Shot Down, Tortured, Locked Up, Escaped Prison 5 TIMES — Roger Reaves

[00:00:00] Speaker A: DEA couldn't catch me. I was going way out over the Pacific and coming around them. They didn't know I was getting it in. So I went and bought me a Cessna 207. It was so easy and simple. If you don't get shot. I got four bullet holes. Took my toe off my kneecap and the fuel is just pouring in on me. I can't even breathe. I knew I better not ever go back to Mexico. So that's when I went to Colombia and I met Mr. Pablo Escobar. Made two and a half million dollars a day. So then they came with a dead man and they had him on an ice hook. And they brought him in and put him on a hook on sail where I was. You next, son. Bitch, you next. They were there to get a confession out of me. [00:00:39] Speaker B: Everything you just watched, every bit of. It's true. And that was the calm part of his life. I've spent some time on the other side of the law, undercover, sitting across from people the world had already written off. And I have never, ever sat across from anyone like Roger Reeves. Dirt poor Georgia farm boy, alcoholic father. And when the family farm was about to go under, he did the only thing he could think of to save it. He started running moonshine. That one decision pulled him into a life most people wouldn't survive a single chapter of. Shot down out of the sky over Mexico. Tortured in a foreign prison, Face to face, doing business with Pablo Escobar. 33 years locked up across three countries. But here's what got me. And I think it's going to get you, too, through all of it. The money, the bullets. He spent the last 19 years where he and his wife could only press their hands to opposite sides of the glass. Yet she never left. So if you think you already know how a story like this ends, stay with me. Because Roger doesn't tell it the way anyone expects. Roger, thanks for trusting me with this. Let's get into it. Honest man's work. I realized becoming an author wasn't going to make me rich either, because I'd already been through the musician thing. [00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:54] Speaker B: So that's just usually. Don't get into that. [00:01:57] Speaker A: It may make me rich. I mean, I don't in my lifetime. Apple had it for two years and then they turned out what the writer did. Now, this afternoon, I'm meeting with Nikki Weinstock. He did a severance. Okay, I heard of it, but he did it. Did more views and most anything. He likes it. But I'm not going, okay? I'm Going to hear what they have to say. And certainly if they did. I signed a contract for one year with Barry Pepper. He was an actor that was the Sniper and Private Ryan. He's a Christian fellow up in Canada. Yeah. And he's a lot of movies. It was kind of not. [00:02:33] Speaker B: Not him attached to your story. [00:02:35] Speaker A: No, no, he's attached to me as an. [00:02:37] Speaker B: As an actor. [00:02:38] Speaker A: Oh. Well, as to get it made. [00:02:41] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:41] Speaker A: So he's hooked up with the people that made the House of David in their Canadian outfit pretty big, and they made one. One series. And that man's going to meet me on the 12th of next month in British Columbia. We're going to stay at Barry's house and go salmon fishing. So I think that's the people I want to go with. Yeah. [00:02:59] Speaker B: And it's. Man, I appreciate that you're thinking like that because when the. What brought me to even LA was getting courted over my book too, right before COVID hit and everything and I. And I. My greatest negotiation tool was if this never gets made into a movie, my life is perfectly fine. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:03:18] Speaker B: So if you really want to make this a movie one, it has to tell the story properly and has to be the right people that are actually showing up on time, creating deadlines they actually meet. And, you know, business people. [00:03:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:31] Speaker B: And you get a lot of these creatives out here that say, hey, we love the story. We want to give you some money, hang on to it for four years. And then that's what, three and a half years. They're like, oh, what are we going to do with this? And you're like, dude, you've had three and a half years to work on this. [00:03:44] Speaker A: Exactly. Same thing with me. They said the writers didn't. So anyway, these people, I don't want them to take the Lord's name in vain. If you look at all that stuff with Taylor Sheridan, it's the gd. Every other second just in. My wife just cringes. I don't like it. But I. And then lesbianism. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:01] Speaker A: I said, I don't want a purple lesbian playing me. Now we can skip all that. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Hey, what if they look just like you. [00:04:14] Speaker A: See, anyhow, that's sort of about my only thing that I. [00:04:17] Speaker B: Well, that's important. I mean, like, you have your hard lines and you've got a guy that's shopping it for you that understands those are the per. Those are the. [00:04:24] Speaker A: And he's a Christian fellow, so he's so in that. And the people that do in the House of David also that you don't hear them cussing or nothing. [00:04:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So how do you deal with making it realistic as well as. Because I kind of struggled with this too. You know, when you're. When you're writing your story, if you were the guy that didn't normally cuss up a storm, but you're also telling a true story, what are your thoughts on how you present that? [00:04:53] Speaker A: Well, I have 43 chapters in my book there and each one of them could definitely be a. Be an hour long. [00:05:01] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:02] Speaker A: So in. Since I'm not a gifted writer, some of these people are just. Absolutely. Just got a brain for. Take that and just put it out for a screen. Right. And they gifted at it. And so. [00:05:15] Speaker B: But in terms of the language and so you wanted. [00:05:18] Speaker A: They can do about what they want to just let the Lord's name in vain. That's just don't be cursing throughout it. I mean, I don't at all. [00:05:24] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:24] Speaker A: I don't curse. [00:05:25] Speaker B: Right. So but your character. That would be a. A line drawn. But if you're talking about some of the cats that you dealt with and you're trying to paint a realistic picture, do you have any lines? [00:05:36] Speaker A: Leave that. Just leave the taking the Lord's name in vain out. [00:05:40] Speaker B: Okay. But the rest of the cursing is more realistic. [00:05:43] Speaker A: But just all the words. You won't do it. Oh, you won't do. And this and the other. I don't care what they do. But just some of these things that are against my. I just don't do it. [00:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's appreciable. [00:05:55] Speaker A: And also the. I'm just tired of men kissing in my living room. I start watching. What was it? That one Ozarks and the FBI guy and he kissed in the truck driver. And I just turned that thing off. Get it out of my living room. They can't do that movie without that. I don't need to watch it. [00:06:12] Speaker B: How realistic was that? Did you watch the rest of it? [00:06:14] Speaker A: No, I just watched. It was completely unrealistic how much I give them $50 million. And you got to spend this in the next six months and do you got to invest it? Get out of here. It's just a whole thing. [00:06:26] Speaker B: It's Hollywood. So, man, that's the danger, I guess in getting your work. Your work done is that in Hollywood they're going to kind of do with it what they want to do with it. And at some point you lose control. As soon as you sign your name, you lose that control. So having somebody in it's going to Be up representing you. [00:06:45] Speaker A: It's going to be up to the writers to how they do it. And, yeah, I might tell a joke about the preacher that like boxing. So he took one of the men from the congregation to the boxing match, and the boxers came out and danced around the robes. And one gun down on his knees over in the corner, and he said, preacher, what does that mean? He said, nothing if he can't box. So all this stuff, like going on and doing it don't mean nothing if they can't write. [00:07:13] Speaker B: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And, you know, it just. [00:07:16] Speaker A: It. [00:07:17] Speaker B: I know it's got to be unnerving to think about somebody taking over your story. At some point, you sign the dotted line, and you have to trust the guy that got this show sold. And then you have a showrunner and a production company that are actually leading it, and you're just like, I hope this works, because from there, you don't have it anymore. [00:07:35] Speaker A: I'm all right with it. It's been this thing, what, 25 years ago when I was in solitary confinement. [00:07:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:43] Speaker A: And. And I got it out to Mari, and she put it up. Just. There's not one t uncrossed or appeared that I didn't do in that prison cell. It's. It's completely. It's wrong. [00:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I love it. I love it. And I've. I've gone through the vast majority of it, and even some of the. I mean, there's few pictures, you know, so guys like me, you know, struggle through a book with fewer pictures. But. And I'm being facetious, of course, but. But it also gives me a little perspective on some of the planes. You know, the photos of the planes and stuff that you had is fascinating. I'm telling you up front. I've got you. I got you some Blackland whiskey. [00:08:21] Speaker A: This is. My goodness gracious. [00:08:23] Speaker B: This is going to surprise you, actually. So this is from Fort Worth, Texas. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. [00:08:27] Speaker B: And that thing is made specifically from Texas grasses. [00:08:32] Speaker A: Welcome to open it. [00:08:33] Speaker B: Whatever you want. I got glasses, brother. [00:08:35] Speaker A: What? We don't use glasses. [00:08:39] Speaker B: And then I brought one for Mari, too, which is. This one is. That's the whiskey that I think you'll truly appreciate. Now, if she sips whiskey, she will appreciate that, too. But this one is their most popular one. It's. It's called a Texas pecan, and it's like a. You know, it's a flavored whiskey. Magnificent. [00:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah. You. [00:08:57] Speaker B: I mean, no need. If you like mixed drinks at all. No need to Mix this with anything, it's just straight up. [00:09:03] Speaker A: All right. We appreciate that, too. Yeah. [00:09:05] Speaker B: So, yes, drink. Drink responsibly. And just a little. A little tip of the cap from. From Texas. [00:09:11] Speaker A: I appreciate it, man. [00:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:13] Speaker A: All right, good. [00:09:14] Speaker B: So speaking of this, what's the best honey you ever made? How. How did you. When you were moonshining, how did you actually concoct all that stuff? And what got you into that as an early age? [00:09:28] Speaker A: Okay. I was young. I think I was 21. I got married and took Murray to the farm. She come from Holland? Met her up in Canada, where I was a transit farm worker, picking tobacco in the summertime, wrestling the bear in a carnival. [00:09:43] Speaker B: That story I want to hear. [00:09:44] Speaker A: That's a good one. Yeah. And so we went. I went back up there and we got married and brought her to the farm. And that was something else. I mean, bring a lady like that to a place like Tobacco Farm. Yeah, Tobacco Farm. Chickens, shit and snakes and flies and bugs. [00:10:02] Speaker B: But, you know, she still likes you after that. [00:10:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So I taught my mother. My dad had died a few years before, and I taught my mother into mortgage in the farm. And we put in 36,000 laying chickens. And Purina promoted it so they could sell feed. So when there was 20 million chickens within 20 miles of my house, the price of the eggs went down. I think it was 17 cents a dozen. And it cost us 2122 cents for the feed. Pretty soon, I'm in debt $78,000. [00:10:40] Speaker B: And this is money back then you borrowed, too, right? [00:10:44] Speaker A: We owed a lot of money for the chicken houses and all that equipment. But now the feed bill, right? It's astronomical. They got trucks coming out there, semis every day, dumping their feet and taking those eggs away. And it looked like a ship of semi truck load to New York. And everyone would be cracked or second grade. It's like, y' all ain't playing fair. [00:11:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:06] Speaker A: And the long chain man about to take my truck away and everything. So I said, I got to save the farm. So I started making moonshine whiskey to save the farm. [00:11:18] Speaker B: This is after your dad passed? [00:11:19] Speaker A: Yeah, every year. So Mari, I always told her. I said. She just cried. She just. That's Bartford. She said, don't do it. I said, marty, we'll lose a farm my great granddaddy bought from Indians here. We got to do it. There's no other way I can see. And she just cried. And the tears dropped on the little baby's dress, and she ironed them dry, but she saw it and she thought, well, across. Across the river in Florida, it's legal. And here in Georgia, you get five or ten years for it. [00:11:46] Speaker B: Right? [00:11:47] Speaker A: So I started making it. And I got. I had full vats as big as this room here. They had 18,000 gallons each. [00:11:54] Speaker B: How'd you learn how to make it? [00:11:55] Speaker A: Oh, I had a moonshiner help me some. Okay. [00:11:58] Speaker B: You got dementor? [00:12:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So. Well, it wasn't a big trouble. It ain't nothing to it. And so after a while, Mari's bringing fried chicken down there to us. And she just loves those two. Two colored men. You know, we just. We watch. And that thing went on 11 months, and I about paid the place off, and then. Then one morning, they put one of them. We had 200 big butane bottles. They're 220 pounds of piece. You tear them up and you have to keep them around the flame because they ice up. And one of them bumped over him. Bam. Like a war went on down there. It went into the mother bottle. And I was having breakfast. I thought the revenue said blew it up. So I went back down. I was working. And then here come the sheriff and the federal Revenue. Neighborhood called in. He knew what it was. We called in anyway. [00:12:49] Speaker B: So are they the ones that. That wrecked? [00:12:52] Speaker A: Wow. It was a foggy morning. You could see the glow, look like a bomb and drop you way up in the sky. Yeah, it. It shook the world around there. [00:13:01] Speaker B: And what. What caused it? [00:13:02] Speaker A: Oh, that one gas bottle bumped over [00:13:05] Speaker B: because by happenstance, wasn't so it wasn't [00:13:07] Speaker A: the put it too close to the fire. The ice up, maybe that much ice on those gas bottles, you have a manifold to keep changing them. [00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:14] Speaker A: And so as one melts down, you have to kick it and put it around. So you all day long changing bottles to feed that fire. [00:13:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:13:23] Speaker A: And knocked it off. And so then here they came and they. They run it chasing after me. And I'm running and Mars looking out the window. And Wayman will favor the deputy sheriff. He's shooting. He's got a square hat. And she says it falls off. And he stops to get his hat. And then he falls down. [00:13:43] Speaker B: Thank goodness. [00:13:44] Speaker A: And I'm getting way ahead of him. [00:13:46] Speaker B: You got Barney. [00:13:47] Speaker A: I got a bullet across the neck there. And so it was cold. It was February. It was ice. On the edge of that creek, I said, I got an alligator creek. I must have swim two miles. I was. I almost had hypothermia before I got on the other side. I knew the dog was coming. [00:14:01] Speaker B: And so you Know how law enforcement has changed over the years. But that's a wacky story from the day when you're running from guys are trying to rescue from moonshining and they're firing off rounds at you. That's insane. [00:14:16] Speaker A: Hey, one of them got hit and I mean there was eight of them. Bullets popping off the trees that which way, knocking and bark off. I don't know if they're trying to kill me, but. Well, you look like bees coming by. Likely, I think they were trying to say was. And so I just said, I. I think we should be careful who we give a gun to. [00:14:36] Speaker B: Yes, well, in law enforcement or otherwise anywhere. [00:14:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Fellow has my wife visit him and he's a policeman here in L. A And he takes a shower when he goes to the bathroom with his undershorts, only wears his gun. So them folks ought not to be on the force. [00:14:56] Speaker B: I like. [00:14:57] Speaker A: I know they waiting to shoot somebody. You know somebody like that? [00:14:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. I know plenty of guys like, you know, and I'm from Texas too. So there's. There's a bunch of them out there mowing the yards like, hey, don't underestimate them. They can't hear you coming, but they're still packing in their pair of shorts or whatever. They're out there doing their. It's a little wild, a little over the top, but yeah, it's. It's crazy to think. What year was this? In the 60s. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:21] Speaker B: Okay, so it's still before law enforcement really had received a lot of criticism about how they were policing at the time. That's a little wild. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Anyway, I got away and came on and the grand jury didn't indict me. 12 men voted to Ford invite and 12 against it. I was out there shaking hands with them, telling them who I was and who my grandpa was. And that lawyer come around, you get out of here, boy, you're going to get more trouble you could ever get without liquor still down the road. [00:15:50] Speaker B: That's true. [00:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:52] Speaker B: Are you politicking early? [00:15:53] Speaker A: Absolutely. I didn't know better. [00:15:55] Speaker B: So what did. What did. So Mari was already against this idea, but. [00:16:00] Speaker A: Yes, but not so bad because in Holland, where she come from, liquors everywhere. And her folks had a. A little cherry or something and drink. But. [00:16:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:16:08] Speaker A: And her father said just. Just cover the ice. And he put his hand around the other side of the glass. They're real sweet. And so she'd. So nothing about alcohol. And they were big billboards, moonshine kills. It showed people wrapped up like mummies I'll tell you another about a mummy story a little later. But, yeah, it was. It was bad against. Long was giving people five or ten years for that. [00:16:31] Speaker B: Right. [00:16:32] Speaker A: So I was glad to get out of it, and I came. So I came out to California, went to work. [00:16:36] Speaker B: So did you pay off the farm with that money or did that. [00:16:38] Speaker A: No, my mother, they took her to court, and her lawyer got up and made her. She's a poor widow woman. That they've done this and what they've done to it. She said, whenever it was over, I went back and opened my cabinets to see if I had anything to eat. I made her feel so poor. Yeah. The judge threw it out. [00:16:58] Speaker B: Oh, that's good. So it's a farm still in the family? [00:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Oh, great. So then you moved. You moved to Cali, but also by then you'd met Mari. [00:17:07] Speaker A: I mean, by now, little girl. [00:17:11] Speaker B: Okay. So when you got. So two years before you got married, I guess. Did it take you two years to get married? [00:17:16] Speaker A: No, but two minutes. [00:17:17] Speaker B: Two minutes. [00:17:20] Speaker A: I met her and I went back the next summer, and there she was. And three days later, we told her parents, we're getting married. [00:17:27] Speaker B: So I have. I have one interesting. After reading the. Reading the books, you guys met. First of all, you're gimping around because of this bear story, which I'd love for you to tell. And you're gimping around, and you still managed to win her over, at least for that time being. And then you took off and worked, and you guys were essentially pen pals for a little bit. Right? [00:17:48] Speaker A: A little nicer story. Whenever I was gimping around and I tipped my hat and she asked me about the ring, and I said, you're from Holland, aren't you? She said, how do you know I'm from Holland? Sit down here and tell me how you know about Dutch accents. And I said, well, international accents is just one of my hobbies. I knew one person in the world that had that. [00:18:09] Speaker B: You sound just like my buddy. [00:18:12] Speaker A: So we talked all afternoon, and time stood still just talking to her. I mean, it just stopped. And I guess three or four hours, her father come and we sitting on towels on sand, and. Mari, Mari, we have to go. We have. So she got a pencil and paper and wrote her address. And I put it in my shirt pocket and I lost it. Oh. And so my mother asked me. She making biscuit in the morning, said, you got any girlfriend, Roger? I said, no, but I met a girl in Canada. If I ever get married, I'd like to marry a girl like that. She said what happened to her? Like an idiot, I lost her address. So I got a job with Atlantic Coastline Railroad driving trains. Fireman on electric train. That was the best job in the world. [00:18:56] Speaker B: You were already a fireman by then? [00:18:57] Speaker A: No, the co pilot on a train is called a fireman. Oh, they used to shovel coal and those old guys had knots on their legs that big. And they were jealous of us just have sitting up in a leather chair. They made it by shoveling coal. But we still call firemen. And after three years you become an engineer and you can drive the train. So anyway, that is a real good job with a. With the union. You made as much money as an Engineer. Been working 40 years. Wow. So that was. It was just unbelievable. Anyway, I was driving to work one night and I had a 1958 Impala Chevrolet. That thing was pretty glass packs and a four in the floor. I love it and back on everything. It's raining a little bit and I had a flashlight. It could hardly. It just had enough a little yellow bean. My voice is back on. So I got out to take the tire and I took it out of that wheel well and rolled it up in the dark and shot a little light. And there was almost rusted into was the address of the beautiful girl from Canada. [00:20:05] Speaker B: You kidding me? [00:20:07] Speaker A: There in the wheel well and wheel well. That's wild. [00:20:11] Speaker B: I know why serendipitous maybe. [00:20:14] Speaker A: But I got a lot of shirts. I just graduated from high school and I got a lot of shirts. I believe everybody in the world sent me a shirt. And I think I put that address in the shirt pocket and I just put them in the trunk of that nice car. And my mother would wash them. So it fell out of that and got behind there is what happened. So I wrote her a letter and with a pencil I went right into ymca. That's where we were staying in Waycross, Georgia. And I wrote her something. The lines are not very straight and spilling might not be the best, but I wrote or something. A few days later I got a letter with beautiful stationery. It looked like it had been engraved. Right. [00:20:54] Speaker B: That's how you write a. [00:20:55] Speaker A: My face turned right red. I went and got me some stationary and a pen and we started writing. So then she says I wanted to go to Alaskan. There'd been a big earthquake up there. And I heard the big money it was making. I'll go up and go to work in construction. So I wrote her and told her she's well, I'll Be at that same place, stop by to see me. So I stopped by to see her and three days later we told her parents was getting married. [00:21:22] Speaker B: So how long was that pen pal part? [00:21:27] Speaker A: Okay. About six months. Because we didn't, I didn't know it for six months. We was just a skip. [00:21:32] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:32] Speaker A: What's. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's what makes it curious to me because, you know, I mean, people meet now in all kinds of ways. I couldn't even fathom, you know, having to meet people online and doing all this stuff and there's, there's less of a. Of a connection between people every day. But you're coming from an old school time where everything was done in person, but even a step beyond. I wonder if you feel like that writing also gave you a glimpse into, you know, careful, carefully thought out and pencil to paper. Courtship. [00:22:06] Speaker A: No. [00:22:07] Speaker B: Did that contribute at all? [00:22:09] Speaker A: I just thought how beautiful she could write. I better improve a little bit. And no thought of it. The song was a green green screener said on the far side of the hill and she had no thought of getting married. And so when our hands touched Absolute sparks. Flute. Yeah. Something happened. [00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:33] Speaker A: And. [00:22:34] Speaker B: And it was for a good purpose. [00:22:36] Speaker A: Yes, it was. It so. And her, her father, I mean, she was, she just turned 19 two or three days before, but her father had a firm hand. I mean, she had to be home in the house by 10 o' clock at night and it was night in Canada. Right. So that's what strength she lived. So he says, you don't know anything about him, you know, said, but I would if you, I want you to go live with his mother for one month in Georgia. And if after that you feel the same way, I'll give you my blessings. So we got in a car. Boy, I thought, this is, this is a honeymoon. [00:23:16] Speaker B: We'll be there. [00:23:16] Speaker A: Yesterday they did about, I don't know, two or three weeks with him. And then we got there and we got down to Pennsylvania, stopped at a nice little hotel and I went and we want a room. And she says, two rooms. We just engaged. I love it. That's how it was. [00:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:35] Speaker B: And so knowing that about her too, and you know, look, even with you, I mean, you, you have your druthers, you have your standards. But she seemed to have even more of a, of a strict thing, you know, when you're talking about moonshining and stuff. She had to kind of justify it in her mind. [00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:52] Speaker B: And so by the time you start running loads from places, which kind of was a happenstance I would love to know the story of getting into it and then how you presented to her what it was and how you managed to get her to justify it or go along with it. Because, I mean, tight. But she never drew a line either. [00:24:14] Speaker A: No, absolutely. And. And she. She'd packed the sandwiches for me, you know, so it was all right. I came out and I worked construction for a while here in Redondo Beach. Then I got on the fire department, and it was like winning the lottery, man. I mean, you get on fire department, you only work nine days a month. Yeah. Good pay, great gig and. Oh, yeah. So anyway, we was members of the First Baptist Church in Redondo beach and beautiful church family. We wonderful pastor. It was just paradise. And I mean, when I got on the back of a motorcycle, she came out after I did and went. And we come over that little hill and she saw those sailboats on that blue Pacific. And she said, I never want to leave this place. Staying there nice and cool, Georgie. So I started buying antiques on my days off. And I was one of the first pickers and fellow told me about the antiques in Missouri. And it was a treasure chest there. The settlers come on the train from all over the eastern United States. And when they cross the river on the barge, they got this side in their Studebaker covered wagons. Wouldn't hold the furniture. They left millions of pieces there. Big stuff, pianos, big clothes, all side boards. The things that just wouldn't go. [00:25:40] Speaker B: They just had to pitch it and [00:25:42] Speaker A: they just had to choose the little stuff that they could carry in those wagons. They weren't very big. And it was Studebaker that made the wagons. And later on they made the cars. And so I would go back there and I had other firemen that were buying it for me, and I would go back there with a truck and bring it back on my days off. I get four days off when I fly back, then drive that truck back. I'm making good money. I bought a house, had a new car, had an airplane, that bought several airplanes. And so I was. I was in high cotton down in Redondo beach. [00:26:13] Speaker B: And that's. And, you know, you were having the life. Because that's the beautiful thing about fireman's jobs, too. You've had that second income. [00:26:21] Speaker A: So now you're way more than that first one out of the antiques, right? So I'm reading the National Geographic magazine and they. Mercury is 13 times more expensive in. In the United States. It is Mexico. I said, I want to take my airplane down there and Get a few gallons of that stuff, man, that'll bust a hole in your airplane. You ought to bring some of the marijuana. I said, I don't know about. I heard the kids, if you're smoking it. He said, it's the hottest thing since popcorn, I'm telling you. [00:26:47] Speaker B: And who was talking into it? [00:26:49] Speaker A: He was just talking. [00:26:50] Speaker B: He was American or. [00:26:51] Speaker A: Yeah, he's American. He and I were doing this antique stuff, okay. It was too heavy for me to load that stuff, okay? So we came. He knew more about antiques than I did, Mike Love. So. And I just asked him about it. He said, man, you just can't believe it. So I said, well, how much? The pace? I don't know. I'll ask somebody. So I asked him. Really nice guy. He's paralyzed. And he spoke, beautiful. He'd been a race car driver. And he said, you got an airplane? I said, I might. What be. Let me call somebody. She called a fellow. I said. He said, I'll give you $10,000 when you want me to go my next four days off. So I went down there, they throwed some in, and I came back and they gave me $10,000 in a paper bag. That was a lot of money. 2 years pay. I shook it on the bed. Mari put her hand over her mouth like, oh, my goodness. Baby grabs a hundred dollar bill and walking around with them. And I thought, I don't know about this. This is. How dangerous is this? So I took $100, and I went to see a lawyer, and I said, criminal defense. One question, two minutes. Mr. Lawyer. What would happen if I got caught bringing pot back from Mexico? He said, what's your criminal history? I said, I don't know. I don't have one. He said, traffic. I never had a speeding ticket, parking ticket, nothing. Never nothing. You get probation. Almost certainly you get probation. But the worst. You got the worst judge in the world. You get a year, and you spend four months raking leaves on some military base. I went and asked another lawyer. He told me the same thing. And I said, I have found my profession. So I went and bought me a Cessna 207. Now, that's a station wagon of an airplane. [00:28:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little dual prop. [00:28:38] Speaker A: No, it's one prop. Same, just a regular single inch problem. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Okay. [00:28:41] Speaker A: The biggest one they made then. So I make $40,000 a day now. And my wife was upset about it. Like it's against the law. Well, the people that we met, we went to Mazatlan, they smoked pot, and it was just. They were A jolly group of people. They were nothing wrong. They were nice people, just nice people. And we had, then we had the church people. So now then we don't want to feel like a hypocrite so we could quit going to church. But now then some of those people. There was a criminal element in them running through there and we didn't particularly fit with those people either. Right. So we was kind of caught. Mr. In between there. [00:29:25] Speaker B: So how was, how was she? [00:29:27] Speaker A: She didn't like it. But I would tell her stories of. I would land in there of a poor, poor, almost starving village and donkey starving. And those women want anything. And I told her about the little children and how they had never seen some of the stuff. So I started. She started packing apples and, and boxes of candies and stuff. And the women would give me a list of what they wanted and she would shop for it. And I had the airplane loaded going down. So it got more and more children and people waiting at that little tiny airstrip. I couldn't hardly land while you were doing your pickup. And I spend the night there and the next morning the young fellow get in a plane with me and we'd go off on the highway and. And he'd show me and I'd put trucks and pull out another truck down the road, guys on them and traffic all stopped both ways and I land between them. Another truck would come, put in thousand pounds of marijuana. I'd shake hands all around. Then I'd take off be line of cars one time. He's highway patrolman. Everybody's like, what? No, it was just covering for you. Pardon me? [00:30:32] Speaker B: Covering for you? [00:30:33] Speaker A: No, he just get out with those guys with the machine guns. Like forget about it, I'm traffic. [00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a version of this that doesn't make it here. The part I only send to the mailing list community early before it goes anywhere else. Free links in the description for those who want to be on the inside. [00:30:53] Speaker A: So on day 13 I had that little tick in my stomach and I'm telling this hare lip weasel that was running this thing. He tried to take all the stuff away from the children. He was just like, oh, he was nasty little fella. I was paying him $17,000 and he wouldn't want those children to have an apple. I mean I just like. And so he said he had the federal is paid off. I was worried about it going on every day. And so this Pedro got in a small little man so light it was only had like a 900 foot strip of sand. Right in the bend of a river. And just that was a waterfall. And I cranked that thing up and going taxi back down to the other end. I thought a tire blew out. That's how innocent I was. Major was hitting me. Police see. A roger. Police see A Police see. And it dawned on me. And I just pushed that throttle cold engine to the firewall and took off. Tearing down that sandstone. I didn't have enough room to take off. And so right at the end of it, I just pulled it up. Hanging on the stall. And four empty machine guns are AK47. It was 80 bullet holes in there with me. I got four bullet holes. I took my toe off my kneecap. One. One piece of a bullet lodged in my foot. And the top of my head, you can see the square come across. And it wiped all the windows out of that plane. And it hit up in the wing on the other side and ruptured the fuel tank. And the fuel just pouring in on me. I can't even breathe. [00:32:31] Speaker B: All right. [00:32:31] Speaker A: Gasoline. And the rudder is just floppy. I thought they shot the cable into. Now, I know hanging on a stall, you don't have any rudder control. [00:32:41] Speaker B: No control at all. [00:32:42] Speaker A: Rudder control, but no. No elevator control. So it would have flown out of there. But I went into shock with the bullets and the stuff and the gasoline on me. And the world turned yellow. And things got in slow motion all the time in the world. I just reached over and turned all the electrical off. I thought that gasoline was going to explode. Then I turned everything else off and I plunged towards the river. It wasn't deep, but that deep. And it was just turning daylight. And the rocks in the river looked like the backs of turtles. And I just can remember that just imprinted on my brain exactly what it [00:33:19] Speaker B: looked like because it was moving so slow. [00:33:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And the plane hit and the wings came off. And it bounced one time. Bounced high, sprung up. They had big. And when it hit again from the firewall forward, came in under the plane. And I'm sitting up there kind of knocked out or kooky. And Pedro saying, come on, Roger. Come on, Roger. And he's done jumped off in the water. Well, I just stepped off in the water and I kept a 9 millimeter tape to the top of one of those radios up under there. Now that thing's just laying up there like, hi. Have to look for it wide open. We're right here in a hamster and two of those federalis is coming down the Runway and they still shooting at us. And two of them yeah, they still shoot now. Two of them hit. Hit the plane while I'm right in front of us. I kind of had it between us. So I took that thing. It has 13 shots. And I went pop, pop, pop, pop. Unloaded back. I ain't want to shoot nobody, particularly policeman, you know. Yeah. So anyway, they ran into rocks. And I say, when the. When the rabbit get the gun, the farmer, he run. [00:34:24] Speaker B: That's. That is the saying. And that's the reason why, too. Right. [00:34:28] Speaker A: So we took off up thing. And I didn't notice it, but I looked, and Pedro's foot nearly shot off. It had gone through his heel here and came out the other side and just blown all that right out. [00:34:38] Speaker B: So he's not. [00:34:39] Speaker A: Yeah, he was. It wasn't bleeding a drop. It went on in shock. Like when people get the leg cut off on a railroad or something that don't bleed. Sometimes you can't put a tourniquet on it. [00:34:49] Speaker B: Wow. [00:34:50] Speaker A: So let it be. So anyway, we got on up there, and there was an old donkey. Looked like she was 30 years old. Way back. Charlotte. Charlotte. And he petted her a little bit. We got on her back. Boogie. That story could go on. This old chapter in the book about getting shot down there. [00:35:09] Speaker B: And this was the Colombian. [00:35:12] Speaker A: No, Mexican. That's the Mexican1 holding cheap 60 a pound pot. [00:35:17] Speaker B: Right. And okay, so. And that was during. How long did it take you to get back? And that one after that, being shot down. Obviously you've escaped by the skin of your teeth and come back to Mari. And then. How do you explain yourself? [00:35:33] Speaker A: Well, I got a taxi to take me to Guadalajara. And I got on an airplane. And I was in poor, bad shape when I got off the airplane. I had to go to hospital right then. So we couldn't get anybody. So we took to Wilmington. I had painted a hospital for a doctor there. And I knew him, so he was Chinese guy. They put me in there without saying anything. Took care of the. Took care of me. And while I was there, I said, murray, get some tickets. Let's go to Hawaii. So from the bed in the hospital, we went highway. I guess one of the first vacations we ever took our life. I work, so she. A lot of my work is. Is fun. You go places, but just to take a vacation. [00:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:14] Speaker A: So we went over there. And I had the crutches. And I had my foot up. And the children poured water over me. And they puka shells and brought me pina coladas. And we spent a month over there. What a lovely. [00:36:27] Speaker B: How Many kids did you have by then? [00:36:28] Speaker A: Two. [00:36:29] Speaker B: Two of them? [00:36:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:36:35] Speaker A: Yes. I'm trying to think what year was. What year they were born yet. [00:36:40] Speaker B: So obviously a vacation is needed after that. For you, that's a great respite. But you are not deterred. [00:36:48] Speaker A: Not a bit. [00:36:49] Speaker B: And. But is she not even more deterred now? Why is she still not saying, okay, that's it? [00:36:55] Speaker A: I don't know. I really don't know. I was going to make $300,000 and go back to farm, and I made it so quick that it was just like, bam. And she, she definitely put her foot down. I'm not going back to that farm. And rattlesnakes and bugs and flies and eat and all this. [00:37:09] Speaker B: Okay, so at one point you had a figure in your mind that. [00:37:12] Speaker A: Yes. [00:37:13] Speaker B: Would have kind of solidified that part of the career. [00:37:16] Speaker A: That's what I was going to do. I just kept on. It was so easy. And if you don't get shot. [00:37:23] Speaker B: Yes, but then when you're getting shot, you're still saying, that's right. [00:37:27] Speaker A: Keep on going. So anyhow, we. I bought another airplane and got a call and I could load up and I had a cast all the way up to my knee, and I can make that $40,000. And so I took a hand so. And cut that so, so I could. [00:37:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, hit the brake fly. [00:37:45] Speaker A: And so I came back, no good. Doctor, he cursed a blue streak. He put it back on. About two or three weeks later, I had a call and I cut it off again. He wouldn't put it on. [00:37:55] Speaker B: So is it a mess now or is it okay? [00:37:57] Speaker A: It wasn't very much anyway. Bone broke in the foot from it. [00:38:01] Speaker B: You aren't making the doc very happy, buying every, every part of the universe that says, hey, here's a hint. [00:38:11] Speaker A: Don't do it. You're. [00:38:12] Speaker B: Yeah, you're. [00:38:12] Speaker A: You're. [00:38:13] Speaker B: You're moving on. I wonder how much of that comes from your growing up on a farm and, and hard labor and learning, having a hard work ethic and working through things that normally would deter somebody lazy or doesn't have that kind of a work ethic. They might be deterred by that much adversity, but you seem to just drive. [00:38:37] Speaker A: I got a brother born on the same birthday as I am six years later. He never rode the horse or the mule. He never got his. Got his feet in the chicken ship. But he, he didn't want it. He wanted to study his lesson. He's a PhD now. Yeah, but he just didn't have that he didn't care about catching a wild hog or going to smoke shooting something. [00:38:54] Speaker B: Right. So. But. But you had that country boy learning, learning the outdoors all your. [00:39:01] Speaker A: Let's go for it. [00:39:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:02] Speaker A: My book Huckleberry Finn. [00:39:04] Speaker B: So do you think a lot of that contributed to your tenacity and just moving forward even though you had these incidents? [00:39:10] Speaker A: It probably did. And being poor. My father was alcoholic and we were really poor. Too poor to. And I started 14 years old working in the grocery store. $3 a day to pay the lunch money. And I did that until I 19 years old. So getting in. And I got a job in the logging woods. That was something. I come home, not much clothes on someday where I was hooking. Hooking log behind a caterpillar. Yeah, it was rough, hard work. Oh yeah, hard work. [00:39:39] Speaker B: And so that maybe is a contributing factor too. [00:39:43] Speaker A: I'm not afraid of work. And my mother would brag on me, I could. I could hoe cotton and we chop cotton and I guess I would have been a good, good golfer. Cause I can get that cotton. I mean, just as fast as I would go up and down. I nearly skin a cotton shock. And she said I was the best little whore in the county. [00:40:01] Speaker B: That's a compliment, I think. Thanks, mom. [00:40:04] Speaker A: I don't know. Thanks Mom. I was in the field from the time I was five, six years old. Little hoe. And they'd be 20 women who in cotton. And she'd say, Roger at least got a lot of sandspurs on her row effort along the boy. I'd help her and I just help them catch up because my mother would tell stories all day long and she'd tell them a little bit off color. I'm not supposed to know what's going on. [00:40:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Positive motivation though. [00:40:30] Speaker A: Oh, it was. [00:40:31] Speaker B: So as you started making this money, I'm just. I'm kind of curious if it was. If you ever had a different number. Did you ever say, all right, I thought 300 grand would do it. We'll come back, take care of the farm. And Meyer was like, I'm not living on the farm. And you at that point have been married, you got kids. You're like, okay, that's not a deal. Did you ever set another number? Would there have been any other number that would have made you say, all right, this is the time that we quit. [00:40:59] Speaker A: Okay. I was extremely immature and I trusted people. So I. I started making money and I hooked up with a fancy fellow that planning and zoning cities and stuff. So I bought the land that is now Moreno Valley. Now I have to work like the dickers to play 17 designers and stuff to work. So we're going to make videos. [00:41:31] Speaker B: Indebted yourself? Yeah. [00:41:34] Speaker A: And so I worked that. And of course I'm never going to get a penny of that back. [00:41:38] Speaker B: Right. [00:41:39] Speaker A: Just what was I thinking? Well, so those. And so then I made enough money and so I. I heard about the. There was a grain problem. The United States sold grain to the Russians, I reckon was. And it was in dirty ships. And when it got down to the bottom, the ships, the, the corn, the wheat was condemned and a lot of it. I heard $7 billion that they had to pay anyway they just stopped the shipping on the Mississippi river and all the whole. I guess nearly all the United States ships down that river in barges. And there was thousands and thousands of barges tied up in ships as far as you could see. And I thought now I can clean those. I knew a little bit about the fire department and fire science and so I went and bought me a big old Wheatley pump that they hydrostatically test pipelines, put it on a little boy truck and I went to. I went to cleaning ships. Got Mr. Carlos Marcella, pardon entrepreneur. I got a million dollars apiece to clean those ships. And I had man office and shell. Shell Square building there in New Orleans over the square. [00:42:51] Speaker B: And so were you able to do that? Were you doing that before you were moving dope? [00:42:56] Speaker A: No, I took that money from moving the dope. Now I got something to do now I'm only invested in this. [00:43:00] Speaker B: Okay, so are you trying to get out at the same time or are [00:43:03] Speaker A: you trying to get out of it? Okay, but that thing didn't work out as good as a million dollars. You, you out of our 500 people a day and they crawl off that ship and down the chain. Hey, wouldn't work. I made some money but not enough to do it. So I was glad when I sold that thing. They had a fellow that had a brand new shrimper and it got somewhere off the coast of Mexico down there and freezer went out and I guess it had 20 tons of rotten shrimp on it. So I says I can use that shrimp for. Let me pay it a $60,000 back pay. And I paid it out and unloaded a rotten shrimp out so to put on, you know, the diving equipment bad. Oh, it was awful. Anyway, got it cleaned up at built a is 80 footer and about 4ft from the back. I took all the insulation out of the. And I've never told this, I've never Took all the insulation out of the wheel well. I guess it's out of the freezer. Just 60ft long, I guess 25ft wide. And then I built a steel wall across it with frame just like the rest of the boat was built. And then a trap door. And there was two big rudders. Not the rudders, but the shafts from the motors, they're that big around. And you could slide down those and go back there all the way with that 60ft and open that trapdoor and get in a hidden compartment. [00:44:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:31] Speaker