Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
roger reeves one of the most prolific
drug smugglers in history
he worked for pablo escobar and jorge
ochoa
the leaders behind the medellin cartel
roger was the employer and close friend
of barry seal
the infamous drug smuggler who was the
main character in the movie
american-made
roger transported countless tons of
cocaine and marijuana
covering six continents he escaped
prison five times
was shut down in both mexico and
colombia and was tortured
nearly to death in a mexican prison
through all of this his wife mari the
love of his life
was there with him and when he was in
prison she waited
for him he recently got out of prison
where for many years he worked on his
memoir
called smuggler this podcast is an
exploration of a story
quick mention of our sponsors noom all
form
expressvpn four sigmatic and aidsleep
check them out in the description to
support this podcast let me say a few
words about roger reeves
pablo escobar and the war on drugs this
conversation with roger is unlike any
i've ever done
in the eyes of many including the law
roger is a criminal
a bad man who has added to the suffering
in the world
but he never directly engaged or
participated in the violence
unlike his bosses pablo escobar and
jorge ochoa
his crime was a transport of drugs i
thought about this
and about pablo escobar who was at once
both a brutal murderer
and a robin hood figure who helped the
poor and was loved by thousands
if not millions we sometimes idolize
murderers
and destroy good honest men we give
power and money to corrupt politicians
and dictators that starve and murder
their own people given this
i think about what makes for a good man
and what makes for a bad man
and who decides sitting across from
roger i saw a complicated man
but one who has kindness in his heart a
love for money
and adventure and a disdain for violence
again his crime was the transport of
drugs since 1971 the war on drugs has
cost us
one trillion dollars marijuana
legalization alone would save and make
13.7 billion dollars that could send
more than 650 000 students to public
universities every year
then there's a human stories of the 500
000 human beings sitting in prison for
drug-related offenses
and the 1.1 million on probation and
parole
their life is damaged or ruined beyond
repair
due to the prohibition of drugs there's
a lot more to be said
about the damage done by the war on
drugs but when reading about roger's
story and talking to him
i couldn't escape the thought that while
society wants to label him a criminal
and a bad human being there are much
worse men out there
who we give a path to even give power to
even men who hold political office or
run companies
i also think about my role as an
interviewer sitting across a man like
roger
in these interviews in life in many ways
i continue to be myself
a person who like dostoyevsky is the
idiot seeks the good in all people
but is hurt by it on occasion and maybe
is destroyed by it
in the end i'm not naive but i'm also
optimistic
and have hope for humanity that's who i
am
and that's what these conversations are
i hope you join me
and i hope you understand that i come
from a place of love
this is the lex friedman podcast and
here's my conversation
with roger reeves you are
one of the most prolific drug smugglers
in history
what would you say motivated you money
power
the thrill or was it something else
money but
isn't there a point where you've had
more money than you can possibly know
what to do with
was it always more money you know
i had plenty of money several times and
i think it's sort of like if you was in
las vegas and you had the
slot machine handled down and the gold
coins were stumbling around you and you
had sweepers
bagging them up when would you let it go
but isn't some part of that the thrill
then oh it was a lot of
real sometimes way too much you made uh
certainly tens of millions of dollars
probably much more what memorable
experience
did having that much money make possible
for you so there's one thing is the
money
and the other thing is what that money
can buy
well i bought everything that i could
hide i bought
seven farms i owned uh the uh
the city the land where the city of
moreno valley california is
had an option on that land did the
planning and development of that
uh the most expensive corn in the world
yachts ships airplanes galore
that bring you happiness no absolutely
not
in fact i think i'm happier now i know
i'm happier now so looking back
would you do it the same way all again
no way really even the thrill of it
not even the thrill of it it wasn't
worth 33 years in prison
being away from my lovely family
so money what about the power just being
on top of the world where nobody can
not the the governments
the police all the big bad agencies
chasing you and you could do whatever
the heck you wanted
as far as having to look over your
shoulder everywhere you
went and every phone call you made make
sure that you was
naked with somebody in the ocean before
you talked
it's rather uncomfortable yeah
um i like to make phone calls the same
way
what was it like meeting and working
with pablo escobar
the leader of the medellin cartel he was
just uh
just seemed like a gentleman when i met
him just like you and i sitting here
shook hands and
i had flown one load for a fella and uh
it didn't work out well the fellow that
i give it to got shot and it took a
while to get my money and they didn't
put as many kilos on the plane as
they're supposed to and
so i wasn't going to work with them
anymore and my contact down there
introduced me to
jorge ochoa and uh we went up
and in vegata we went up and the gate
opened and we was escorted in they must
have been
50 men out in the yards a hission rail
on an old house
and we was escorted right in and they
was a beautiful woman in there i mean
gore drop dead beautiful and she made us
a cup of coffee
then was ushered in to see jorge ochoa
and he had 12 telephones on his desk and
all of them was a different color
and he shook hands was very friendly
spoke english
and he said that each one of those
telephones were represented in another
city in the united states this is
chicago and this is new york if i ring i
knew who's calling
and so we chatted a while and uh he
asked me what type of airplanes i had
and what experience i had flying across
the u.s border
and i told him he seemed pleased with it
and he called the lady in and she went
next door
and came pablo escobar and he introduced
me to pablo escobar and
he asked the same questions again and uh
i answered them and i said
and i i asked them how much they paid
and they paid five thousand dollars a
kilo
to haul it and uh so that's how much he
put on the plane he's 300 500
that's one and a half two and a half
million dollars for an eight-hour trip
sounded pretty good to me and we're
talking about cocaine
cocaine we're talking about colombia
colombia and cocaine and medellin cartel
and uh jorge ochoa was one of the what
would you say
founding members of the probably the
brains behind the whole thing
the brains and spoke good english yes
and they were nice people
really nice people were you scared not
at all
what's wrong with your mind that you
weren't scared here's some of the most
dangerous men
in this world and you weren't scared
well i knew i was going to do exactly
what i said i was going to do
murray and the children were down there
they went down and they stayed in the
hotel
five star and treated royally on my
first load
and they just did ask security to make
sure that i wasn't a dea agent
so i uh i did the first load and
they would they can say they were
hostages but they really weren't it was
just
insurance so there was some integrity to
the way they operated
completely i mean straight straight up
the money was ironed and bad banded
and just right and the numbers were
never once
anything wrong with it what would you
attribute that honesty to
within the their own moral system and
their own set of rules
why weren't people crossing the line and
shaving off the top
and and uh injecting chaos into the
system to where
it would be unpredictable and people
would be dishonest and greedy and all
those kinds of things
that's true most people are but there's
certain people at the top of the food
chain
that they don't need that and if they're
completely honest
then they don't have to think of
remember the lie they told
and and plus they just honest to start
with they're they're they making plenty
of money
they was making as much money as i did
i uh i'll tell you how that um that came
about
i understand that 10 000 people were
killed every year in medellin colombia
and what they were doing they didn't
they didn't have any organization
and uh if one fellow had 10 kilos and he
wanted it shipped to
new york he would tell his friend and
his friend said sure i'll ship it i have
a pilot and i'll ship it up
and then he would look in the newspapers
oh 40 kilos was busted in new jersey
i'm so sorry yours got busted bang bang
he's dead
so here comes jorge ochoa and the
three ochoa brothers and pablo escobar
and gotcho and
they decided that we will make an
insurance company
that we would charge you ten thousand
dollars to take it to your
contact in miami
if it gets lost anywhere between the
time i put it on the airplane
or the time you give it to us and the
time we give it to your man
