I thought it was great. I liked it. Yeah. I like that season too. I thought that was complete bullshit that, that, those reviews anyway. But Joe Russell, back to Joe Russell. He is first and foremost, a conk. I think. I

think. You say conk, right? I think it's conk, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's really, it's a weird word. C-O-N-C-H, which is the name for a Key West native, derived, of course, in the tasty mollusks you'll find all around the region. Joe has also got a speakeasy on the seafront and a healthy business in the waters beyond. Here's a city website, quote,

Joe knew the Cuban waters like he knew his own skin, but not just for their fishing potential. He was one of the most daring rum runners in the Florida Key, thriving on the rush that came from making a successful run across the night waters, playing games with the federal agents, dodging in and out of the tiny bays and inlets around the keys. These hot Havana nights make Joe pretty rich. A decent case of liquor sells for 40 bucks in town. I mean, that is almost $750 in today's money.

By the time prohibition ends in 1933, he scrawled enough cash away to buy a bar called Sloppy Joes. In 1936, Hemingway actually meets his third wife, the legendary war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, at Sloppy Joe's. Here's a hot take for you. I think she was actually a better war correspondent than Hemingway was. I don't know if you've ever read The Face of War or Travels with Myself and Another, or that big piece called the Arabs of Palestine, I think in the Atlantic, but she was just like a phenomenal, phenomenal writer. And just, you know, she had fun too. Like when you're reading it, it's actually, it's not like reading a magazine. piece today where you're bored out of your mind.

Like she would just, I don't know, man. She seemed like she was having a good time. Except for the pieces that you write. Except for the ones that you write. Yeah, except for those ones. Yeah, she, the stuff I've read of hers is absolutely incredible. Yeah, it's so good, dude. It's so good.

The following year, Russell falls out with his landlord. So, in a mammoth act of shithousery, he pays a local Spanish emigre, just happens to be named Juan Fato, the nearby Victoria restaurant. It doesn't get old. It doesn't get old. I know, and it will not for the next 30 to 40 minutes. And then he recruits a, quote, Midnight mob of Key West drinkers to strip Sloppy Joe's down to its bear walls

and then transport everything across the street to Victoria and rename it Sloppy Joe's in your face, landlord. If you've been at Key West, by the way, you are going to know Sloppy Joe's. It's still the most famous bar in town, heaving with tourists and bar flights every single night of the week. Trivia. Sloppy Joe's is not the home of the famed ground beef sandwich. Apparently that came from a cafe in Sioux City, Iowa. But Sloppy Joe is the name of a pretty well-known strain of indica cannabis, which is fitting because throughout the 1930s and 40s, Key West becomes a major transshipment

point for weed coming from Mexico into the US. We've done a lot of this on the early industry of the Senaloa cartel, the CGA, and others, various shows through the years. I think we've been doing this podcast for about, what, 20, 28 years now. Florida is a bet noir of the Washington establishment. That means they don't like them. And Harry Anslinger, who is the first commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, which is the predecessor to the DEA, he goes hard on the 1933 tale of a tamper man

who murders his entire family with an axe after smoking pot. Never mind, of course, the guy was deeply mentally ill, and the killings likely had nothing to do with a drug. in 1936, the propaganda movie Riefer Madness comes out, and Anslinger piggybacks on its fallout to introduce the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. This is basically a ban on weed by a stealth, by making its sail rules crazily narrow and taxing it up to the eyeballs. In 1942, newspaper The Key West Citizen warns that smoking pot could be a, quote, fate worse than death for the city's youth, which, I mean, they're already living in some.

Florida, you don't need to stick to food. But anyway, you get the point. This is a place far removed from the mainland, full of turtlenect poets and beatnicks and potheads and all the other kinds of people Danny hangs out within Bushwick these days. I think I'd actually rather hang out with like your typical Florida man, you know, than anyone in Bushwick. Yeah, I once spent a couple nights in Pensacola as part of a story and, oh my God, it's incredible. Anyway, hats off to any of those of you who live in Pensacola, which is maybe the most redneck place I've ever been in my life. And I lived in Oklahoma. More done.

And this place is swimming in illicit Cuban booze and Mexican weed. That is Key West, of course, not Pensacola, although, you know, maybe that too. Sounds great, to be honest. So many bales of green are bobbing about around Key West that local fishermen at the time begin calling them Square Gruper. Bumphato's father Kwan is right in. in the middle of this milieu at Sloppy Joe's, and the man himself is a rising star in the city's fire service.