A: So we went around the world with that shrimp boat. I went to school to get my license for celestial navigation for the United States Coast Guard or something. So I got me a sextant and we took off around the world. We didn't do nothing, but, yeah, we made it. Went to Pakistan and got to load and come back. And I unloaded in British Columbia and I flew it down with a float plane into Lake Osette in western Washington. Terrible weather. And I was almost killed there one night. I was. So. Okay. Usually it's bad weather. And I said, I must have a tailwind. The lake's a little early for me. In a black lake and white water around it. And I pulled the throttle with that thing, overloaded in hashish and. And I got. Didn't turn lights on. And I got right down almost a touch. And I saw like these pine sky sticking up 20ft high everywhere. It was a clear cut area where them trees had fallen, entangled down and logged and rode in a road around. It looked white like the lake. [00:45:34] Speaker B: You had it all. [00:45:35] Speaker A: And I just hanging on a stall, just come out of the jaws of death. Probably one of the closest calls I've had. So anyway, are you running? [00:45:43] Speaker B: No lights at this, which is part of the problem. Right, because you're seeing. [00:45:48] Speaker A: Exactly. But it's in the dark, too. So anyway, I got out of that and we. And with that I had a million dollars in my pocket. A little bit more with that. And so I says, all right, let me quit this business. And that's when I bought a house in Santa Barbara and Hope Ranch and bought that land there and tied it up anyway. But then I went to flying to support the real estate deals then. [00:46:17] Speaker B: That's. So that's what really kept you going. You almost set yourself up to where you had to keep going because of the. Yeah, the financial obligations, damage. [00:46:25] Speaker A: No, I just didn't know I knew how to farm. Everybody in the world I knew was going busted farming. Right. So. [00:46:34] Speaker B: So at that point, then you also Trip into. You're not moving marijuana anymore. So. [00:46:41] Speaker A: And that's. [00:46:42] Speaker B: That's where you're able to. [00:46:43] Speaker A: I got tortured almost to death and in a Mexican prison. And then later on I was taken out and really done a number on by the Federalist. I don't know if you want me going all that. [00:46:55] Speaker B: You, you, you may, because again, it's one of those things that. That. That amazes people that you still flip around and go right back into it. [00:47:05] Speaker A: Yeah. I never thought of it, you know, it was just. Just what I enjoyed. [00:47:09] Speaker B: It never occurred to you? And Mari was just. [00:47:11] Speaker A: Well, I wanted to quit. I thought we would get him. I thought I'd. With that much money in what I'm doing in way I've invested. I'm going to be. I'm going to be rich. I'm going to be rich than I can imagine. Yeah, but it just. People are. So I got a little poem. I just tell a few lines of it. So you come to the tropics, heard all that you had to do was sit in shape in the shade of a coconut glade While there's dollars rolling to you. Did they tell you that, Deburo? Did you get those statistics all straight? Well, let me tell you what happened to another lad before you decide your fate. You don't go down with a short hard fall. You just sort of shuffle along and loosen the load on the moral code. You can't tell the right from the wrong. [00:47:56] Speaker B: That's. That's beautiful because you're. It's. It is harder. You're kind of myopic. You're in your own world. Right. And if you would have taken yourself from 15 years prior and watched what you're doing, you would have had great advice. But living with yourself and watching yourself move incrementally into that business and justifying each little thing. Exactly makes it a little more difficult. [00:48:22] Speaker A: And I was watching a program and when we do things, when we do something wrong, let's say adultery, a man that does it. Most men have in their life. And so. But when they do it, they're looking at their own pleasure, what they want to do. They are not thinking about how it's going to hurt their wife or their children. So when you do these things, you're doing what you want to do. And yes, you love them and you want to do for them, but you're doing it because you. I did it because I wanted to do it. [00:48:54] Speaker B: The lack of accountability, right? [00:48:55] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Yeah. [00:48:57] Speaker B: And as young men, you make more of those mistakes. [00:49:01] Speaker A: Okay. I might get shot, I might go to prison, but I can handle that. But you don't think of what it does to her, right, to meet me at an airport after I've been shot or to come out to creek and watch the bloodhounds get after me. It's just like, unbelievable. [00:49:17] Speaker B: And that's. That was part of my intrigue with the whole story between you two, because I can. I can tell how dedicated you are to one another. And knowing her frame of mind since the beginning and everything, it just seems she must have been also in that same frame of mind where she's getting kind of pulled into justifying this over that, justifying that over the next thing to where you both find yourself in a. [00:49:43] Speaker A: Well, I think more hers. Like, he's going to do it anyway. I mean, I'm not going to divorce him. It's just. [00:49:50] Speaker B: Well, you're lucky she didn't do that. [00:49:52] Speaker A: Exactly. And I'll tell you about that. I got life sentence down in Australia, and I was gone 19 years on that move. And she couldn't visit me. See the hands on the glass. She brought money for my defense, and she's. And she didn't declare it because it was US dollars. And they asked him, if you have $10,000 Australia. So they took it from her. Now she's a felon, so she can't visit. I saw my hands up on the glass. Didn't see each other for 19 years. And so I came home and I says, well, Marty, I know you got hit on all the time. What in the world did you say? She said, I didn't put myself in places that I would get hit on and said if I did, I just say I'm not available. And her dad said, really? Fine. Manage Mari Rogers doing life. He may never get out of there, be so old. Why don't you just divorce him and go on with your life? And she said, daddy, I love him. I just can't. And I said. She said, we sit around the table and I say the blessing when I hold hands with the children. She was on that side. And I say the same blessing my grandfather said all the time. He said, I just couldn't imagine another man sitting there at the table after I'd cooked a meal and you in prison and then holding hands to our children and saying the blessing. She said, it made me sick to think of it. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Good for her. [00:51:17] Speaker A: That's. I mean, her side. [00:51:18] Speaker B: Good for you, too. [00:51:19] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:51:22] Speaker B: There's an. I was like meeting the other men, other men that have married up like me. But yeah, so you, as you get deeper and deeper into this stuff, you end up. And I don't know where this, the Mexican prison story happened before the Colombian. [00:51:38] Speaker A: That's what sent me to Colombia. [00:51:41] Speaker B: So can you tie that, tie the stories in a little bit in terms of how you ended up transitioning into moving dope for one of the bigger Colombian enterprises? [00:51:52] Speaker A: Yes, it was real simple. I was. I was in a swimming pool waiting to get a load together and a man in a nice suit came over. So are you Mr. Ardell? That's the name I was in yesterday. Shook hands, he put some handcuffs on me and he took me to the prison and put me in there. I mean, it would sell about this big. I believe one time, 18 people in there with a five gallon bucket for to be in. That was it. They come in every morning, look like that same stuff that they clean hog pins, disinfectant, raided around. We went back in there after five minutes and after three days. And in that time I did, people left and I gave Mari's number to call and some pencil neck SOB from the United States government came in from the embassy and. And I gave him all the information. He didn't do nothing but just write out a report to the dea. Not one phone call to my family. So he needs a visit finally. Need to look him up. Yeah. Thanks for 50 years ago. Yeah, thanks for nothing. More than 50 years. Yes, more than 50 years ago. 53 years ago. So after three days out in that spot, they're sitting there, I mean, nothing to eat. And I can get a cocoa bottle and some boy go to a hot spigot and get me some water. And they took me down in the back and I mean, they laid into me and beat the bottom of my feet till I couldn't walk. And then they put me in a cell. Five foot square and tall and filthy floor. I slay on that floor. And they took my clothes and they take me out every once in a while and put my head underwater. I mean, it's like some kind of shelter. You take one with that, you'll take four or five of them up with you. Yeah. [00:53:45] Speaker B: What were they trying to get out of you? [00:53:46] Speaker A: They wanted me to sign a confession that I was. I had a boat and two airplanes and I was holding marijuana. And they said that they was in a joint task force with American dea. The DEA couldn't catch me. I was going way out over the Pacific and coming around them, they didn't know I was getting it in. Okay. And I didn't buy or sell, so I. [00:54:06] Speaker B: And is this the first time that you realized that you had eyes on you, I mean. [00:54:11] Speaker A: Yes, I reckon so. I don't know. Didn't matter much. I thought they had to catch you, right, As a parachute and all that stuff. It's going to be hard to catch me. I had to burn the load and the plane, all that. [00:54:22] Speaker B: Well, apparently not. They just need to shake your hand and then beat your feet and try to drown, right? [00:54:26] Speaker A: So after some time they took me out and naked and put chains on me, wore me apart and buttered up my bum. And they had a prisoner. There were big thick fingernails. And he crammed my colon, probably a cup full or two of hot chili pepper up my backside, man. I'm telling you what, that burnt me up. It almost ruined me. And finally got that stuff washed out and bring a sign, the papers. I didn't sign the papers. And then I don't know how many days it was later they did things to try to trick you, like bring you food in a couple hours or some more, and then not anymore for 20 hours or something. So you wouldn't know what time it was with the light on. But at nighttime when the dope addicts would call for street, I could hear them thumping them, beating them up. So I could kind of tell when another day, it was kind of rhythm. There's a filthy place back there. So then they came with a dead man. And he was a slim black man and he was wrapped in about one inch wide newspaper. And he was frozen just like a mummy. And they had him on an ice hook and they brought him in and put him, hooked him on a hook on the cell where I was. You next, you next. And that fellas. And I thought, if they think a dead man gonna make me sign a confession for six years in prison. And at that time still, I ain't even thinking about it. [00:55:53] Speaker B: You know, that's also impressive. I mean, how many people do you think would have broken underneath that? [00:56:00] Speaker A: I know. What I didn't think about it. It's like, you crazy. You hit my feet. I mean, I ain't gonna die from my feet. Chili pepper was the worst part. Yeah, and that head under the water was bad, too. But you, I learned to come up, have a fit right before you had to breathe so. That your head's hanging over sideways. And as he started to throw it, it was hot. And June 1974, 52 years ago. And it looked like the tears was running down his faces. That formaldehyde his eyes thawed out and it looked like he looked like he was crying. Wow. And then the officer started unraveling and the formaldehyde was pulling on that floor. Kind of had a dent there and it wasn't going down the drain. And that stuff was just awful formaldehyde coming through his rotten and guts. It was just nasty. So I put my face under the door like that. So breathe. Lay my face on that filthy floor and I had. Last thing I remember was, it was pink. Pink pigs flying in the cell with me. I was hallucinating [00:57:18] Speaker B: how it'll do it. [00:57:21] Speaker A: So I woke up in the hospital with a doctor and I had a respirator on me. And he was. In English, he was saying, breathe, man, breathe. Breathe, senor. [00:57:31] Speaker B: Wow. So they didn't want to kill you. Obviously. Somebody. [00:57:34] Speaker A: They almost. They almost did, but without knowing it, I think. So then they put me back in general population. And I got a message to Mari and she came down and paid me out. [00:57:45] Speaker B: And that's all you needed in the first place for just a. I don't get somebody to. [00:57:50] Speaker A: I don't know how much. It's not a bond, of course. It's the whole thing in Mexico. [00:57:54] Speaker B: Graph. [00:57:54] Speaker A: Nothing you can't buy. Yeah, nothing. [00:57:57] Speaker B: But you just couldn't get a hold of her to even get the mess there. And she's at home probably wondering, well, [00:58:02] Speaker A: she knew something bad's happened, right? [00:58:05] Speaker B: But maybe thinking the worst. I mean, you're going through a lot. [00:58:08] Speaker A: She don't know. Absolutely. I was there. But I was there for a couple months. So it took. Took a bit. And then I started working again. And I was in a hotel and I ordered huevos ranchero for breakfast just at daylight. [00:58:23] Speaker B: At what hotel? [00:58:25] Speaker A: And one in Mazatlan. Okay. I don't forgot what. No. 1 was a Holiday Inn, six floor, okay. No balcony. [00:58:32] Speaker B: All right. [00:58:34] Speaker A: And open the door with no shirt on, with my blue jeans. And a great big Mexican had his. The tray with the hot coffee on it and looked like a tent. And I opened the door and he just put that.45 between my eyes. Federal police to Mexico. You move, I kill you. So get dressed. So he's looking at my passport and I go in a mini bar. And several times I've used a Coca Cola bottle to be an equalizer. So I took one out. [00:59:08] Speaker B: Those are some. The old school bottles are starting to break. [00:59:12] Speaker A: They will. They will even up the school, right? [00:59:15] Speaker B: With a handle. [00:59:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So anyhow, my hand kind of trembled and he had his head down. I could have Knocked him out so quick I didn't know how many was in the hall or downstairs or what. They knew what deal was. I knew I didn't have anything. Oh, nothing so. [00:59:32] Speaker B: But you already knew. That didn't matter to them. [00:59:36] Speaker A: Drag you into the next one ripped and down the elevator. And there was three carloads of them down there, brand new LTD's. And put me in the middle between a bunch of them with the guns in my ribs. And took me through town by the prison, thank goodness, didn't stop. And it went across the rear route track, then down it, bumpy, bumpy. And I think was seven of them. And they told me that they were with that joint task force from Mexico City, dea, and that they were there to get a confession out of me. They had the papers there for me to sign. [01:00:07] Speaker B: The voice reading my articles to you. It's mine, but I never recorded it. Eleven labs cloned it flawlessly. Try your own voice links right below. Okay. Right back to it all over again. Oh, my gosh. What is going through your mind at this point? You already know what's coming now. [01:00:23] Speaker A: Well, I know I'm gonna get whooped. [01:00:24] Speaker B: Is it worse knowing what's coming than it is? [01:00:28] Speaker A: No, it was kind of a. Kind of like almost a joke. I said, they put me out in these woods. I'm gonna get away from them, okay? It was just