we will replace it in colombia for you
so there was no way anybody could lose
and i understand they got a hundred tons
piled up
under that insurance program and i was
right there the first day
so i had all the work i could do i would
land in this i said when you want me to
come back
we waiting on you senor well let me ask
a difficult question uh
some see escobar as a brutal murderer
and some see him as
um maybe a robin hood like figure who
helped the poor
how do you see the man both of them i
think he started out to be honest would
help the poor
and then they had a war down there and
they blew up and killed his people
and uh the country was divided almost
equally three ways
they had the uh the military
they were just as much into it as
anybody and then you had the
farc guerrillas they had about a third
of the country
and then you had the contras it was like
the white farmers
and uh they're the ones that i was
dealing with and they were at war with
one another
and so if one of them started killing
their people i'll kill some of yours too
so that that's how it happened and then
when i heard about pablo escobar
blowing up that airliner and killing
those women and children i was sorry i
ever shook his hand
that's that's brutal murder so you would
say
escobar is not a good man not at all
he's terrible
now looking back on it when i met him he
was good
did just exactly what he said he would
do could he be a bad man and a man you
can trust
are those absolutely you could trust him
yes
so from your perspective in terms of
business
he was reliable he was honest had
integrity
you could work with him oh he felt safe
completely
we flew up and uh to his ranch and even
we brought out motorcycles to start with
and can you ride a motorcycle of course
i can ride a motorcycle
so i took off across the grass and there
was a little ditch there
and the front wheel dropped in that
thing and i must have slid across that
grass 20 feet
before i got stopped he almost fell off
for his
bike waiting because they knew what it
was going to do and then we got on
horses
and went out there and pretended to
round up some cows
and he put a mac 10 machine gun pistol
over my shoulder
you know how to use this well i never
had but it was all right
i think it was like okay you got 10
bodyguards what do you need me for
so that's the kind of time we laughed
and talked and drove some cows over the
stumps
you said jorge ochoa was perhaps the
brains
of the medellin cartel
what was he like and why do you say he
was the brains
well he was a gentleman and i suppose he
shipped and don't tell me how many more
times of cocaine than pablo did
just in him and his brothers you could
tell by the they had on each
hl load they was in duffel bags and
there's big football shaped
uh fluffy stuff made with ether
and they would have three horns on it or
a rattlesnake or four x's on each bag
you kind of got to knowing which was
which was which and they shipped a lot
so um and he was just a gentleman i took
the family we went one weekend to his
ranch or his uh malaysia place
out near barangay and oh
we he just treated the family and his
family had
his younger brother wrote we made a bull
fight and
we had uh skiing and
little airplanes on floats on the water
it was really nice and he was really
nice
how do you make sense of the tension
that a man could be a gentleman can have
integrity but also be a murderer
well murder is is a is a stronger word
than killing
can you explain the the the line the
gray area we're talking about
i mean i've just talking with jocko
willing and we talked a lot about
killing in the context of uh
military conflict and context of war
so there there's a line between murder
and killing that you can draw
what's the line that you're referring to
it's something similar
if you if people shooting at you and you
shoot back and kill him i don't that's
not murder whatsoever it's uh
he's trying to get away or out of the
situation
but if some woman don't pay you and you
send a hit man over
to to kill her and her children that's
that's that's murder that's murder
was jorge involved in those kinds of
things i don't think so at all it just
i mean he was he was just such a
gentleman he had a restaurant before and
and he was just smart i understand that
uh the first
10 kilos he sold he was sitting on them
on a motorcycle in the
in the sidelines in a parking lot when
the dea come in he sped away
so he didn't come back to america he was
just smart some people just have
are savvy and he was such a gentleman
and the whole family the mother and the
father
the two brothers their sister it was i
was there when she was kidnapped
and uh finally he kidnapped our
i guess 100 liters of the farc
and uh said all right and she don't come
back none of these are going to come
back
so they made a deal is there something
you can say about the power structure
the hierarchy of the
median cartel that you interacted with
was uh
was it a dictatorship where pablo ran
everything
was there a bunch of power centers was
it like a company
would you have ceo cto kind of thing and
then there's like managers and all those
kinds of things
what's the like how did it run from a
leadership perspective
i understand that about five of them got
together
and made this i would call it an
insurance company
and uh now known as the medellin cartel
and i didn't see any difference each one
of them had their own business
and their people from the jungle or
wherever made the cocaine gave it to
them
and they shipped it and uh so didn't it
didn't seem to be any
any power play between them at all but
my main contact was jorge ochoa
and pablo escort bar was right there and
i saw plenty of stuff for him too it's
strange
that they didn't betray each other
regularly
you know uh greed makes men betray each
other
how do you explain that how much
betrayal did you see
i didn't see any absolutely none
if if they shipped his 100 kilos he got
paid for it
if the other one uh shipped his i'm sure
they got paid for it
how do you explain that well there was
no need to
the money was just unbelievable you
think about 500 kilos in the plane
at fifty thousand dollars a kilo at the
time
and they paid five thousand dollars to
ship it
and they made five thousand without even
touching it they just had
somebody to load it onto the airplane i
gave it to their man in miami
they gave it to whoever it belonged to
by the uh
by the marks on the duffel bags so they
was making just
untold millions just uh
no reason but greed can blind men i
you know it's still
it's still strange to me that there was
not more betrayal
it speaks to something else perhaps
that's bigger than money
maybe maybe not but it seems like just
like in the casino like you mentioned
uh we um get accustomed to the
whatever level of money we have we get
accustomed very quickly yes
and then there's a tension that's
natural between human beings
and when that tension combined with
money
combined with power combined with like
you mentioned
beautiful women and a bit of violence
it seems that um betrayal should be
commonplace
but it's not it was not at all like
carlos later
i don't know he betrayed anybody but he
started that he was
running cocaine through the bahamas and
he had the island
i didn't go i was offered to fly with a
dc3 with that but i didn't like it
so i had my route through the old wheels
in louisiana
and uh so i you weren't going to change
but uh he
he talked a lot and i don't know he
betrayed but they didn't like him
yeah so as you expand there could be
tensions that
yeah that lead to conflict colombia was
like you said an ultra violent place
how did you survive who protected you i
was a hero
they they liked me i mean i was just
treated royally all i did
i would come over el banco there's a
radio station at the forks of the
magdalena river
i believe at 7 20 if i remember right on
the am and i'd fly in at 10 000 feet and
i'd see below me there'd be a cessna
and i'd wiggle my wings and he'd wiggle
his and i'd fall in behind him and we
might go 100 200 miles
i'd land on some jungle strip or some uh
banana plantation and they'd fuel me up
i could eat
steak in the night it was just like
treated royally and
i mean take off the next morning
whenever i wanted to it was just like
that was protected
and i was i was honored guest
it wasn't anything like in that movie
putting you putting a gun to your head
and taking your sunglasses
and betting so one time i uh complained
to um
jorge ochoa that the runway was pretty
short that they were using
and i went back down and it looked like
los angeles international they had
bulldozers in there
had that thing 5 000 feet long just like
just
the next week it was all done the jungle
was gone and clay put up there and
and all the while you were not afraid
you were treated like royalty
yes there i was i was afraid when i
landed in the united states
well maybe let's go back to the
beginning what was the first time
you uh flew an airplane with drugs on it
tell me the story the first time you
smuggled drugs all right i uh
i flew down to halapa vera cruz
with a cessna 182. and uh
we landed the town it was a lovely town
and this an old town looked like
bible times people women were washing
their clothes in the streets and
with stone basins in the stream running
through i just was just
dumb struck it was just so pretty and i
went in a church and a catholic church