And boy does he know it, and boy does he let other people know it too. But first, a little on that Cuban connection. Because while Miami might today claim to be the foremost Cuban-American city, actually the title belonged for the longest time to Key West. As far back as 1890, there were 12,000 Cubans there, reading no fewer than six Spanish-speaking newspapers, and hanging out in over 100 patriotic clubs. The revolutionary poet and philosopher Jose Marti

had campaigned on the island in 1892, while Fulgencio-Battista led a motorcade through Key West in 1938, just two years before becoming Cuban president. Even when Batista's regime begins to creak in the mid-50s, and Fidel Castro rises as his potential successor, Castro comes to Key West to try winning over U.S. Cubans and American politicians, because little known fact, despite his communist rep, Castro wasn't actually a Marxist until pretty late on when he realized he needed the Soviet Union's backing.

He actually just started out as a nationalist and wanted to work with the US. He's like, I think I listened to a documentary recently where he goes all around the US trying to chat up politicians, but they're like, nah, we don't like you. So he says, I like Moscow instead. But yeah, you could probably listen to a 50 part of Ken Burns movie about all that. Bonjour, compadre. It's the... How do I negotiate so many great travel deals?

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We're up there too. Comfort Inn. It's calling you. your name. Save on the stain. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song book direct at storeshiltails.com. Castro leads the communist revolution, of course, in 1959. And thousands of Cuban exiles make their way across the Caribbean to Florida, not least the keys. Bumfato, who by this time is married to a local woman named Esther, takes on the role of unofficial refugee welcomeer. He provides food and hydration to new arrivals, helps send news of their

travels back home, and he arranges medical assistance for his fire service connections to Key West's hospital staff. Writes one local historian, quote, Bum helped the exiles find jobs. He helped them start a new life. Bum Fato was life support to strangers in a strange land. Bum helped others so that others would not become Bums. Isn't that profound? This work allegedly puts balm on a Castro hit list of anti-revolutionaries, but Cuba isn't just leaking people. In Havana, mobsters belonging to Santo Traficante, leader of the infamous Tampa Mafia, are loading up ships with heroin and sailing them over to Key West. From there, the gear is packed onto the backs of trucks backed by Jimmy Hoffa's Teamster Union

and sent across the US. Hoffa, Traficante, Danny's done a lot on this history and how it was all wound up with Castro, Kennedy, the Cold War, great stuff, head back and listen. Yeah, I think, I don't know if we did an individual episode on Trappaconte, but I think we did, but there's lots of stuff there on the Kennedy stuff, on Hafa and all that. And I think even in the episode way back on the corporation, that Cuban organized crime group that ran the lottery out of New York and Jersey,

they eventually go down to Florida, and I think there's some stuff on Trapecante in that one. Yeah, that's like a super interesting. interesting topic and yeah you've done I think like two or three episodes on sort of various people around it but we are in Key West this week and by the early 1960s Traficante and Hoffa worked with a local patrolman named Sam the Fat Man Canina to build the city's first shopping mall at a cost of three million bucks which is 31 million today which is quite a lot here's a bit of juice the fat man's cousin is a man named Raymondo Bayo Beiro's sister Estelle Badle, aka Estefato.

Was Bumfato married to the mob? Well, yes, yes he was. And he certainly looks the part as well. You might want to sit down for this bit. I'm about to describe one of the slickest men in history. Bumfato becomes Key West's fire chief in 1964, but he's not just any old fire chief. Continuing his love for fire trucks,

he's almost always decked out in red. Red shirts, red slacks, red leisure, suits, and even signature rose-tinted glasses, even the walls of his home, outside and in, red. His pinky ring, a gift from the guys at the station, has a red stone in the middle, and his fire badge is gold-plated with red gemstones around the edge. Guys, he has pimped out his service badge. When a local authority repaints all the red fire hydrants in town, a bright green, bum goes nuts.

He also loves bling. and he's rarely seen without gold watches, chains, bracelets, the works. He drives around a hulking full galaxy or a Cadillac, depending on the source, that's got a lime green paint job. On its hood is a golden eagle. And on its license plate are the words El Hefe, the boss. This is his official state vehicle, by the way. I'm sorry, but this guy kind of rules, man.