like. [01:00:37] Speaker B: Like I'm not. [01:00:38] Speaker A: I'm not letting him bear rabbit ain't gonna be, you know, eat that tar baby up. [01:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:44] Speaker A: So I got out of the car and. And the big red face one had a big sailfish with a ruby eye on it hanging over his neck. And I guess he weighed 250, 225, something like different. And I said, donja suit dungeon. Where's your airplane? And I said, I don't speak Spanish. He had that big thing and he hit me upside the head with an open flap. Knocked me plumb off. I said my Spanish improved immediately. So anyway, they took in and tied my hands behind me with my belt. I had a leather belt and tied it good and tight. I mean, he did a number on it. And then he had me down and pull my shirt up over my head back out of white shirt on, and they went to thumping on me. It wasn't. It wasn't excruciating. It bust your nose and lips and hit you upside the head and slap you on the ears and all, you know. [01:01:38] Speaker B: Well, yes, I know, but again, this is the country boy in you. Because a lot of people would even break from that. But you're. You're a tough guy. You're like, hey, I've already been through all this. [01:01:49] Speaker A: I was in a fistfight. Just ain't no worse, right? [01:01:51] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. [01:01:53] Speaker A: So then they went and got to cattle prod. Is a bull one about that long. And they went to work on me and they over 100 times on my tender spots. Oh, around my groin particularly on my butt wherever it could get one. It burned. I mean, it'll burn. It burned. The two little thing you just. You will move. Well, that thing went on for two or three hours. I guess it was 10 o' clock in the morning now. And that man is as tired of it as I am. Then once in a while he grabbed me by the hair and pulled it up. Sign. Oh, senor. And started again. Well, then the cattle prod, the batteries got dead and it wasn't doing much. So they called a town. And I got to tell you what this place was about an acre and it'd been pushed off with a bulldozer in the jungle and had piles of dirt where they had over the years. And this is where they dump the dead cows and goats and birds. And that was where new thing it put me in all that. Karen. It was rotten gourd vines all over everything and beyond that, trees. And so whenever they come with some new batteries, five or six of them went back up there to kiss ass to the boss man and left me there with old red Face. By that time I've had so much blood and sweat on me until. And I've swim around till my belt is stretched and I can get that hand off but I don't let him know it already. [01:03:30] Speaker B: Okay. [01:03:31] Speaker A: And there's rocks everywhere like that cotton field rocks. It was kind of red rocks. I got one about like a baseball and I said, you know, Sign he couldn't believe his ears and he leaned over and I came up with that fist, loaded it hit him in the head and he went down like a full axe dog done. But I took off. I mean, I'm running like crazy for that, for that pile of dirt. Get behind it. And they open up with their pistols, all five or six of them. And the dirt, I can see the. It was dry and the dirt was just popping up around me all over those things. It didn't hit me at all. And just as. Just as I wanted to go over that thing, a little machine gun pistol opened up and it shredded the stuff above me. And a vine caught me right at the top, right over my nose. And Just crushed it. And as I was going that way, my feet kept going and I must have dropped five or six feet down on my back. And you could have heard the bump when I hit. And then I went. Oh. And they. All the shooting stopped. They thought it done kill me. I got off. [01:04:36] Speaker B: You clotheslined yourself? Knocked the wind out of you or something? [01:04:40] Speaker A: No, we didn't. You probably did. But I was happy that I was laying behind that dirt. [01:04:44] Speaker B: Right, right. [01:04:46] Speaker A: Worry about it. Anyway, it was quite a story how I got out of that. But I got out of there and got back home. So Mari said, and I did, too, that they'll kill you if you keep going back there. You know you're there. So that's it. Don't do it. [01:04:59] Speaker B: In terms of Mexico in general. [01:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Not even never go back to Mexico again. Because they even put out that I killed that guy. But of course, I didn't kill him. But I give me headache. [01:05:10] Speaker B: Knocked him out, that's one thing. [01:05:14] Speaker A: But I'll tell you almost a ghost story. I. I called the fellow and he come with my airplane. He was supposed to come anyway. And I called him, David McMahon. And he. He. I paid him $5,000 to bring the airplane down so I could monitor my load. They'd been giving me bad loads, so I did. So he brought the airplane down and I flew back, unloaded the load and then flew to San Diego. Because I had property in Mexico and about $40,000 in a lockbox in Tijuana. Well, they had my wallet. And then they had that bank, the bank of Tijuana, bank of Banamix. They had the card. So I said I got to get there early so I can get that stuff out before they find out about it. So I flew to Jim's there in San Diego and time airplane down after I'd unloaded in the desert and got a cab, went to that bank. And when I go in there and the boss, the president of the bank, sitting up on a ds and when the lady told him I wanted to have my lockbox drilled out because I didn't have the key with me. It was in Santa Barbara. I didn't have time. He looked up like quick, just like enough. He knows who you are. He's waiting. And he reached for the telephone and I almost ran. And the lady realized that he's calling to Loch Miss. And you said, he'll be here in a while. [01:06:39] Speaker B: Did you believe. [01:06:40] Speaker A: Well, that I didn't know I wanted that money and those deeds. I really did. [01:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:45] Speaker A: And you ain't gonna run. Just cause a guy looked at you [01:06:47] Speaker B: right then, they will be suspicious. [01:06:52] Speaker A: I. I'm sitting there and I hear high heel shoes behind me. And I'm sitting on a nice sofa. And there's a woman, maybe she's 40 years old. She said, senior Reeves, the federal police are here for you. Come with me. That was Angel. I'm telling you, I don't know where it come from. Out of blue. I don't know. I've never seen her. So I. And so I saw him come through the door. They locked the door, the bank front door. And they got in black shades on and all that military stuff, and all of them holding them little Uzis and they meant business in Mexico. So she just, she come and said, go in the bathroom. No. And there was a big window there and there was some cement blocks. I just couldn't probably bust it out anyway. And then, then a policeman came up. Stood there with his old gun, talking to somebody, fat policeman. I said, if I bust out this bank, he gonna shoot me. [01:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:41] Speaker A: So then she went on back to the back, and it was like a warehouse. And she said, here, go, go through, go through here. And there's a little, little stainless steel locked door. And she gave me her phone number, said, I'm Alicia, call me. And so she pushed a button somewhere else in that little door open. That's where the Brink truck backs up. I went through that thing. I mean, I just squeezed through it and I fell in on six feet on top of the asphalt on the street. It was hot. And I ran that crazy. Got on one bus, I rode it a block to jumped off, went on another. And so I knew I better not ever go back to Mexico. So that's when I went to Colombia and I met Mr. Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa. Yeah. [01:08:26] Speaker B: So you did finally learn one lesson. [01:08:29] Speaker A: They're gonna kill you if you keep going here. This, this is uncomfortable. [01:08:33] Speaker B: Right, but you did insist on. Okay, let me go link up with this Ochoa and Escobar. I'd love to get your, your thoughts on those guys, because I, I mean, I, I know what you think of them, but I'd love to, to hear your, your explanation of how you distinguish yourself from those guys in the way they did business. And how did you get into business with them? Because at the time, I know there was kind of a lot. You. You had a, a work resume resume by then to bring to them. Did they come to you or you go to them? [01:09:06] Speaker A: No, I met a lawyer and a little Dealing with him. It didn't work out. So he took me to a. We flew from Bogota. He wanted me to introduce him. And so we went to Medellin and landed in 707. Remember those things and that thing? Oh, it was shaking. I thought it might come apart. We landed right downtown. They said that was one of the most dangerous airports in the world. It made a gene until the new one was built. I mean, we nearly touched the buildings and we landed. We went to, I guess, most palatial condominium I've ever seen in my life. And those verdant blue green mountains are looking over Medellin. And there was an old drunk up there, kind of a Winston Churchill, I guess. He spoke 15 languages. He must have been a genius. And he was a cocaine man, Fernando Corrello. And he had, I think 15 miles of beach, of jungle along the Pacific coast. And he told me he paid $5,000 a kilo and that he had plenty of work. But go see his wife. I went to see his wife. Marta lived on the golf course, nice house. And me and her and Mario. So I went down here. We came friends, so said he'll sober up one day. He drank three bottles a day. [01:10:29] Speaker B: And you're about to go into business with this cat. [01:10:33] Speaker A: He's the man that's got it. [01:10:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:36] Speaker A: So I had flown back and got my airplane and the DEA had filled up one engine with metal shavings. And I got to police and took off in there. And that engine seized up and I finally just made it into New York to Belize City. And I mean, that thing was overloaded just for fuel. And I taxed. I cut the other engine and I taxed in parked. And the police and the soldiers all behind their sandbags because they at war with El Salvador or whatever, Guatemala. And so they didn't believe that I could taxi up and park it with one engine. You know how they'll turn around. But I got enough momentum. And so one of the military mechanic came out and he had a hat full of shavings from a metal factory. And they tore my engine up. So I just think, you know, if we can't catch him, we'll kill him. [01:11:35] Speaker B: Yeah. They rigged you. [01:11:36] Speaker A: Absolutely. And so I didn't have anything nice for him. I mean, those bows, they were. They were going to stop me. [01:11:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:45] Speaker A: So anyway, this Fernando, while I was up in Belize getting that engine changed, his wife called me and said they're having a birthday party for Fernando and to come down. So I flew down to Medellin and They had come in any other airliner. They had these British shorts carry about 40 people a piece. Shuffling them over to his place on the Pacific. And he had, I guess 20 little houses up on steel. It's all painted different stuff. A river coming in and ocean turning it down to beach red and an old log house and woman cooking all kind of steers and stuff on goats. And so it was. It was. They had it going on. People walking around with their bags of cocaine and. And that's the whole story. I mean it's almost two tailed. One fella got shot in a blood sparkled on the book that I was reading, MMK's before pavilion. I've never finished that book. Anyway, that was on the weekend that they got together and decided that they would stop the killing. And there was about 300 people came in there and it was a big party. And so then from that I met this. Because of that killing, they took most everybody out of there, but the poor folks was left. And I was left in there with this Mario and Matilda. I met them on the airline coming down. She spoke perfect English, okay. And so I was walking with a girl on the beach and she met us coming the other way and said, roger, Mario tells me that you're walking with the girlfriend of the most vicious killer of Colombia. He suggests you get away from. [01:13:30] Speaker B: Sorry. [01:13:31] Speaker A: So excuse me, lady. She just walked, not even a block. She's just chatting. I don't know why I'm here. I've never flown in a helicopter. I've never flown before. I don't know why this man invited me. And I thought, honey, you fixing find out. So anyway, that's what it was. So I. Mario took me back and we went into Invigada, just above Medellin. And there's little. They call them fincas, maybe a few acres each. And the rich people over the years had build them and they took. They come up with a. With the two guys with their guns and they opened. So we drove through and it was 40 men outside there for doors and waiting to be talked to. The heavy, right. Beautiful house. It looked like it was 300 years old. Sagging top and the moss hanging everywhere in the green and. And so hitching rails out front. Just left like it was. It was a museum almost. [01:14:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:31] Speaker A: And we came up, we issued right in and it was a drop dead gorgeous woman. She said, be careful for the hole in the floor. They had a hole that big, but it was polished around. [01:14:43] Speaker B: Yes, ma'. [01:14:43] Speaker A: Am. And she took us in to see Jorge Ochoa and he had a great big desk. He got up, shook hands, spoke a little English and he had 12 telephones on his desk, all of my different color. And I laughed at what they said. Oh, that's New York, that's Chicago and this is Miami. When they ring, I know which one is I'm talking to. Wild. So old school phones. Yeah, so he says, asked me what airplanes I had and I told him I had a DC3, Beach 18, Aero Commander 690. And he says, what's your experience? I said I've hauled well over 100 loads across. I never been caught. And so he said, well, I have all the work you can do. $5,000 kilo if you want to do it. About 500 kilos at 5,000, that's two and a half million dollars for an eight hour trip. I think I'll take that. [01:15:36] Speaker B: That changed the game in terms of just a minute. [01:15:39] Speaker A: And he called Buzz the pretty lady and he said, told her something in Spanish. So she went next door and brought in a man about my size and had a plaid shirt on, a khaki pants, iron stiff and brown shoes polished. I remember very well. Shoot my hand. Nice. And Senor Pablo Escobar, about my age [01:16:01] Speaker B: and, and by at that time you knew who he was, right? [01:16:04] Speaker A: Never heard of him. [01:16:05] Speaker B: Never heard of him. [01:16:05] Speaker A: He was nobody. He'd been a. He'd been smuggling washing machines and stuff out of pound okay, so this is [01:16:11] Speaker B: early in his career, so to speak. [01:16:14] Speaker A: Yes. And so what it was is that there was three factions in Colombia. They was almost divided up pretty, pretty well. They had the fart guerrillas and other guerrillas groups and they control the coca plantations. They was that, that part of the world down there was where it grown, right. And then you had the military and they was into it, big as you could imagine government was. And then you had the Contras, the white landowners that had the mountains and the stuff closer to town. And they, they didn't like one another. They was all striving for the same business. So that's why. So I got hooked up with the concert, with the concerts. They concerted the Gorillas, really. Right. And that was Pablo Escobar. And so that's why they just. So they said, they told all the growers in South America, give it to us and we will ship it to your man in Miami for $10,000 a kilo if it gets caught anywhere between here and there from time you give it to us until Roger gives it to your man in Miami, we will guarantee we will replace it