and it had the stations of the cross
all carved magnificent i'd never seen
that
and i come home and told murray about
that that was just almost brought tears
to my eyes it was so beautiful
and three o'clock the next morning i
went out to the airport and taxed it
down to the taxiway and
there was a guard came out and uh
wanted to know what i was doing and i
pulled out i was on the i was on the
fire department at redondo beach
california
so i pulled out my wallet and then and
it was the fire department bash and oh
he shook my hand was so glad
so i taxed it on down and we loaded up
about 400 pounds in the plane
and uh came on back and i was uh running
the headwinds more than i thought
and i landed on a little strip you're
talking about on the way back
on the way back on the way north after
we loaded up early in the morning
and uh for only time i ever got vertigo
the mountains were coming down at a
30 or 40 degree angle and uh milky was
where he was overhead and somehow i
wanted that airplane to be
level with the stars and it got it got
me
it's just a phenomenal pile of house
vertigo the only time i ever had it was
on that load
so anyway the wind was on the nose of
that cessna i wasn't going to make it to
the dry lake where i had fuel
so i landed on a little bitty strip
there was a little house that was caved
in and there was a little boy
named lazarus about six or seven years
old and he was heard and some goats
so we put the marijuana in that house
and the man stayed with it so while i
flew into some town
and got fueled and came back we sat down
with the lunch that i brought back and
little lads were sat there and ate with
us and we had a good time we loaded them
back and came over
oh wow i wonder where he is now
what was it like to fly maybe describe
the details of
do you have to fly low um is there
details
that are unique to this experience of
flying an
airplane with drugs on it on board all
right well
one of the mistakes that just thousands
hundreds and hundreds and thousands of
pilots make they don't stop at the
border
going down and get their permit once you
get a permit to be in mexico
you've got it for six months you can go
anywhere any fishing village any little
town any little place
show them this and you're welcome if you
don't have that you go straight to jail
so you go down there and you think okay
they're going to have fuel for me to
come back and so forth oh sorry senor
that was uh had a rusty leak in it we
don't have any
well you better be able to go to town
and get it yeah so
that's what i did and when i was coming
back for
several years i would fly uh fly up at
mexicali and cross the border right at
calexico
just i would act like i was landing on
the clexico side just after dark
and then i'd zip across the border and i
go over to the salton sea and
go below sea level 100 and something
feet i believe 170 feet
and come on up and go out there and
above palm springs and
land out 29 palms in the desert and put
my
stuff under joshua tree and fly into
town and get my pickup and go on back
out and get it
and that was fun and then it got really
dangerous they had a
operation starlight i believe was the
name of it and they caught a lot of
pilots coming across the border
so i changed it and by that time i was
flying bigger planes i was flying beach
18s
and i would refuel in moulihae on the
halfway down on the
baja peninsula and then over in the
middle
20 miles from the nearest road was a was
a goat ranch where they milked goats and
made cheese
and i would go there and unload the load
coming up out of anywhere in southern
mexico
and i would land there and a guy named
juan would uh
we'd put the put the marijuana under the
trees and i'd fly in the mullet
and they'd wash my plane and gassed it
up my
i'd ease a lunch and rent a room for a
few hours and take a nap and shower
and then go back afternoon and fill up
and then i would go northwest
out of there and fly 200 miles off the
coast of the island of guadalupe
and from there i would fly on a more
northwestern heading about 300 miles out
over the pacific
and then i would come in behind the
santa barbara islands down low and then
i'd come up
and go out in the desert and land and i
did that
for the rest of the marijuana trips
what was the hardest part about flying
those routes
the hardest part was getting good
marijuana
so the hardest part isn't the flying
flying just like driving your car down
but then i had people that would bring
me on strips that were just
unworthy of an airplane right when i'd
land on a highway
and uh and this and in the rainy season
i'd come back to land again and the guy
wouldn't think about it have like little
hills on both sides and
the wings right there well the grass and
the weeds would grow up and it sounded
like
i mean it sounded like tearing the
airplane apart when those wings hit
mowing the grass down both
both shoulders of the airplane the weeds
grew up high in the tropics
so some of that stuff was bad and oh
getting bad gasoline and
telling me that land here and the light
and and
knock the wheels off when you land oh
you should have landed a little
further up here saying you know they
ditched down yeah you know
that sort of thing what was it like
landing on a highway and
and when did you have to land on the
highway i landed a highway most of my
life most of the times
in mexico first time i went down there
was a place called picchulingi
and they had a 900-foot strip and
i would fly down and i'd carry gasoline
wing with me and
mari and i would go to the grocery store
and buy all kind of little goodies and
candies and toys
to bring to the children and uh
that sand strip in the in the bend of a
river
was just too short to take off with a
load so there was a young man there
named pedro must not weighed much over
100 maybe 120
pounds and he'd get in a plane with me
and
he'd direct me 20 30 40 miles away to a
highway
and the people walking and the people
would
pull out in a two-ton truck with a
machine gun on it and a bunch of
guys with their arms were just and
they'd block the road and then another
one block it up about a mile away
not land right over that truck and
they'd load me up it looked like a
bucket brigade when the marijuana coming
i'd shake hands with all of them and i'd
take off right over the other trucks
and sometimes maybe 20 30 40 cars lined
up i
one time i remember a patrol car a
highway patrol car
he didn't have his lights on to go right
over him and then
when i started flying to louisiana the
bridge over the mississippi
river there were several contractors
that went broke and that thing was out
for years
and about five miles from the river was
flashing red lights
and a detour and then the swamp on both
sides of it in the middle of it we've
grown up with 20
feet trees and that was like
an international runway from anywhere in
the world
so i landed on that and over and over
those red lights just like the end of a
runway
and then the next morning we'd go out
and scrub the marks off the highway
where i'd landed
before daylight wow let's go to
somebody you've known well somebody who
is
who's also a drug smuggler is barry seal
who is barry seale how did you meet him
bear seal is a friend of mine
uh mari and i and the children went down
in uh
honduras and we went up uh lake azul
i believe it was and was looking at a
ranch to buy i was looking for something
in central america where i'd have a
halfway place oh it was lovely we stayed
up there for some days and our clothes
got
muddy and we went in the river and all
kind of thing so we got to san pedro
sula
and uh was going back to new orleans so
uh went to to the cleaners to get our
clothes and most all of them was in
there
and they got old senor they'll be ready
tomorrow morning we're not ready now
well the plane leaves it
nine o'clock or whatever so
i told murray to for her and the
children to go into the airport because
it'd be
easier for one just on a standby flight
so i went to the
laundromat for the clothes and they were
ready and they was a pile up and i put
them on my back and got into taxi and
the old taxi would drive him with it and
i'd give him a hundred dollars to go
faster and he just blew his horn
more rapid
finally we got to the airport and i
jumped out and ran around on the tarmac
and
here's a brand new 727 taxiing out
oh no so i'm waving to the pilot and
this young fella he waves back
then i see mari's face in the cockpit
and the nose goes down where he puts on
brakes and he laughs and he puts some
stairwell out
and i run for the stairwell and he pulls
it back up and goes like a hitchhiker
gonna pick you up and go
go again then he put it out and i got on
an
old crowd clapped and i'm coming home
with that load of clothes
so i go way down in the middle and the
plane's full
and miriam my daughter's about nine
years old then
and she was sitting in the middle and by
the window was seal of course i didn't
know it
and i sat in the middle and uh we took
off and
the wheels come up with clunk and then i
got up about 5000 feet we had a little
click link
and she said what was that daddy i said
he just turned on his autopilot
that fellow reached over and i looked at
him i said he looks like c.i.a or fbi
something he ain't supposed to be here
clear blue eyes
gentlemen looking man and he
he said you fly these things i said i
got a few hours mister he said i i fly