I'm a Bumfardo fan. I'm going to go ahead and say it. Oh, yeah, I'm big on Bumfarto. He's got drip, he's got Riz. I don't know what the kids are saying now, but he has got it all. Fato, he's also keen on Santaria, which is a religion popular in Cuba that combines Catholicism with African practices, kind of like voodoo in Haiti,

which is getting a lot of play now. He's got altars in his home, and sometimes he throws parties in honour of Santa Barbara, who in Santa Ria is the same as Changol, the god of fire, leader of men, charming and seductive who always wears red and whose symbol is a double-headed axe kind of like a fireman's axe makes you think even among key west's huge cuban diaspora this is out there a bit kooky especially when bum shows up to cheer the local baseball team the fighting conks and drives his

lime green car onto the field to assemble santaire shrines on its fender for good luck we we probably should have secured the rights or bought the rights to this guy's life before releasing this episode. Yeah, how is this not a what, Judd Appetal movie? This would be amazing. I guess the thinking goes with him, well, my name is Bum Fato and I

shall own it, which he does with a plumb. But pretty soon, not everything in Key West is going to be as rose-tinted as Bum's favorite specs. In the early 60s, just as organized crime is getting a real grip on the city, naval forces withdraw from a local

base, which rocks the local economy. As residents struggle to cope, many turned to the illicit market to make a buck, not least, bum. Writes Mental Floss, quote, perhaps being a fire chief had been his childhood dream, but it couldn't keep him rolling in money. For that, he decided to take a second job, drug dealer. Did you think it was going to go another way? At 6.30pm on Saturday, October 30, 1965, bank manager Joe Pinder locks the doors of the Florida National Bank on front street, just minutes from sloppy Joes. The next day, an empty home barely a block away catches fire around 3.30pm and burns

till the early evening. The following morning at 7 a.m., it's a Monday. Pinder returns to the bank, and he discovers that burglars have broken into its vault through its roof with heavy machinery and have raided 90 deposit boxes. The blaze, local media claims, was just a diversionary tactic. The FBI is brought in, but it never solves the case. Agents do, however, interview Sam the Fat Man Canina, and they make a list of all those he mentions in connection to organize crime

and money laundering in Key West. Agents named the city's police chief Armando Perez as being part of the burglary team. Perez, they say, had been a lookout to, quote, protect the burglars from a surprise apprehension and, quote, keep drunks and citizens away from the bank area. How many drunk people are in Key West that even the bank robbers have to have a look out for them? Anyway, others on the list are directly linked to the Tampa Mob. At the top of the list, of course, is Santo Traficante,

by now one of the most powerful mobsters in America. At the bottom, though, bum fatto. This is the first time that bum is on the radar of federal cops, so to speak. And his problems continue to worsen from there. In 1966, a city commission tries to force bum out as fire chief due to alleged misappropriation with city funds. But he's only suspended for 30 days when a board overturns the decision. Doesn't hurt that Bum's nephew is on the board too.

Later, he drives into a motorcycle police officer and he gets charged with failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. That same month, he falls into an irrigation canal and, because he can't swim, lives about 10 feet from the ocean, guys, and he cannot swim, bum has to be rescued. So, it's a bit slapstick for him. A new decade begins, and with it comes a new party drug, cocaine. This stuff is flying off the shelves, and Traficante is joined in South Florida by Italian crime families from up north

in using the keys to ship Coke from Latin America into the US. In Key West, slinging drugs is so destigmatized, almost to the point of being legal, comparable to as one source reads to shrimping. An avuncular, big red bum farto starts a tidy side hustle selling weed and blow, oftentimes just sitting on a bench outside his fire station in the heat of the midday sun. One of his friends is Mani James, a city attorney and adopted son of Key West's police chief, who's made a name for himself as a defender of crooks and narcos.

And he's widely suspected of being in bed with Trafficante, Hoffa and other boys. big players. According to a TV news report at the time, some say it's as easy in Key West to buy cocaine as it is a slice of key lime pie. This is now making national headlines and it's embarrassing. We're decades away from the Florida man phenomenon, but you can see where it's coming from. Now we're up to 1973 and the cold open, which is when Florida Governor Rubin Askew launches Operation Conk in a bid to break up Key West's out-of-control drug dealing problem, with Bumfato smack bang in the middle. At first, he dispatches a three-man taskful south,

but they receive little cooperation. In fact, according to one son sentinel report, quote, one night they found Limburger cheese smeared into the air conditions as in their motel, an odorous warning, but hardly enough to stop their work. I mean, as far as warnings from drug dealers go,

that's actually, it's pretty funny. But it could only be done by a guy named Bumfardo, You know? Yeah, it's kind of like a dirty protest in a way, right? You don't want bum smearing anything across your motel room. For once, anyway, it is not only bum farto that smells in Key West, but pretty soon, the taskful swells in size. And in 1975, they hatch a plan to catch bum in a sting operation using a local guy named Titus Waters. According to Florida Weekly, quote,