in Columbia. So I understand they had 100 tons piled up on. [01:17:28] Speaker B: So I went to work with that guarantee. [01:17:31] Speaker A: It's just. Did it. [01:17:34] Speaker B: Did you ever worry about losing a load and then finding out that there was a penance besides just replacing it? Because it seems like obviously they, they would have not. [01:17:42] Speaker A: They would not have cared about that really. Not at all. Of course you care about losing load, but they wouldn't imagine much money as they was making that. [01:17:51] Speaker B: But would they have suspected? I mean, people had to have been thieving some of it, which would have been a different. [01:17:56] Speaker A: Well, so I was, I was one time in Georgia Cho as office and they come in and said that they give a man, I believe it was Los angeles or somewhere, 40 or 50 kilos. And he went to Vegas and lost the money. What should we do, senor? Right. He said, is he a good salesman? He said, one of the best. He said, give him 50 more, he'll pay it back. [01:18:20] Speaker B: Interesting. So he did have an appreciation for that much human nature, profit and having a sense about him. So knowing what you know now about Escobar, what was your sense about him when you met him? He seemed cordial, but you know, how do you compare yourself working under the guise of that type of a person? What's the differentiator between you and he, for instance? [01:18:46] Speaker A: Well, at that time, it was before all this additives went to cocaine, only the rich and the famous was doing was purely no matter what's the stuff they lacing it with now and all that fentanyl, it was nothing like that. You could in any cocaine you had was pure, right? Nobody was dying from it before all this stuff came out. Cocaine was used for teeth extraction and Coca Cola's and all kinds numbing agents. And it was, it was classified by the government as a non narcotic control substance. Way down on the list. Okay, now then, Richard Nixon is having a lot of trouble with the hippies Kent State, right? And he says, all right, black folks are doing the heroin and the hippies are doing pot. Let's lock them up, let's get them off the street. Straight out Kissinger is telling him, you can hear the words, you don't keep that war going, Senor Mr. Pratt, you won't be president again. So he shoots to two fishing boats in Hanang harbor to continue to kill 56,000 of our young people. So he came president and he started that war on drugs, right? So that's where it all come from. And now it's got really, really bad criminals. I mean, Criminals, we just. We were just outlaws just running and having a good time. [01:20:18] Speaker B: And that's why I think Pablo viewed himself too as a bandit. [01:20:21] Speaker A: Yes. But wasn't he was a cold blooded killer. [01:20:26] Speaker B: I mean once it's about money that changes people. [01:20:30] Speaker A: I don't know. He must have had it in him to start with. He must have been a very bad person. But he didn't seem to be. But anybody. I mean I know that the police was killing his people and he had a war with him and then good. But you blow my house up, I might blow yours up too. Right. So that was going on and then when he brought that airliner out the sky. Had somebody blew it up and killed all those people. I just thought I'm sorry I ever shook his hand. I'm sorry you ever made a nickel off of me. Yes. I can repent of that. Yeah. [01:21:00] Speaker B: And that's. I mean that's. Do you ever think about or did you ever think about. I differentiate you now versus then. Did you ever consider what your contribution might have been to addiction or incarceration or murders out of proxy? [01:21:19] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I'm sure they did. There had to be some murders out of all that cocaine and stuff that was moving at that time. And people argue about it but I don't. I really. If a pure cocaine. People want it just like they want food or sex or gambling. But is it really addicting? It's not like cigarettes or heroin. I don't even think it's as bad as alcohol. As far as you want it again. Once you become an alcoholic. People can do. Do cocaine and not think about it again. Is my experience with the people. Now it may not be. But the people started to argue with you about it but. [01:22:03] Speaker B: And you were never a user yourself. [01:22:05] Speaker A: I don't use at all. [01:22:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean I wouldn't know either. I mean I can only. [01:22:09] Speaker A: Well, I tried it but I didn't. I like the feeling. But then yuck. Afterwards. [01:22:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And that. And that maybe is what makes it addicting too. Is that the mental crash afterwards to where the only thing that fixed the crash is to get up again. [01:22:23] Speaker A: Maybe they can't afford to. Yeah. [01:22:27] Speaker B: Go out of business quick. [01:22:28] Speaker A: It's really. So. Yeah. I'm. I'm sorry that I was ever affiliated with anything. What it would it cost my family and me and any. Any of the people I don't even know. But I don't feel huge guilt over it. Just like I think that we have God's laws and extent of them. If we abide by them. We wouldn't need the courts and the police for sure. Okay. And interesting. Some of these other ones break the law. He's just old degrees. I mean, a thousand new laws are made every day. [01:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And they accrue. They don't like take a bunch off. [01:23:07] Speaker A: They just keep stacking. You still got, you can't run your mule or horse over 32 miles in Georgia. [01:23:13] Speaker B: Right? Right. And you ended up being like an escape artist. I want to make sure I'm kind of expediting through this because I really want to talk a lot about the, the prison and when Mari was obviously due. I mean, her helping you escape and stuff. That, that's pretty amazing stuff. Maybe we do that in part two, but you know, her part in that is fascinating to me too. Again, knowing that her conscience, she's having to override her conscience in order to do these things that are otherwise something she would never have done her in her 20, never dreamed 20 years prior. [01:23:48] Speaker A: Neither would I. [01:23:49] Speaker B: Right. [01:23:50] Speaker A: It just, it just happened. [01:23:52] Speaker B: So you started making a bunch more money doing this. [01:23:56] Speaker A: Made two and a half million dollars [01:23:57] Speaker B: a day, and then you end up finally getting essentially ratted out. So what, what is your, I mean, I know you have a relationship with, with Barry Seals son now, but what is, what does his relationship have to do with this whole process and, and, and getting you? [01:24:18] Speaker A: That's quite a story. I got above the clouds one night above the fog, and I couldn't get down. Doing 300 miles an hour with 300 kilos behind me in a turbojet Aero Commander and I couldn't make it. Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, all fogged in. Eastern part of the United States is covered. And it scared me. So to save my life, I came down the glide slope in New Orleans International Airport and bounced down that Runway in the fog. And when I got stopped, I said, I'm never going to do that again. [01:24:56] Speaker B: So that scared you enough? [01:24:57] Speaker A: Scared me death. I thought for sure that might be my last night on Earth. And you just can't tell. I'm not that good. I mean, I can fly an airplane, but I ain't coming down between power lines and towers and Lake Pontchartrain and all that stuff right down. Just, just got like, oh, baby, 100 miles an hour. You know what's going to hurt? [01:25:20] Speaker B: No. So, so you decided to sub out [01:25:24] Speaker A: some of the darkness. So the next morning, I like 8 or 9 o', clock, you, sun shining through there. I turn the radio. Everything still fogged in. Any little security if they could have Come around that, down that Runway, and life sentence right there. I'm sitting on it. [01:25:41] Speaker B: You'd have been doomed. [01:25:42] Speaker A: I can't jump off and leave it. I'd get shot, I reckon. So I took off. An airplane took off and went across and I. By that time it had thinned out a little bit, and I just took a dive at the ground and I got down and I told Harvey, I says, I'm hanging up my gun, boy. And I told the Columbians in Miami. That was it. Oh, Roger, please, please. This is making a living off of me now. [01:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:08] Speaker A: And so I knew Barry. I thought, now let me ask Barry. So I asked Barry. Yeah. So I'll give you a million dollars a trip. So he went flying. [01:26:16] Speaker B: And so you split it essentially because you say you're making about two million [01:26:20] Speaker A: of two and a half. Yeah. [01:26:22] Speaker B: I mean, it's still great for him. [01:26:24] Speaker A: Exactly. And soon. And he said, you got to put $50,000 on there for Bill Clinton. So he said, only place I'm going to land in Mina, Arkansas. So every time I'd give him a million dollars, I'd put other little thing on for the governor. And so he said, I'm going to go and have dinner with the governor tonight. [01:26:43] Speaker B: Please ignore this. Right? [01:26:45] Speaker A: Yes. [01:26:45] Speaker B: Here's your. [01:26:46] Speaker A: Here's your donation. [01:26:47] Speaker B: Please don't just ignore this. [01:26:49] Speaker A: Everything's fine. He might have been lying to me. I. Mr. Clinton. I don't know. But that's what he said. Makes sense. I paid one and a half million dollars to Mr. Clinton. Or an imaginary Mr. Clinton. [01:26:59] Speaker B: Right. [01:26:59] Speaker A: Somebody's. They got that cold killer in Arkansas. I don't know no part of that. So I hired Barry. And then he got. They just got begging me. So I hired another fellow, Jerry Wills, lives here in Palace Verdes. So. [01:27:18] Speaker B: And was that the real turning point where that was your kind of. Your fatal mistake, kind of turning it into an enterprise? [01:27:26] Speaker A: Do it. [01:27:27] Speaker B: No. [01:27:27] Speaker A: They came and they arrested me for old marijuana charges. They charged me with a continuing criminal enterprise which scares life in prison up to life in prison. I was number 41 for 400 pounds of marijuana. They got dealing. They want my property. They wanted me to talk. And. But they knew nothing about Columbia. So I had a $5 million bail. And we never hear. You had to prove where the money come from. They had no idea that I was sitting on that kind of millions of dollars. Yeah. They locked me up and I couldn't get out. And everybody told on me. Everybody worked on my airplane unloaders. Everybody just. They just Rolled dominoes. So I'm left. And so I fell into court and they gave me a five year sentence, 25 year special parole. Anytime you violate, you'll be do all the part and 5 years probation all stacked on top of one another. So I did two and a half years in prison. And while I was in, Barry had turned. He turned State seven and went to working for him, right? [01:28:37] Speaker B: Dea. [01:28:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So I just got out of prison, I'm watching the TV and there's Ronald Reagan, blue eyes, right, on television in the morning, said we have absolute proof that the communist Sandinista government is in cocaine running business. Well, I'd been refueling there all, all those years and Barry had two. He couldn't believe it. So. And I saw the plane, I knew the plane. So, oops. Barry has done it later on in the lack of good books called the Kings of Cocaine. You can see Pablo Escobar stripe his shirt. He's carrying those bales of cocaine from one plane to the other. [01:29:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's the picture he snapped. [01:29:19] Speaker A: Yeah, well, he snapped thousand of them and, and then he had to go back in there. It's snapping inside and under the wing. And he goes there and takes them out of the camp, right? And you know, you see him and that dea, Jake Jackson would have been fed to the pigs. Yeah, ain't no doubt. I mean, talking about he put the president of Turks and Caicos. But anyway, I should cut that out. So, anyway, I love Barry and Barry was our friend, but he got under such pressure that he snapped and he went to work for him. [01:29:52] Speaker B: He flipped. [01:29:53] Speaker A: So he called and he said, roger, I'm coming out tonight. Meet me at a little French restaurant at 9 o'. Clock. Oh, Lord. [01:30:02] Speaker B: And you, you already had a sense that this was. [01:30:05] Speaker A: I just, I'm on probation. Got 30 years of pro probation, right. I just got out of prison, I'm still going every day to see his parole officer. And he was terrible. Nastiest man I ever met. [01:30:17] Speaker B: Really. [01:30:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, even the pro people hated him. They did. Stanley Schwartz. Oh, God. And so I went to the restaurant and Barry was leaning up at the back and I walked up to him in a room full of people, leather skirts, pistols under the shirt, you know, all these women, men. And I said, are you wired, Barry? He said, no. I said, well, you talk to me, I ain't gonna say nothing. So he went to telling me what happened and he went to crying. And he put his hands up over his eyes and the tears run between his fingers. He said, Roger, I just couldn't do it. Facing three lives since I've told him everything. But you're my friend and I put you under my umbrella. You just testify before grand jury, you can live anywhere you want to on earth, any name you want. Ain't nobody going to ever touch you again. I said, they all dea said, have one of them. I said, bring your head hunch over. So he brought over a man, I like him, Jake Jacobson. Okay, we'd been on the same side. We'd been friends, right? I mean, we are still friends. It don't matter, right? [01:31:28] Speaker B: Not anymore it doesn't. [01:31:29] Speaker A: At one point, it kind of just human being doing her job. [01:31:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:31:34] Speaker A: And so he came over and says, you know, you can come tomorrow, first class tomorrow, or I'll take you down tonight and change whichever one you want. But if I take you down tonight and change, the only place you'll ever see your family again as long as you live is in a federal penitentiary visiting room. I can promise you that. I said, I'm going first class, Jake. So the next day, Mario and I flew down first class, business class anyhow. And I went to a lawyer And I said, Mr. Lawyer, I got to do something. I told him what ship I'm in. I said, got to go to a grand jury this afternoon. He said, well, I tell you what, I'll represent you for $600,000. But I don't talk to snitches. My face turned red. I said, well, I'm not a snitch, man. He said, that's what you're talking about. Whoa, man, I've got to tell him something, right? He said, let me tell you something. You go in, said, being, being, being a snitch is like being pregnant. You either are or you're not. You go in there and tell them one thing and you don't tell them everything, they'll convict you of everything you've told them, right? You got to tell on your mama when you go in there. And, well, I don't like, you know, your attitude. So I'm getting on. So I went. So another guy, oh, you much better, he told me the same thing. So I went to the courthouse where I spoke to meet him. I said, I got to buy some time here. And so three or four o', clock, whatever time, it was hot in Miami and great big marble pillow sticking up from the courthouse. I kind of got behind one and I saw him coming three car load, just like they did federally. [01:33:16] Speaker B: Great. [01:33:16] Speaker A: And they got him in the middle and they got the machine guns. And they looking this way and they looking out. And they stopped right in front of me. Two steps down. They looking all this way. And I came down, I hit the top of that car. [01:33:28] Speaker B: Bam. [01:33:31] Speaker A: Hey. Yeah, they went crazy