them too or something other than they
said my name barry seal and he reached
over miriam
shook hands and we got to talking and
i thought no choice of seats on this
it's just open seating so
but i don't believe him one bit
and he started talking about he just got
out of jail that morning just got out of
prison
and i said uh-huh
and he told me he'd been a pilot with a
twa in this another
and uh told me what he was for and so we
had a nice
conversation with a couple hours to new
orleans i didn't believe him
yeah so he got off in front of us and
what a crowd of people
to meet him an old mother and a wife and
little
children hanging on to him crying and
hugging and kissing him i said
he was telling the truth
so i reached over and gave him a little
piece of paper i had maury to write it
out with our address i said barry i
might have some work for you because
he's in jail for
he got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine
and a small plane
and so he served a year and that was
from colombia
i don't know where he comes from he got
caught in honduras probably refueling
but he'd be he'd been in prison down
here before for bringing explosives to
the um
cuban contras and he lost his job with
the airlines
and then later on i found out he was
xcia and george bush seniors protege and
had a thousand parachute jumps and was
there
he was a hot shot there's a million
questions
i want to ask here but uh maybe can we
linger on a little bit longer what was
your relationship with him like
you you were a drug smuggler he's a drug
smuggler
um your friends
how often do you guys talk how often do
you work together
what was the relationship like well i
back up and just finished where i
started off there
he uh i gave him a thanks bear i may
have some work for you i know i got some
work for you
and uh i said come out santa barbara
and so i don't know a week or two later
he flew out and
went to our house and stayed with us a
couple of days and i had a
almost brand new uh arrow commander 690b
that thing was turboprop and it was hot
it's the hardest thing i'd ever had so i
said
let's go barry let's see what you can do
so i'm sorry i said that
we got about 9 000 feet and he was like
one of them blue angel pilots
he wrung that thing out yeah you know
that's enough and then um
he did the falling leaf that's where you
cut the engines and the plane
falls from side to side i saw bob hoover
do that in the air show once
and that's the only person i ever saw do
it and i was
my hand was white knuckle hanging onto
the seat you shut off the engine
yeah he shut off the engines and landing
flying side by side like this
how do you explain that was he just uh a
wild man
or was he sufficiently skilled to wear
sufficiently skilled
absolutely he knew what he was doing i
can get a plane from one spot to another
and i guess i'm known as a good pilot
but that guy
it was aerobatic
[Laughter]
so anyway he stayed with us a couple of
days and then i told him i said this
plane needs uh
needs tank and i guess i got some work
done in colombia needs to come back to
louisiana
and i need 2 500 mile range he said i
got somebody in mina arkansas do that
and keep the mouse shut
so i gave him 10 000 and he flew away
and in a few days he called me and says
come to my house in
baton rouge so i went out to his house
in baton rouge and
i stayed with him for a few days and
that plane was tanked i mean beautiful
from
stem to stern i could went from bolivia
to canada with him
so uh he was uh then i hired him to fly
and uh he was funny i paid him a million
dollars a trip i beat him two thousand
dollars a kilo so
about a million ultra and i didn't get
paid
until they the people received it they
had to ship it to
chicago and new york and then the money
come back so it was a couple of
two or three weeks pipeline well i was
had to pay him
before before he'd go again i mean and
he bellyache
i mean he had moaning room so uh
one time i uh i gave him a million
dollars and i put it in a box real nice
so how big is a box that contains a
million dollars so we're talking about
bills hundred dollars it's not very big
you can put in a large briefcase
it weighs exactly 10 kilos each hbill
weighs a gram so you can weigh your
money
and almost get it exactly 10. 20
something pounds is a million dollars 22
pounds
22 pounds 100 bills but a hundred
and one dollar bills it's one ton two
thousand two hundred pounds
we didn't even accept them were you the
one that introduced barry seal to uh
pablo escobar
no i didn't introduce him at all and uh
he and i our deal was that you don't
meet my people i mean we just kind of
crossed you working for me
to fly the airplanes so he wanted these
panther conversions cost four hundred
thousand dollars each
with a storm scope and radar so i want
anything you want
what's that mean sorry to interrupt
panther conversions a panther conversion
was a
these people called panther they
took everything out from the firewall
the instruments and all them converted
them
and put q-tip propellers on them
four-bladed and you're
very quiet and the cia developed those
in southeast asia for
running behind the lines and that's
where barry had flown those things so he
knew about him
so hey that's what he wanted and that's
what we got him
how does that connect to pablo and so he
worked for you
and you got those upgrades i i think he
flew about 30 loads for me and then i
got arrested and
was better for everything in the world
got 35 years sentence
but let me back up a little bit barry uh
was our friend
uh mari and i befriend we should pause
real quick and say
mari is uh uh your wife
and we'll hopefully she'll uh we'll
convince her to join us
in a little bit she's the love of your
life and sort of she uh
weaves in and out of many of these
stories that you tell
yes she was there she was behind the
scenes but i kept her out of it
completely
and then also you mentioned miriam as a
your daughter
yes rhett our son was a was a baby yeah
and uh i remember we went out to the
festival was my favorite restaurant in
carl gables
oh god it was good and barry knew about
it
anyhow we went out to dinner and uh
so we came back and there was no rooms
so very well would spend the night with
us so he goes to our hotel room with him
we got two
two big beds in the omni hotel and he
lays over there gets down to his stripy
undershorts and his t-shirt and he puts
the baby up on his belly and gives him
the bottle said
ain't that good red oh my my and he just
feeds the baby
we laugh and talk and that's how close
we were
that we could all stay in a hotel room
together
and would you say he's a good man a
wonderful man
a gentleman southern gentleman just
he's looked after his mother his family
everybody around him
everybody loved barry he just had a he
had a little
little smile on his face always so you
got arrested
and then what happened to barry well
barry knew the
the people that uh unloaded
of course he sent the cars down and all
that so he met
the unloader guy named lito louis carlos
bustamante
of venezuelan and uh so he's just kept
on flying
but he uh yeah i believe he had three of
my airplanes at 400
a piece and they owed me some money well
he collected a lot of that and
gave murray the money and put it in his
safe and took her to his house and all
after i got arrested and
sent all year in he got me the best
lawyer in the country
albert krieger he was head of the
defense team for all america
wonderful man can you tell
the story of the months that led up to
barry's assassination
what it what what what did you know what
did you sense
what did you think okay when i got out
of prison i hadn't been out long
i was uh watching eating breakfast and
there was ronald reagan's
face right in the television we have
absolute proof
that the communist sandinista government
is in the cocaine run in business
and there was that fat lady the c2
c-2126
on the runway would build it in and i
thought oh
god he had done it so i had heard
that barry might been working with him
so what mom working with
with the dea whoever yeah he did he is
he was no longer on our side you know
so uh can you clarify how you got that
from the
reagan making a statement about we've
heard okay there was his plane
there was a bearish plane and okay on
the way north we could stop in in
nicaragua and land on a military base or
on a a basis they used those crop
dusters and all
and refuel yeah and so that shortened
our trip would go
further into the jungle and come up and
that was what pablo escobar and ocho and
him and they had
there was associates with the people in
nicaragua so barry was if that plane
was there that means barry was feeding
the dea information
he was working with him at that time but
let me back up a little bit when
when i was flying and i told barry we
would we would refuel
and trains airplane the loads in police
where i had a spot up there
and then that's when the they told me we
can refuel in
in uh nicaragua and then you fly all the
way and barry couldn't believe it
he says all right but i wanted to land i
had a place in louisiana
for ten thousand dollars that i could
unload and
sheriff and oldham was paid off and uh
he said no
no no i can't get caught in me in
arkansas
i said what do you mean you can't get
caught in maniac so you get caught
anywhere
he said i can't if it can't but it's
going to cost you fifty thousand dollars
every time my wheels touch the ground