Water's deep acquaintance with Key West drug scene was the result of his having lived as a junkie for years. Playing Tofato's weakness for garish attire, Waters fornagled the introduction of undercover agent Larry Dollar to Fato under the guise that the former wished to buy an ounce of cocaine in exchange for a large gold and diamond ring. This is awesome stuff. Bum doesn't display his usual cheek and says he'll need time to source the product. he actually tells Dollar, the undercover agent, that he'll need to speak with Manny James, the city attorney,

quite the bombshell for agencies trying to unpick Key West's tangled relationship with the mob. I mean, bomb photo is not an expert, right? The guy's asked him the source blown, and he's like, yeah, let's just let me check with my boss, this massive attorney, and his name is Mani James, so I'll just go and ask him, guys, hold on a minute. In the meantime, though, Waters, the informant, disappears. days later he's found dead in his bathtub shot twice in the head turns out waters had been caught up in an altercation with a miami dope dealer and had tried to shoot him and an associate the two guys had then jumped waters in his living room and frog marched him into the bathroom made him sit backwards on the toilet

then put a washcloth in his mouth and taped his hands and his mouth then this guy had used a syringe to inject waters with battery acid and draino before popping in from a pillow with his pistol. It's pretty grim and quite a right turn compared to the rest of this story. Anyway, the killer, by the way, he was executed in 1991. Bum Farto must know

this has happened by now. He's too deep in the drug game and he's too well connected in Key West, not to know. Nevertheless, he sources some blow for Larry Dollar, the agent, and hands it over and exchange in, where else, the fire station. Everything

is captured on film. Operation Conk has the evidence it needs to convict whom it believes are the ringleaders of Key West Coke epidemic. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened.

And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Dhrfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history, from killer cannibal brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story

each and every single day, Morning Cup of Murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. But don't let this thing fall you. There's still plenty of room for slapstick. Like when days later, on September 9th, 1975, 28 agents arrive in Key West to make Bum's arrest, but they all check into a single motel in a beach town, wearing suits and tires. and they hastily make up a backstory that, wait for it, they're all there for a karate match.

Writes Florida Weekly, quote, the next day, phony karate enthusiast patrolling the island in unmarked cars snatched prominent local conks from the street one by one to the confusion and horror of local onlookers. People called the police to report what appeared to be a string of kidnappings. The fire service fires bum upon news of his arrest, and the state in pounds is lime green company car. 17 others are arrested too, and they're held on 25 grand bail.

But because Key West is such a close-knit community, one of the city's two bondsmen is in Philadelphia, the other is arrested in the bus. So all but one of the men have to stay in jail. That's good, isn't it? The first day of Bum's trial in February 1976, he doesn't show. He says he's complained to his doctor of stomach pains,

and his doctor had diagnosed him with ulcers and drugs, checked him into Key West's De Poo Hospital, named after a prominent Cuban-American physician. Yes, Vato spends a night in De Poo. Enjoy the moment. This is your best work yet. Yeah, in any format. The next day, Bum shows up to court in a Dau blue suit. You know it's going bad when he does that. The trial is about as uncomplicated as they come. A jury finds him guilty after just 30 minutes of one count of selling marijuana and two counts of selling low. media report that he's staring down the barrel of a 15 to 31 year stretch in prison.

Days later, Bum tells Esther he's got some business to do in Miami. He rents a Pontiac Lamont, one of those massive grunty V8 American cars that are so cool, and he heads north and U.S. Route 1. Pub trivia number two today. Route 1 is the longest north-south road in the US, and it covers almost 2,400 miles from Key West and Maine, which is crazy. A fortnight later,

folks find the Pontiac abandoned in Miami's Little Havana district and there is no sign of bum anywhere. You cannot find bum in Little Havana. Here's where we get those where is bum photo t-shirts. Another reads, whatever happened to El Hefe? Well, nobody knows. Some think you might have skipped the country back to Spain or perhaps central or South America.

The only evidence for this comes years later when reports emerged from Costa Rica claiming that people had seen Bum renewing his passport at the US Embassy. Authority showed Bum's photo to six people who say they've seen him, but there is nothing beyond that. More likely is that Bum got wiped by Florida's mud bosses. Jesus, that was a bad one. One local says in 1976 that, quote,

I think he's wiped out because he knew too much, probably dumped overboard from some shrimp boat. I mean, even they're doing the puns now. Jimmy Hoffer had gone missing in 1975 after all. Some pointed out similarities between Bum's disappearance and that of Joe Bidami, who is a Tampa Mafia associate and friend of Bums, who the FBI believed had played a key role in that 1965 bank heist

and was close to a city commissioner and other leading figures thought to be up to their necks in dirty organized crime. Some even think Bum was whacked because he had dirt on Bidami. Dirty Bum, he's a dirty bum. It's also pretty suss that Esther had waited two weeks before reporting her husband missing. But whatever the truth of Bum Farto is, he'd have been well into his hundreds today, so he'd probably be dead even if he was living in Costa Rica with Elvis and Kirk Cabain and JFK. Mani James, the attorney bum had gone to for the blow.