in there. They turning around, trying to find work. [01:33:37] Speaker B: That's not nice. [01:33:39] Speaker A: And I said, see how easy it would be? [01:33:43] Speaker B: I'm sure they loved you for that. [01:33:46] Speaker A: They were already fans of yours anyhow. I think when they got over, found out they weren't bomb, they were. [01:33:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true, too. [01:33:55] Speaker A: So I said, I'm having trouble with a lawyer. Well, use mine. Use mine. We'll see, you know. So, all right. Took his card. [01:34:04] Speaker B: Barry says, this I took. [01:34:06] Speaker A: Use his lawyer. He went back. So I said, all right, Barry. So I went Festival Restaurant and Carl Gables at night. And Barry probably knew I was be there. And he came in with Debbie. And it was on my birthday, 1986, I guess it was. Yeah, January 26th. And we was about finished, so we waited for them. And then I went over and had dessert with him. And I just hugged Bear's neck. I said, my friend, they gonna kill you. Oh, no. I said, barry, listen, look at me. They gonna kill you. [01:34:40] Speaker B: He really wasn't worried. [01:34:42] Speaker A: I don't know. He was arrogant. Sucker just. He would bait the police in Louisiana. They ate him. They marched by his camp coughing, all of them, to make sure sucker would dead. Yeah, y' all ain't got sense enough to catch me what you burned up. Just go with gas. [01:35:00] Speaker B: Well, you have to have a little bit of that gumption, right, to be in that business anyway, right? [01:35:05] Speaker A: I don't know. I didn't have it. I didn't bother him. [01:35:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, and you would have known. I mean, you already did know. Hey, you cross these fools like this and take all these pictures, and Colombians don't hang out and wait for you. [01:35:18] Speaker A: Exactly. So anyway, we went. Mario and I took children, went to Brazil, and a few months later, he killed him. [01:35:28] Speaker B: Assassinated the Colombians. [01:35:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:35:30] Speaker B: Assassinated him. Yeah. There's a version of this that doesn't make it here. The part I only send to the mailing list Community early before it goes anywhere else. Free links in the description for those who want to be on the inside. And so you're still close with this kid? Talk to him anytime. [01:35:47] Speaker A: They just. He just. [01:35:48] Speaker B: You ever talked to Pablo's kid? [01:35:51] Speaker A: No, I didn't. I didn't. He was a baby then, so I. Yeah, and was, too, but I don't know. I talked to him. If you wanted To. I just, I don't know. Yeah, he just, the. My daddy was Pablo Escobar. That's all he's got going for him. [01:36:06] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. I was just curious if you guys have ever crossed paths or whatever. And so I'm curious then too, obviously, prison became a big part of your life, and I want to be respectful of your time. But also you have a lot to say about it that I think is important. [01:36:21] Speaker A: Okay. [01:36:22] Speaker B: And you know, be. And I say me from the other side of the law. I mean, I only, only a stint of my livelihood was done in law enforcement and I was an undercover guy that infiltrated. And I have a particular fondness for guys that I learned to appreciate because, you know, whether it's a different race, different cultures, whatever, everybody, you know, the, the good people realize that, hey, we can all get along, there's something in common. But I think for a long time, and for most people, they miss the fact that, hey, but if you're, if you're a killer or you're a gang member, you're a trafficker, you're whatever. And they put these categorized people in this other box and say, well, but certainly those are criminals and we have nothing in common with them. And it was my experience that we absolutely still do. There's that, there's that part of them that compels them to, to commit the crimes that they do. And sometimes it's just your environment, you know, where you grew up or whatever, and then you have a completely different story. But I felt like there was so much in common and your story about the DEA agent being on the other side, you could have been friends, man. I actually did become friends with a lot of these people and stayed friends when they were, you know, in the penitentiary and everything or in the feds. So I would, I would love to hear about your experiences once you got into prison. I mean, aside from the fact that you've escaped from prison three times or so, but your relationships with the people and, and what types of people that you learned about in there. What was the most eye opening experience through your long prison stint? [01:38:06] Speaker A: Well, I'd like to just kind of back up a little bit. We have a broken system here. No doubt about badly, badly broken. Compared to Australia and Germany, it's disgustingly bad. I believe that we should go back to the old law. I believe Deuteronomy in the Bible, it says if anybody testifies against another person and he's testifying a lot, that he would receive the same sentence that his victim would have. So The DEA on all the stuff that they did, they were completely fair. I didn't see one line. They said, well, when a prosecutor stands up and screams at the jury, did you kill Bill Bob? You didn't know Bill Bob? Jurors already heard it. That fool got up in front of me and talked about the tons of heroin that I had brought into the country. And he kept. And heroin. And he couldn't bring. Forget him. He couldn't bring himself, say, marijuana. He kept yelling, heroin. And my lawyer was a good one. He put up. He said, I'm from Missouri. Put up or shut up. Like he's going to fight. [01:39:28] Speaker B: There's a difference. [01:39:29] Speaker A: And judge had her. He's a black judge. He put his head down. Dang. Your left. So shouldn't be allowed. [01:39:38] Speaker B: Right. [01:39:39] Speaker A: And in Germany, you have five judges, and in Australia, three. And well, on the second appeal, the first one, and I'm telling you, they have rehabilitation programs, work programs, all kinds of stuff, and they help people. It's a whole different world. I came in there and the director of the prison brought me and had a cup of tea with him in his office, mahogany. And he said, now, Reeves, we are here to keep you. We're not here to punish you. When the judge give you that sentence, it's a punishment to be in prison, away from your family. You behave yourself. You get along well here. I'm sorry you got a life sentence, but you're here a long time. [01:40:22] Speaker B: It sounds really logical. [01:40:24] Speaker A: What a nice man. Yeah. [01:40:26] Speaker B: And there's a guy from the other side again, who sees you as a human person. Yeah. And that was an experience that later on, when you went to trans. Transferred over to an American prison. Didn't even compare. [01:40:43] Speaker A: It was like heaven and hell. I mean, they put us. Put me in a Life report at 300 of us, and everybody in there had to be doing life. And they let us have the Oval. Two hours by ourself. And hardly anybody went out to. They smoked their cigarettes and do that thing. And I would run the two hours. It was just on the green grass, really nice places to chin up. Bars. And it was just. It was all right. And six men in a. In a nice apartment. Would you add your own room, 15ft by, like 9 or 10ft wide bed and television, remote control, your shower, your toilet, all separate in a nice. It cost nothing to build those things out of concrete. The bed, desk, everything was just nice concrete. And you had a key to your door with a thick door like that. And of course, the guards had their key to it. And we had a front door to other people couldn't come in and steal. The six of us could lock our door. We usually didn't, but. And they give us a $360 voucher for food per week. And then you would order it, and they would bring the food. And you cooked your own food. [01:41:54] Speaker B: You learn how to budget. [01:41:57] Speaker A: And I was older, and you can. You can eat well. I mean, you can eat well at $60 a week there. And of course, you. You got to eat some beans and rice, but not all together, you know, chicken. Just that sort of stuff that you can make it tasty. And so I cook for 18 years. So. And I said, if you don't cook it pretty good, somebody tell you about it. I didn't do it all the time, but get creative. Yes. So just that. [01:42:27] Speaker B: And. [01:42:27] Speaker A: And then I had two years of Shakespeare acting. Lovely lady. I just loved her. She came in. It was every day. We just went to the theater and practiced acting. And then I stayed and I learned to set tile and lay bricks and all kinds of stuff. They had all kind of carpenter stuff. I did every one of them. [01:42:50] Speaker B: So what do you say to people who would actually detest this story that you're telling about you should be punished? And they don't care about torture or. You know, we have so many Texas state prisons now. They're like 70. Don't even have an air conditioning unit installed. And, you know, that's. And they don't have any. Any empathy for. For people. What do you say to them, though, [01:43:15] Speaker A: the people that all. I get that every day. I get my views and the comments and people sue it. And I just say, remember to take that plank out of your own eye. Do you remember that? You know what that talking about? [01:43:28] Speaker B: No. [01:43:29] Speaker A: He's talking about Jesus. He was just talking to him. And that was one of them. He said, before you criticize your neighbor, he's got the speck in his eye. Take the plank out of your own eye first. [01:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's just a lack of perspective. Right. Because I think it's just ignorant. Yeah. Your warden at the first place explained it perfectly. This isn't the same. You getting an acting class or learning a new language or linking up and playing backgammon with friends is nothing like being at home and being able to do that. You're still confined to a concrete cell. [01:44:06] Speaker A: It's not bend over and spit them. Reeve. You. What I'd always say, is it still in the center? You go to hell. [01:44:16] Speaker B: At least you get a positive Response. That's proper. Yeah. So I mean, I think that's what people miss is that perspective, is that it's, you know, they just, they just [01:44:28] Speaker A: sad people, they just trolls and miserable people everywhere. [01:44:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:44:32] Speaker A: And I think that good people would have a little different. But in my 33 years in prison, I've seen some very evil people. Evil to the bone. [01:44:43] Speaker B: So where are they? Where are most of them? Are they inmates or are they jailers? [01:44:47] Speaker A: Are they both inmates, But I've seen some, a few guards that were just evil too, but most of them are not. But you get in maximum security prison, you get some bad people. [01:44:59] Speaker B: So when you've talked about the types of people that get ignored or don't get proper treatment and stuff, who belongs in American prisons and who doesn't belong, how would you, would you change the way that lines are drawn 100%. What would you do? [01:45:17] Speaker A: First off, I would make a mental illness program in the United States like Jimmy Carter had until Nixon destroyed it. He stopped them. Of course it would be an abused 100%. Just like Medicare and all that being abused now. [01:45:32] Speaker B: Right. [01:45:32] Speaker A: But these people need some help. And I would say the men need vasectomies too. That stuff is hereditary. A great portion of the mental illness is. And I got a real wow on this one about my daughter's a doctor and she delivered a baby from a 10 year old girl. Incest. Wow. We have so much of that in the world. You watch it, these homeless people, tens and tens of thousands of them walking the streets and crapping in the bushes and whatever it is, it's a shame on America. It's a shame that we have it. And I would say that most of the, a good portion of those are mentally ill or got some trouble with them right now. They need some help. And we need not be worried about some of the stuff that we wasting money on and putting on our own people. Clean those people up. And then I know that it won't start in America, but it'll start in China or Russia or somewhere else that a woman will have to have a permit to have a baby. If you can't support yourself or you're a drug addict, are you mentally ill? You know, you shouldn't be bringing little children in the world. We have, I believe about 300,000 a year babies going to foster care. [01:46:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:46:58] Speaker A: Plus the orphans, those little children, nobody love them. Yeah. They just, it's just terribly, terribly sad. And I see these people got a dog and a little baby carriage. I said how much better it would Be if they go get one of these little children and take it for an ice cream. But they won't do it. It's not popular. It's not like. [01:47:20] Speaker B: Well, a massive undertaking too. I mean, it's big responsibility, but so important. [01:47:25] Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean, you could just do it once a week. Just something right to care. That's getting off of the subject. But we need a mental health program. And then I would certainly have a trade school right in the dead center United States. And it would be big. I mean big. And if a young man or any man comes in there and he's stolen a car and the penalty is five years, I'd give him an aptitude and test and say, we need plumbers. You make, you make the grade. You want to be a plumber, you want to go to prison. It's a great choice. Now then, plumber making $200,000 a year, he don't need to deal a car to make 5,000 when he gets out. Right. When you. Your sentence is not five years. Your sentence is 10 years if you misbehave. But you can go home when you get to be a certified plumber. [01:48:22] Speaker B: It's a great idea. [01:48:24] Speaker A: Course it clean. It cleaned the whole world up. [01:48:28] Speaker B: And it would. It would certainly define the people that were willing to put in the work to do the right thing and the people that weren't. Which begs back into my question, which is, you know, there are some people that you met that are so evil that like, this guy's gone, Please don't let him out. [01:48:44] Speaker A: Never. [01:48:45] Speaker B: Right? Right. [01:48:45] Speaker A: Never. [01:48:46] Speaker B: I met people like that too. I was like, yes, I'm friends with a lot of these guys, but I'm also terrified that a lot of these guys are going to get back out [01:48:53] Speaker A: and they should never, ever. I'm not against death penalty a bit in the world. Nobody killed my family and stuff. They're going to keep him 60 years on death row. That's terrible. But it's still something. Yeah, so. But we had black Bob. He killed a man, cut him open, ate his heart while it was still beaten. Put the corpse under my bed before I got there. And he. 17M unit, Mount Bach Penitentiary. [01:49:22] Speaker B: He did it in prison. [01:49:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, but he killed other people too. I'm sure he is black. I mean, but he was black Latino, and his mustache dropped down like kung fu. And he could play chess really good. And I'd play with him and I'd say, wake up, Bob. He wouldn't move and beat me. These are people that are in there and had stick them. Steve, he killed 13 people supposedly while he was in there. And went in for about three years. Kill somebody, get somebody, go back in the back, couple of years, get out. And that man could paint all. He painted clowns behind razor wire on oil. I would have bought one, but I just didn't want to have any memory of him, Right. So I was having coffee one morning. Oh, no. I got up at 6 o'. Clock. I must wait just a minute. So you get your coffee cup and walk all the way down the little