why can you explain why he can't get he
said he was
he was hooked up with the with him the
very top and he even said
i'm gonna have dinner with the governor
tonight
that's at that time i mean the arkansas
mr bill clinton
undoubtedly and it's a little like did
bill clinton did you give him any money
and i said no i never give the man any
money
but it was like the money that i had
went to grand cayman islands and i told
my lawyer i never touched that money
he said you don't have to fondle it to
be guilty
so so what i mean there's a lot of
conspiracy theories
around the relationship between pericle
and the clintons
absolutely what evidence do we have
what would you say from your best
understanding
of what was the relationship between
bill clinton and barry seal
barry said and he knew that he couldn't
get caught in me in arkansas
and when that movie was going to come
out be called mina
somebody stopped it i mean they stopped
it dead in the tracks for two or three
years and the producer even quit
you mean the american meds with tom
cruise movie it wasn't it was going to
be called meena it's the name that was
written and produced in mina
and wait waiting on hillary to be
elected
they they would not let that movie out
and that movie was changed
drastically but to push back on that
that doesn't mean there's
truth there that means they were worried
about
the power of the conspiracy theory which
stuck
exactly i don't know i mean you know
some conspiracy theories just because
they're popular doesn't mean they're
true
and ones that uh but it also doesn't
mean they're not true
and there's ones that are not very
popular that could be true but that one
that one really stuck did you do i mean
what's your sense
well i paid one and a half million
dollars for barry to land at meena
arkansas
so i was pretty well assured that he
couldn't get caught
and i said well i can't get caught in
colombia we can't get caught in
nicaragua
i guess we got a license it's that we
went for it so when you say i can't get
caught just to clarify
there's a there's a sense where this is
a safe place to land
yes like completely safe so you don't
think he was referring to some kind of
um you know
like my grandfather who fought in world
war
ii would talk about bullets can't hit
him
so it's almost like believing back
he's taking that fifty thousand dollars
and giving it to somebody to somebody
and barry was honest so he wasn't just
taking it from me because he was making
a million dollars he didn't care for the
fifty thousand
ah man taking the story forward
uh the months leading up to his
assassination what what uh
what do you understand why he was
assassinated
who were the players involved
maybe could you have stopped
well i'll tell you after i saw reagan's
face on the
television saying we have the absolute
proof the phone rang
and it would bury i hadn't heard from
him in a couple years
he said i'm coming out tonight roger
and oh boy so uh
he came out he said i'll meet you in
this uh french restaurant i don't even
know in santa barbara
and i walked in there's about 20 or 30
people in there
and he was all 30 40 years old women
would
plastic leather skirts and me and their
blue jeans and i looked around and barry
was at the back
he was leaned up he'd gain weight and i
walked up and i said barry you wired
he said no i said i'm not going to talk
are these de agents
he said every one of them
[Laughter]
with jeans and skirts i like it
i said well barry i'm going to set you
and you just talk to me buddy and tell
me what's on your mind
and he sat there and he just went to
talking and he told me about
he was left holding the bag and that um
what do you mean by that like that
nobody's supported him or another
he was uh and and i don't know this i
mean this is just what
what happened uh putting it all together
that he had some cia buddies
that was pretending we're going to
supply all of our northwood arms
and with that you can land cocaine back
here by the ton
so he's taking his little planes and
putting some ak-47s and
maybe ammunition or whatever and takes
it down to
the contras against the communist
party of nicaragua where we've been
landing and oliver north was involved in
this
so uh when the when all that and so his
cia buddies was certainly
involved and we know they were and barry
had been in the cia
earlier when he first got out of school
so
uh when when uh
as i say the shit hit the fan they all
fled
and left barry hold in the back the cia
and the dea
yeah no not the dea the cia the dea
wasn't in on it cia was
was selling that cocaine bringing it in
and uh
just to clarify it uh what's iran contra
scandal
what was the alleged involvement of the
cia
in uh in using drug trade to fund
things what do you know what do you
think is true
what should we know well i know what i
know is true
that barry was taking a small amount of
arms
back to central america and giving them
to whoever oliver north
group group were who oliver north was a
colonel that got
implemented and almost brought the
government down and so they said all
right
we're getting the guns from iran and
we're taking cocaine to pay for them
yeah and since congress won't give us
money to fight this war we're gonna
we're gonna circumvent it so that was
that was a whole thing so it was uh
cia's effort
to circumvent the funding mechanisms of
government
by you selling drugs yes but it was a
handful of renegade cia agents it was
barry's friends
that was making a load load of money
tons of it come up if you would like to
read the book the
the big white lie the cia and the crack
cocaine epidemic
the cia put according to this uh
the book in michael levine i i didn't
remember his name last time i talked
uh wrote that book and he was a head ci
agent
he was a dea agent that exposed this
and the cia tried to kill him and he
says they put crack cocaine they
developed their
their chemists developed crack and they
put it in every country every city in
the united states on one weekend
so they were bringing it up by the tons
and that's for sure
and barry was bringing it can i ask you
a small tangent
question do you think
the public should trust the cia and the
dea
do you think they're mostly good people
that are
carrying out a good mission yeah because
this kind of makes it sound like there's
renegade agents that are just
doing whatever the hell they want and
with uh
sometimes no regard for human life well
that's certainly true
but that's not everybody in there that's
just sometimes you get a few
policemen in the department that do
these things i
i don't believe i believe that our
government is is good
i think we've got some fools running it
yeah i don't know how we get them there
but
i don't think i know okay so what was
barry's involvement here
so barry very lean back in that chair
and he told me
that you know he'd uh he got caught with
one and a half tons
and he built it in the runway in
nicaragua
and uh had cameras
flashing inside and out and he flew it
back to homestead with
with an agent there and he brought the
agent over um
jake jacobson really nice fella i think
he was a crop duster
and we'd have got along we'd have been
on the right side and uh so we uh
we sat there and drank chevis regal
until i got pie-eyed
and barry told me about it he said that
he went to see edwin me see flew
he got out on bail and he flew his
learjet up to
washington and went in to see the
attorney general edwin meis
and they run him out of the office the
next day he went back said i have
absolute proof that the cia is bringing
tons of cocaine
are they running sons of cocaine into
the united states and edward
put him up with this agent jacobson i
believe it was
and they went down and got one and a
half tons and on the way back
they bellied it in and pablo escobar and
some of the other ones on general there
in nicaragua you can see them
toting it from one plane to the other
side in the book called the big
nose uh kings of cocaine it's got a
mention of me too
and also the other one has a mention of
me in it
said i'm in more files for the dea than
noriega
so who was wanted to get rid of barry is
that is it
who wanted to get rid of barry moore the
cartels or the cia
the cartel but uh so barry leaned back
and he and he he told me the story
and the tears came down between his
fingers and he put his hands over his
eyes and he said
i i got you couldn't do it roger i just
couldn't do three life sentences
so i've told him everything i went to
congress and i've testified before
congress
and he testified before congress for all
these things that he'd done
and he said i told them all about you
but you're under my
umbrella you got to testify with me
before grand jury in miami
and so the guy said you can come down
the de agent said you can come down
tomorrow with mari
first class or i'll take you down in
chains
and if you don't testify with barry the
only place you'll ever see your wife and
family again
is in a federal prison visiting room was
that a difficult conversation
oh looking into my my guts was just like
ice water i can't testify against
my friends i just can't do it how am i
going to do it i just
i can't work with people and he was
honest with me how am i going to testify
against them
i can't spend the rest of my life in a
federal prison what on earth what a mess
barry you've got me into
so uh is that a kind of betrayal there
yes but it's still i wish he left me out