He'd been arrested as part of Operation Conk, but acquitted of all charges. He leaves Key West and lives in grand style in the Bahamas until the early 80s, when he's convicted on a drug conspiracy charge. Here's Florida Weekly again, quote. This barred, James now lives on Big Pine Key, and occasionally works in South Florida as a paralegal. In a rare newspaper interview in 1995, James dodged the inevitable farto question.

Bum was my very, very good friend. We're inseparable, like to something's over something maybe, I don't know. Against my advice as his attorney, he refused to take the stand at his trial. I admit he had some very close friends in Tampa with a lot of crooked noses. It was the saints that told him not to take the stand. You know, the Cuban saints. He was Santaria.

He told me they had spoken to him. With bum gone, the feds might hope to have cleaned up Key West Streets, but they would of course be wrong. In 1978, media report a quote, Crime Corporation of allegedly organized criminals who specialize in contract murders, hijacking, narcotics, loan sharking and counterfeiting.

Guess who this report fingers as a group leader? Sam the fat man, Canina. The patrol man who'd helped Santo Traficante and Jimmy Hoffer by the city's first shopping mall almost two decades back. It's only at this point that journalists

discovered that Canina is actually Traficante's nephew. As everybody knows, the 1980s a quiet time for cocaine. So much year is coming through the Keys. In 1982, the US border control organizes a blockade on Route 1 coming in and out of town. If you want to leave Key West, you literally have to pass customs control. It enrages locals enough that in April that year, Key West Mayor Dennis Wardlow gathers a crowd,

then reads a declaration of secession, announces the formation of the independent Concre Republic and himself its prime minister. Cheers went up as the new flag was flown. The Key West is a foreign country to Washington, Washington shall represent a foreign nation to Key West. Businessmen say the traffic jam-ups caused by the checkpoint kept away a lot of tourists. So the more enterprising among them made up for that by capitalizing on the revolution, selling conk visas, flags, and other memorabilia. But if the secession was symbolic, town officials say they won a real victory from the federal government in court yesterday.

They are going to stop the same. searches. They are going to keep the roadblock in, but at this point, on the record, they're saying they're only going to keep it in for two weeks. The crowd was appreciative. Wardlow steps it up a notch by declaring war on the United States, which is always a good idea, and he attacks a US naval officer with a stale lump of Cuban bread. The State Department official points out that if the Conc Republic really wants to become a sovereign state, there'll be a permanent roadblock there, which in past forces Wardlow to back down, but not before requesting a billion dollars in foreign aid. If you think you got that, Bumphartos got some gemstones he wants to sell you.

I mean, that is just, I mean, that's an episode too of whatever mini series you make about this, because that sequence of events just incredible. What a great point to you. Like, oh, you don't like the checkpoint we have on the road out of Key West. What do you think happens to that checkpoint if you secede and become a separate country? It's almost like all of the people in this town are just getting drunk or high and not really thinking through anything they do. Key West has been a player in the regional co-trade ever since.

Nowadays, cartels use submersibles and other tech to evade authorities, and so much gear is in the sea around the island, the experts have warned of, quote, cocaine sharks roaming about high on the drug. Biologists have observed hammerheads, for example, species that would normally run from humans coming right at them. Divers have also seen a sandbar shark swooon about in circles focused on an imaginary object, which does sound like a perfect visual metaphor for a terrible conversation at the afters. In any case, the legend of Bumfato lives on.

Esther had him declared dead in 1986 so she could pick up insurance payout. At the Key West Fire Hose Museum, visitors can see his old desk, and still there are a few uniforms kicking about. I mean, please let us know if he can see his bejazzled old badge to likewise tales of debauchery at Sloppy Jose. In 2010, a local radio station made a podcast about trying to get to the bottom of Bum's vanishing. And in 2022, a musical based on his life premiered on the island.

Any more puns before we close this one out? Danny, something about getting a Bum deal maybe? I don't know. So I thought we could play out with a Jimmy Buffett number because he actually included Bum in his 1977 song Landfall. But Dale has actually made an AI version of a Jimmy Buffett song, which is way better. and we are going to play out with that.

So enjoy this. Enjoy bum. Enjoy the keys. And thanks for listening. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants

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