catwalk. I'm on the third floor and there's a landing up there. And it's got a red lever that you pull it out. It's almost steam water. And you put it on your instant coffee. And you go back to your cell. And there's usually 10, 15 men up there getting their cup of coffee. And you say, good morning, men. Pretty quiet in the morning that time. The doors all open at one time. Yaw clump. And so I walked in and my friend Phil was coming the other way. And he says, you don't want to go down there, Roger. I said, what is it? He said, you don't want to see. I do want to see, too. So I went on down. Nobody there. Landing 20ft. And I saw what I see. Nothing. But you ain't. Something's going on because ain't nobody here. So my hot water. I really want some hot water for my coffee. So I go there and turn it. And I see Steve stick him, Steve over in the corner. And he just comes in the TV room and just turned to channel. Y' all know I watched my lounge at 3 o'. Clock. I wasn't scared him. I just didn't want to kill him. It's just like if you fool him, you gonna right. You don't go to. [01:51:19] Speaker B: It's. He's a sociopath. [01:51:20] Speaker A: Leave the pole. [01:51:21] Speaker B: Yep. [01:51:21] Speaker A: And so he. He turned around and come towards me. And it looked like a car spring was through his chest and out his back. Somebody had got him on his bunk. When that door opened. They come through and plug it come through his body. Wow. [01:51:39] Speaker B: Whoa. [01:51:40] Speaker A: Right to the mattress, whatever the little mattress was, that thick bottom of it, nothing on it. And he walked up to me and he said, and like a little boy, said, can you help me? I know, Steve, buddy, I don't believe I can help you. And he turned and walked off. Can anybody help me? Damn it about break your heart. And he went over there to the rail. And I kind of got back around. I know the shit's fixing hit. [01:52:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:52:06] Speaker A: I want to get back to myself. So he leaned over the rail and the blood starts coming out of his mouth. And it goes down by the guards with a shack down there and spatter on floor. The floor in the guard. It's a panic button. And boy, they come through the door. And the fat women and the fat men and all of them, they come stomping up that trail. I mean, fat, 300 pounds of God husband and wives working overtime and all. Shit. [01:52:29] Speaker B: Oh my gosh. That's a whole nother story. But is part of the problem. [01:52:33] Speaker A: Absolutely right. And Steve boss, he was a painting house. And that guy was like about 35 years old. And he comes right up to Steve. He ain't seen it yet either. And he gets just as close to him as this and he sees that piece of metal sticking through his chest. He has a heart attack and drops dead. [01:52:52] Speaker B: Oh my. [01:52:53] Speaker A: I'm watching him crumble to the floor. And fault Steve falls right down on him. They said when Steve went to hell, he just reached in and grabbed that guy. So took it with him. [01:53:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:03] Speaker A: I don't know. So the story goes, we will lock down all. Everything we had from coffee, the tea. The sheets were stone over the bed. They stripped that whole place. Just punishing us. [01:53:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:17] Speaker A: It was two weeks before they sent us turkey sandwiches. You could see through the turkey. [01:53:23] Speaker B: So one. One bit of jackassery was causing the lockdowns of the. The whole amount of people. They punish everybody who were then pent up and then frustrated and getting out. And then guess what? It runs into the same. I've seen this. I've seen this firsthand also. [01:53:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:53:40] Speaker B: Where I couldn't even visit some guys was going to. To try to see and catch up with whatever. And I've drive six hours and get to the prison. And they had yet another lockdown. I mean, they've been locked down and may as well be in seg. I mean, for as long as these folks were locked down for a couple of jackasses that just want to keep screwing it up. [01:53:59] Speaker A: Yep. [01:54:00] Speaker B: That's all. [01:54:01] Speaker A: Now they should have a special prison for those people. [01:54:03] Speaker B: Right. [01:54:04] Speaker A: And have that middle of the country. Don't try to put them close to the house. Nothing. You're going to be that kind of a person. We're afraid of you. And we got a place for you. We got Supermax in Colorado for the federals. Right. And they got one up here too. And they do it. I guess it's terrible. But I and some of Those people there don't deserve it. They just, they just dangerous. [01:54:26] Speaker B: So also the. I wondered if you had any thoughts on that backing up to that federal cooperation thing. I've always had thoughts about this when, when they. I understand the premise behind, hey, you're going to cooperate, but you have to cooperate with everything we figure out. You're leaving out stuff, or you lie about one or two, whatever, then it undoes everything and you go and get hammered. I've watched guys that I'm, you know, once I lose them to the AUSA or whatever, the prosecutor is going to take the case and do whatever they're going to do. Right. I kind of have no control either. So I'm like rooting for these people to cooperate and whatever. And I've seen them be literally scared into recanting things they said and call them a lie even when they're not alive. But, you know, their families were threatened and different things. I always found it was smarter from law enforcement perspective to just say, look, I'll take anything that I can get as long as it's true. And if you want to come in and say, I'm willing to say this, this, this, but that's all I'm willing to say. And you can get a downward departure or a break of whatever degree based on the information you give, but you can also conserve giving out things that would further damn you. Do you feel like that would be. Would have been helpful to you because you end up did this. I mean, also, I mean, if you. We ignore the snitch culture, obviously, because your entire stay is going to be. [01:55:51] Speaker A: I can't even think that way. [01:55:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:55:53] Speaker A: If me and you go do something and I tell on you, I deserve whatever I get. [01:55:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:56:00] Speaker A: I mean, that's how I think about it. Right? Just you are a snitch or you're not. [01:56:05] Speaker B: Right? [01:56:05] Speaker A: Now some people I understand are just. They got two little babies at home and I had him to unload an airplane and he just like, Roger, I can't do seven years. I'm going to tell on you. I just cry on your birthday. I'm sorry, I understand that. But are there just a lot of tattoo. I mean, most of the people in the world will tell on you. [01:56:26] Speaker B: That's the case. That's the case. And that's what I'm saying is I think a lot of people have stuff that wouldn't show up on paper, but they're absolutely flipping on other people and [01:56:36] Speaker A: they will lie on the stand to make themselves sound good, of course. [01:56:41] Speaker B: Well, that's human nature too. They want to deflect and say, well, you know, it's not really me. Which is back to your Deuteronomy, of course. Don't lie about yourself either. And that's the main thing. [01:56:55] Speaker A: In my grand jury, there was a woman when we was going around the world. We give her a ride from Ibiza to somewhere. And anyhow, she got on the stand and testified that I had got my high school sweetheart pregnant with twin boys and I never would support them. And we had a machine gun shooting liquor bottles over the fan tail of our boat. Well, one thing, I didn't have a girlfriend. I was barefooted in high school. And we didn't have a machine gun. [01:57:24] Speaker B: Certainly not. [01:57:25] Speaker A: And my wife read that and got so upset about her. And Barry Seal said, mari, they'll say anything when they get on that stand. [01:57:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And you're right. Those fools need higher penance. [01:57:38] Speaker A: Yes. [01:57:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Getting out and re. Acclimating to life. I would. I would love to hear your. Your finishing story, your. Of your success story here, how you get out. I. I know I've heard people talk about colors and sensations and all kinds of things. Like when you got out and having been separated from Mari for so long, how did you re. Acclimate into normal life? [01:58:05] Speaker A: Well, it was. It was like coming up out of dark water for breath. And it was overwhelming. For three days I came in and Mari was there. I hadn't seen her in 19 years and I'd been in isolation down in Los Angeles. Couldn't even get a parole hearing. And I believe 11 people died in there with me. It was more people in Terminal island died from that Covid than any other federal penitentiary, maybe anywhere else. So when I got home, I got the prison clothes off after a hug and just get them off and. And I went in and she threw them down the garbage chute and got rid of that stuff. And I went in and showered and scrubbed myself raw. And she said, your clothes are in the. In the bedroom in there. So I went in there. They were all laid out on the bed. Those clothes were 50 years old. 40 years old. I did still fit 38 perfectly. [01:59:06] Speaker B: I love it. [01:59:07] Speaker A: And in the shirts were like. They were so nice. Was I ever this rich? [01:59:12] Speaker B: Apparently so. [01:59:13] Speaker A: Must have put on a shirt and slacks and shoes. Everything fit. And my shoes are polished, glistening. Mario polishes shoes. Yeah. And I took a step and the shoes came apart. I just cried. So I came back in there and I sat down at the table. She had a nice meal, cooked on board it was. And I couldn't eat. The tears just kept running down my cheek. And I said, mario, I'm not sad. I just don't know why. I'm just overwhelmed. And there was the same placemats we'd had for 60 years. There was a place. The dishes we bought when we first got married, the silverware that we had inherited, paintings on the wall that she had done, something that come from Holland, from her parents, all just like we left it. Wow. From 38 years ago. Wow. So it was. I just. I couldn't look at pictures of her, the children. I just would just cry. And I think about three days. Finally said, man up, you know. You sad? It's sad, yeah, but just. You don't have to live it again. So then we started walking, and she walked with me, and she walked fast. And we get off somewhere another and take the car and go a mile or two, and I'd sit down and say, I'm tired. Would you go get the car? [02:00:27] Speaker B: And she. [02:00:27] Speaker A: Oh, yes, of course. I could run backwards, you know. Yeah, we just had fun. That was getting that way and just getting used to it to. To drive again. You haven't driven in nearly 40 years. You'd be surprised. And pull over in that lane, there's a car blowing at you, you know, [02:00:45] Speaker B: I got to drive with you for a short. It was all good, though. [02:00:48] Speaker A: And fly airplanes. I hadn't flown airplane in 40 years, and I went and had to get five hours training or to go recertified. So I didn't fool with that radio. A young fella, he play that radio. I'll see if I can fly this thing. I greased it on every time. It didn't matter. So anyhow, I could rent the place. I took Murray for a flight, and the transponder had one button it was real hard to push, and I didn't get the right number in. And so we had a jackass in the tower, and he wouldn't let me turn. So I'm going out over the Pacific in this ragged old 172. So I started turning. Do not turn. And I finally said, honolulu approach, what is your intention? That got there, too. I heard snickers all over the radio. They told me to turn around and go back to jackass land and call the faa. So I did, and I went home and called him. And he's giving me some lip. My say, hey, mister, I haven't flown an airplane in 40 years, but if you don't think I can fly one, Google the Name Roger Reeves. [02:01:58] Speaker B: So I'm sure they did. [02:02:00] Speaker A: They did. So when I went back out to the next time and I cranked it up and called that you, Roger, go out there and 17 left. We're going to take care of you today. So when I came back down, several of them was down there with books for me to sign. So we had a nice little party. [02:02:14] Speaker B: That's great. Real talk. If you create anything, your voice is your time. 11Labs reads your articles aloud in your voice, flawlessly, in seconds. Stop re recording links below. Go give it a shot. So a day in the life you guys are just living, retired. Are you finally able to look at the pictures of your kids? [02:02:33] Speaker A: Yes. I know you missed a lot looking at Murray, particularly when she was 40 and 50 and 60 and 70 and I wasn't there. Yeah, it was sad. It was, it was a, it was a tragedy. [02:02:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And you, you know, you've earned the opportunity to be emotional about that, but still being able to move on. And it's a fascinating thing with, with all of the stories. Obviously you have tons of stories. You have tons of, of stuff in the past that you've built a legacy upon. And this is part of the success story now that you have children that are turning into success stories and you and Mari have gotten back reunited and living life and enjoying yourself. What do you want people to take from all of these experiences that you talk about? What is, what is your, what message would you like for people to come away with having listened to you? [02:03:29] Speaker A: Wow. I, I'll say just a little bit different. I'm getting some offers or some nibbles to make a series of our life, Mars and I together. And I would like for it to put something good, something I've never told you how the experiences I've had, Christian rise or with God and the visions I've had and the prayers answered and what happened with all that in the spiritual realm. It's real unbelievable. And so we are just spirits in this body and it's wearing out right quick. We gonna go on for sure. [02:04:07] Speaker B: Yes, that's certain. That is one certainty. And I think, I mean, I certainly have learned a lot from spending time with you and just trying to understand the way you think and, and, and seeing you as a human being who's learned so much and gone through so much. So I, I for one, really appreciate all the time that you put in and anything I can do to support your cause, you know, let me know. I'm out here often, so hopefully we can get back together again. And bring Mari in the room, too. I'd love to talk with her. [02:04:38] Speaker A: Come on up Santa Barbara and visit. I'll make you some chain gang groceries. [02:04:41] Speaker B: There you go. That'd be easier for me to do the track, too. [02:04:44] Speaker A: And he says, what do you. What do you season this with? I say gunpowder. [02:04:49] Speaker B: You leave stronger. [02:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:04:52] Speaker B: Oh. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you. [02:04:55] Speaker A: For sure. [02:04:55] Speaker B: Thank you. [02:04:56] Speaker A: God bless you in every way. [02:04:57] Speaker B: Yes, sir. Thank you. What's it take? What you going to do? Success around the sandbox the second grade rules A confident fleet to make you do to make you do what they want when they won't fade A fool A diplomatic base is the one to see it through don't let those bigots take you off your game or just a lot of moves Sit here in the front seat Baby, ain't that sweet the dickens A little honey from the money be but don't pay the pool I make political magical potion A missing piece at the end of the game A slow roll See the truth in soul motion never found in 60 fr like motion the truth lies between blurry lines if you're going to.