of it
i understand him getting his in such a
mess that he told
because if the cia and whoever else
would find him betrayed him
then he's going to tell everything if
you so i says all right i'll be to miami
so murray and i flew down
first class and i and i went to a lawyer
one of the biggest lawyers in miami and
i said man i am
in a mess this fellow's told everything
and i've got to say something
but i'm not a snitch man i mean i can
help
what can i do and he said well being a
snitch is like being pregnant you either
are you're not
[Laughter]
uh and he says i i don't represent
snitches but if you want to fight this
case i'll do it for six hundred thousand
dollars
and uh boy my face turn red well i'm not
a snitch he said well that's what you're
talking about he said let me tell you
something if you go in there and say one
thing
and sign that paper and you don't tell
them everything you know
yeah then they will convict you of
everything you've ever done and you tell
them
so you can't do it so uh
i said barry i'm having trouble with a
lawyer give it i'll go tomorrow let's go
so all right use my lawyer and he gave
me his card the lawyer's card so
murray and i went to the festival
restaurant that night and barry and
debbie came in she was dressed pretty
and
barry was and so he's already about
finished so we had dessert together
and i said barry they're going to kill
you friend he said no they ain't going
to kill me so and so
such and such is going and this another
i said barry they going to kill you man
they know
you can't deny it and uh you know i said
i didn't tell him i wasn't going to
testify so i i hugged his neck
i really like and we fled to brazil i
took murray and the children went to
brazil
so you decided there you're not going to
find you and still i wasn't gonna
i didn't know what i could do i'd talk
to a lawyer i mean i just didn't i
didn't know what what i could do but
the best in miami is what he told me so
i had to go
and he went to brazil we went to did you
have a conversation with anybody at the
cartel
just i mean that's such an interesting
moment that tests the man's character
to not snitch and
did you have a conversation with anybody
no pablo was
you know about it like so it's just
understood i just didn't couldn't do it
but how many men like you are there
not many i had all my friends testified
against me i had 11 friends and every
one of them put their finger up roger
did it
and i was facing life continuing
criminal enterprise care
still you couldn't do it i just couldn't
do it do you ever get respect
from the cartels for that from the oh
they were
time i got back and stuff they owe me
money and i can't get it
so well that's about money i just mean
about human beings
oh i think so i've been back down there
and i've been welcomed
i i have my uh my contact and when i was
in brazil i was trying to get this money
they owe me three and a half million
dollars
so i called up there and he was gonna
pay me oh i got six hundred thousand
today and i'll get you some more
tomorrow and then the next week i called
hey hey got great news great news barry
seal has been
killed so oh no when i went back to the
hotel we was up in the
northern part of brazil and where was it
mighty uh
yeah and uh so i went back and i told
mario and miriam and
uh and they cried and i cried i really
cried how
how's that great news from the cartel
well now
there's no case against me and him and
them do you know who killed them
yes i'll tell you about that story
on the first load i did i landed in a at
a banana plantation
and it was raining and it was a muddy
strip clay
and they put the 300 kilos of cocaine
and then the ugliest man you could
imagine
named ronaldo got in there with a mac 10
and uh
he would make sure i took it to
louisiana
so this is many years before yeah a
couple years before so anyway he uh
uh we took off and the mud
got up in the wheel well so so thick
until the wheels wouldn't come up
well i'm going 200 miles an hour instead
of 300 miles wide with wheels coming
down
well i can't go back there if i do i'm
gonna be in the same situation until the
sun dries it out in a few days
and so but in belize i had a runway that
we've been used for ten thousand dollars
used to refuel
so i told the guy listen we got to land
in police
to refuel and no no no he put them act
in and
i'll shoot you go ahead fool you're
going to die too so
yeah who's in the turf so he wasn't just
ugly he was also
he was a bad bad killer yeah so uh
he's the one to actually kill barry
the one that went up on the first load
with me
and uh ronaldo and he's in doing well
he's just a killer
yeah he's doing life in louisiana i
wonder who uh
is is it known who made that decision uh
the younger
ochoa brother i understand fabio which
one paid for the hit
i don't know that but that's what i've
heard which probably sounds about right
he's he's down in jessup georgia doing
a long long time i think he's about to
get out he's been in 30 years or
whatever
the movie american made
what do you think that movie got right
what did he get wrong
almost everything wrong
it was disgustingly wrong
okay um which parts can you can you um
he may be a librarian it's about barry
seal and it just didn't even it was
nothing and
whoever wrote it had no idea who barry
seale was they sat in a rocking chair
and just tried to
think of what was some baby bashing
drug dealer doing yeah and just like god
just you just don't have any idea of the
spirit of the man
so they wanted to try to tell a fun
story without actually uh
studying the story he they didn't know
we made just that new idea
and barry was such a nice person such a
really nice
gentleman person they talk to you or no
no the people that made them
and uh i see all these people telling me
about barbarian never met him
they telling all about it i think that's
just ridiculous yeah
and uh that for one thing for his
character coming out of whore houses and
all that that was just like
ugly and then down in columbia
putting the gun to his head going to
take his sunglasses and then he put 25
million dollar worth of cocaine on his
plane and then they're gonna bet a
hundred dollars he don't have enough
room to take off
that's just insane i mean just just
the whole thing and then he's talking to
the de agents when he's coming up
you don't know what a frequency they own
how he's got five planes and they all
split
when the dea comes out these are just
somebody just
fantasy but those are like those are
details of the man details of the story
is there some big profound things they
missed about
just this whole period but that's
something that's really important
to you that was missed yes
they just tried to uh sensationalize on
little things that
people remember and it's just not true
it's just it was just like a business
deal
and and and good people and good
airplanes and
good flying and um
it was like a a good watch that was made
it just clicked and
it just went on and they missed all that
they tried to make it sound like it's
something
very ugly do you think it was a story
that could have been told way better
and it would still be a hell of a good
thing
well there's a there's a series
called chernobyl done by hbo and because
i have sort of family connected to that
period
you know they did an incredible job of
being historically accurate
and only not being historically accurate
when it helped the story
only in those rare cases when they on
purpose
left the story to uh to make it easier
for people to understand but it was
it was still somehow accurate and even
though
all the actors were british actors
speaking english with the british accent
it was still somehow accurate like they
captured the
spirit yes so it was historically
accurate and the spirit was captured
that was one of the most incredible
like series i've ever seen it convinced
me that
the movie was made by non-russians it
convinced me that
if you really care about a story you
don't have to have been brought up in it
you don't even need to speak the
language
if you're truly a scholar of it if you
talk to a lot of people if you learn
if you just pour your heart and soul
into it you can create something really
special
and so your sense is you could do that
with you with uh with the story with
this period of time
oh yes it was it was a a story that
needs to be told it need to be told in
the correct way not like
we're trying to bash a certain angle
yeah well if if netflix or hbr are
watching this you need to tell the story
of rogers
in my opinion there you go is this young
picture you
yeah there you go that's from national
geographic jorge
pablo escobar it's you roger and barry
yeah smuggler a memoir
yeah i really do hope that they make a
movie of this one
there's a movie called blow that tells
the story of george young
boston george did you know george young
that's one way to ask it the other is
what do you think of the movie blow
i didn't know george young but it was a
wonderful movie
absolutely it captured it it did yes it
did that's the way it should be
so he was a little bit before your time
exactly the same time
exactly the same same he was using
stewardesses
to fly the marijuana out of manhattan
beach and i was on the
fire department in redondo beach 10
miles away flying it up
sending it back somebody was sending it
back he might have been sending it back
but he didn't have near the excitement
that i did he i was shot down
twice i escaped from five different
prisons
i was tortured almost to death in a
mexican prison so he didn't have all
that fun that i had
funding quotes yeah so yours is a heck
of a fun adventure
just to linger on a little bit so uh
johnny depp plays
george and ray liotta plays his father
and there's this
son father kind of seen at the end
i don't know it's heartbreaking
like that scene paints a picture of a
life that
could have been had if none of this
wild drug smuggling happened
i don't usually i mean i don't i
almost i really never get like
teary-eyed in a movie but that that got
me
it's almost like confronting at the end
of your life
what your life could have been with your
father the way he calls him georgie
it um like you fucked up georgie
yes i did too i really really did
mario waited for me all those years and
the children raised them without me
visiting me in prisons all over the
world it's unbelievable
just nothing's worth that kind of money
yeah
can you tell the story of when you were
tortured nearly to death in a mexican
prison
i sure can and i'm smiling but it was
nothing to smile about i can tell you
i was uh i was in a pool and a gentleman
came over and shook hands with me and
put handcuffs on me
and i thought what in the world that was
at one of the nice hotels
and they put me in a in a jail cell and
i sat there and all the trunks and the
thieves and stuff kept coming in and
they had a bucket and they're overrun
and i said man like 18 people in a room
about 12
12 foot square oh it was hot and i
thought somebody's got to come get me
this
this ain't real i hadn't done anything
it's like
it was a pilot coming to see me and up
in her mercea and he stopped
and he made a mistake and went to the
international runway instead of where he
was supposed to go
and he had my phony name in his pocket
so they got me
so they said i was a drug smoker so
after about three days they put me back
into the into the back
and it was a torture place and they put
me in a little cell like i guess it
wasn't hard
it wasn't six feet must been about about
five feet square and about 12 feet high
and it was june into june and it was hot
i mean hot and uh
they left me in there for i guess a few
days you didn't know
they uh so every once while they come
dragged me out
and first off they put my head
underwater and it had seltzer in it or
some kind
and i took one whiff of that and three
or four of them couldn't hold me down
so then i learned it just before you
have to breathe tear
loose like that and they'll let you up
and uh that was the first treatment and
then then they started beating me and uh
they beat me blackjack rubber hose until
i was black and blue and yellow from the
bottom of my feet to my head
what did they want from me they wanted
to sign me to sign a confession that i
was a drug smuggler
and they put the papers under you under
your nose this is all over fuel sign
well i knew if you signed
you got six years i wasn't gonna sign
i was one on the side so they didn't
want you to snitch on anybody
they don't want to say they just want me
to sign that paper and you still didn't
about to beat nate that bad
so anyhow he's coming to the good part
so then
they come and they take me out and i'm
bug naked and they bend me over and they
have things to pull you like change
click click click and they bent me over
and they
put butter on my bum and they commenced
to put hot chili pepper up there
and that stuff was bad i mean it was red
hot
and that was that was awful
and still it was just awful yeah but
still you didn't
i didn't think about it i ain't going to
i guess
if i'd known he's going to kill me i
wouldn't have done it but i'm but i
wonder about
you get hurt bad enough you'll pass out
so i didn't pass out so i was
all right so then the last thing they
did was
they brought a a dead man in there and
he was wrapped he was frozen and he was
wrapped in newspaper
little strips about a half inch wide
just like a mummy
and he was frozen and he hung him on the
wall with a meat hook
and uh god you next son of a bitch you
next
yeah and so he's sitting there like this
and
as he starts to throw out which is
pretty quick it looks like he's crying
and it looks like he's peeing and the
papers start
unraveling on him and the formaldehyde
puddles on the floor
yeah what a smell that rotten
insides and the formaldehyde and there
was a little
uh space it wasn't even a half inch high
under the door and i lay on that filthy
floor of my cheek
and put my lips right up under that door
and was sucking that fresh air and i
went to sleep
after some time and i know where walt
disney gets it
gets his ideas i saw white pink
pigs with wings on them all kind of
stuff flying around
so when i woke up i didn't know which
was real and which was
the nightmare it took me a minute to
figure out where i was and what was
going
on how did you stay mentally strong
through that time like what i don't know
that i did i would
yeah i was merely strong so i was just
like i am now stubborn
i mean you could be that man they could
have killed you yeah so you would have
so what gave you hope did you have hope
yeah or you're just a stubborn son of a
bitch i think some of both of you and i
think
they aren't going to keep you here
forever yeah you know you're going to
get out into the prison or they're going
to let you go or something if you sign
that paper you ain't going nowhere
and i want to go home
i got shot down uh a few weeks before
that
i got shot from out the sky 80 bullet
holes through the plane
killed a fellow on the ground shot the
shot the
leg nearly off the man was in this in
that little place of peachy lingy
and they were shooting away from the
ground yeah yeah all right a little nine
hundred foot strip there at pichai
lingard poor
poor village with starving donkeys
that's where they'd i'd give them
seventeen thousand dollars for loading
and i'd go over on the highway and load
well on day 13
i did a load every day for 13 days they
had a bunch of marijuana pretty good
piled up and i was going low today
and uh on day 13 i had that little
warning sign going off in my stomach oh
don't do it
but i asked this walking oh we had the
federalists paid off know where we were
so i spent the night
in the hammock and walked down to the
airplane
just as it did in daylight and 10 or 12
men walked with me and pedro got
and i brushed my teeth in the little
stream was about foot deep
little river coming through there got in
the airplane and uh
i fired her up and bam
i thought a tire blew out i looked over
see
it still ain't dawned on me and pedro's
yelling please see ya please see him
roger please see ya
well it dawned on me and i shoved it the
throttle to the firewall and uh i only
had so that was a bullet
yeah somebody they there's off to the
side say it shot they'd shot just a
warning like
get out stop we're gonna rob you
whatever it is
that's what they do it's taken the plane
to me and put me in prison the whole
thing so
but i even though i had papers so uh i
just shoved it to fireball and there
wasn't enough room to take off on that
strip
and there's half of it was behind me or
some of it was behind me
and so just at the end i'm just like i
think that thing stalls at about 50
miles an hour just
just turning 50 and i just pulled it
right up
and put the flaps on and as i pulled off
the ground
they opened up on both sides of me with
machine guns and they
riddle that airplane i mean the
windshield came out
i got hit three times uh do you
like your body yeah and uh uh
i didn't know i was hit i mean it was
just the adrenaline the gasoline just
pouring in
the world turned yellow i must have went
into shock so
it just stopped in slow motion and uh
one bullet hit the strut right by my
head and it just
parts of that bullet just went all over
me i just looked like i'd been
peppered which would uh lead
and uh the gasoline was just pouring in
and i'm just pouring it where they'd
shot the wing up above
and the windshield's gone i didn't i
mean i i couldn't
him it's just like like a hail storm
so i uh i was airplanes the staller now
it i was in a stall anyway and i didn't
realize it and i guess you wouldn't
unless you trained for it
but when you install the elevator is
kind of flappy
and i didn't realize at the time i
thought they had shot the elevator cable
in too
so i thought oh god so i just reached
over and switched it off switched to
pull the mixture pulled everything and
uh
in the river there was rocks about as
big as this table and they were
like the turtle back all the way up
until there was a waterfall there was
quite a pretty place
and i crashed straight on to it i
thought if i get those rocks
and when i did the first time i hit the
wings came off and then it bounced
and the next time the nose came out and
came under the plane
and i'm sitting there i must have been
knocked unconscious called pedro's
shaking me come on roger come on roger
so i stepped out into the water and here
comes these four federalists still
shooting at us
and i'm bullied the two hit the airplane
and
i kept a nine millimeter browning high
power taped to the top of the radio
in case i ever needed it so because
one of those times didn't want it in the
airplane so i just it was just handy
just laying there so i took and popped a
few caps out of them
and they ran into the rocks so uh
we took off up off running and then i
looked and pedro's foot nearly shot off
had shot him on
one side the ankle and it gets blown out
the other side and it wasn't even hardly
bleeding it
the shock of it so i took my t-shirt off
and gripped it and
tied it best i could but yeah it's still
bullets in you so like you could still
i shot the top of my toenail off yeah i
shot a job across my head in my kneecap
so i was just nicked okay it was very
painful later on but right that time i
didn't
it was it was just hot there's a bullet
stealing my foot from it a piece of a
bullet
good sized slug so we went on up the
mountain
through the cactus and it's running just
going i want to go down no no avail
federalists are going in this
the easy way let's go this young fellow
and we came to an old donkey
she must have been 30 years old long and
way back
long hair on her charlotte charlotte and
he pitted the donkey and we jumped on
and we rode for some actual donkey
donkey they were donkeys all over the
place anyhow he knew that was from the
village
and so we rode seven miles two of us on
a donkey with no bridle no saddle
nothing
and uh we came to a little man plowing a
little
horse in a little ox there's both of
them spotted and there's the ox was
the yolk was across her back this way
and he's plowing with a little plow
amongst stumps
it was like one of these people clearing
a little piece of land and he had a
little little house there
and so we went into his house and his
wife and his daughter they put like uh
cloth over my wounds and on pedro's it
was terrible was terrible
and they poured diesel oil on it to keep
the flies off
so i'm covered in diesel so the man left
and he was going all day and then about
dark he showed up
about 15 or 20 horses and mules showed
up in the yard
walking fast and the doctor got out he
said i'm dr benjamin so-so with red
cross
and he worked on my foot and he worked
on pedro he gave us a shot of morphine
and
tetanus shots and he said you got to get
to hospital
he said pedro will die if he don't get
to hospital he said they're looking for
american pilots been shot down they
think he's dead there was a lot of blood
in that airplane
and so they rode i don't know how far we
rode but we rode miles and we'd come to
a road and there was a big truck
and it was loaded with corn in the ear
and they dug holes in that corn
put us in it and covered us up and the
road was rough and every time we'd hit a
dirt road that corn would cover me up
and they'd scratch my face out again
and when it came to the highway we went
into a house and they got me some
clothes and mine was messed up
and uh uh white basin and they must have
brought 20
jugs of water different times i kept
washing them washing my foot till
all the blood and the crud got off of me
and put on those clothes
and somebody went to uh they said you
can't go north the roads block they're
looking for the pilot
so you got to go south so they found a a
taxi in
mazatlan and it was a rather new taxi
and the fellow would would take me to
guadalajara which was
i don't know seven eight hours south
so we got in that taxi and they propped
me up with sheets and blankets and
pillows in the back seat and gave me
these great big white
pain pills and i was quite content
then i was shot down and uh shot down in
in columbia also
what uh can you tell that story i sure
can
all right i was i went down for load um
a little marijuana
and we got to the place and we got there
too early and the gorillas
scream you got to get out of here got to
get out of here and so we went back to
the place where we staged from
and refueled had a beautiful dc-3
carry 3 tons and uh so
while i was waiting i uh
i ate something for lunch and i went
around behind the house we refueled the
plane up i had to wait till late now
they wanted me to come just at dark so
the military planes couldn't see me on
their strip
so i'm laying in the hammock of sleep
and i hear this terrible roar
and i looked right up through the trees
and the ascent of two
military jets going straight up
and they do a dive over and they came
back down the strip in front of that
airplane
and they just tear it up with 50 caliber
machine guns they just showing out
yeah so i run for the airplane i just
give that guy 80
000 and he ran for the truck and all the
rest of them ran for the truck
i should have ran with my money but i
didn't i ran for the airplane
yeah and uh the co-pilot got in the name
was al
he got in with me and two fellows got in
the back we had drums of fuel in there
to refuel when we got down
to the gorillas so we took off
and i couldn't get the gear up because
i'd taken off in such a hurry these
these pins in the struts of a dc3 and
with big flags on them and you have to
take them up so that
the plant plane won't come up so these
jets swarmed on me and they tried to get
me to go
they kept telling me which way to go and
the pilot would be just as close as just
right over there i could see him
i just held up the old hippie piece i
didn't think they would shoot
i really didn't it nobody had shot
before
so i kept flying out and i kept getting
slower and slower and they kept slowing
down down down and
the black smoke rolling and then they
they started shooting up under me
boom boom boom boom with them 20
millimeter counters and then
and the tracer just going up they look
like they're curving up from you know
whoa and i pushed the nose over
so they couldn't get under me and later
on i heard they thought i tried to ram
them
so one of them went for fuel and i kept
on going and
the one just toward the left wing wing
tip up
with the 50 caliber and then they come
back again and shot the tail up
he's warning me and i tell that feller
in there says you know
if you bring me enough water i believe i
can fly this thing my mouth got quite
dry
so i went on and i landed on a big
pasture
and it was huge pasture and it was
rougher than it looked and the wings
just flapped and i come to stop and
jumped out
and pull those tabs out and threw them
on the ground so i could get my
gear up and i understand that during the
1980 world series baseball game
that it says american dc3 has just been
shot down by american jets about
columbian jets
you know it's the first plane shot down
on reagan's new war on drugs but he's up
he's up and away ladies and gentlemen
we'll keep you posted so i took off
again
and i went into a thunderstorm and they
climbed close to the mountains so i
spiraled up
and every time i'd come out that jet was
there boom boom boom
and uh i'd go back into that that storm
and boom boom boom in there
and at 20 000 feet i started icing up so
i went out one last time and he was
right there waiting
he had me on radar so i went back in and
i kicked it over and put it into a spin
and went straight down to 2000 feet
and come out under it and i was flying
along the
guava river and there was a
20 feet above the water it looked like a
pasture it was just grass
and i made several runs to tear the
grass down and it looked like
it felt hard no dc3 weighs 30 000 pounds
and
i put it down on the fifth run and i
said all right yeah we're going to land
now
and that's why he flew like close oh
several times i put the wheels down oh
you put the wheels down without landing
miles
and just so i'm making it weird so
so you okay so you're you're you're
being
tracked by a jet he's trying to sh well
before that i'm just like retelling the
story how insane it is
uh so he is he's trying to shoot you
down
and there's a thunderstorm that you're
escaping into and then you do
a spin down to what 2000 feet whatever
you said
like somehow escaping all of this and
then you try to land on a
pasture on a giant heavy plane
that carries three tons uh
by uh touching down five or six times
to make a to make a landing strip for
yourself
yeah the the grass is three or four feet
okay so i it was really good after about
after a few times
so then just before it stopped i said
i'll take your feet off the brakes
he said i don't have my feet on the
brakes well i knew i had broken through
the crust
and i put full power on but it didn't
that old big plane just come on down and
it just did a head
as it came to stop it did a headstand 90
degrees to the ground oh wow
and the engines helped held it up and
the nose and all just crushed in right
on it
we fell between the two seats to keep
from getting killed and when it come to
a stop
all that fuel was pouring out on those
hot engines and there was an escape
hatch at the top
i just stepped out took my suitcase with
me
did it uh was there fire no fire the
plane left the plane there and the two
guys it was in the back one and broke
his thumb and
it was with the barrels and they had to
put a hoses
tie gas hoses together to shimmy down to
get out yeah
so that's an incredible story well let
me just tell you they had a little bit
more to it i learned to fly with the
idea of being a
missionary aviation fellowship pilot fly
the missionaries in and out of the
jungle
yes well i went 11 days through that
jungle the rest of them went on down the
road and got went to prison
i said i i'll crawl on my belly six
months in here a year
eating snakes before i'm going down the
road so i went in there and uh
i was 11 days in the jungle and i
finally came to his place
and it had airplanes i kept asking the
indian don just die evie owns
i want to steal an airplane get out of
there and when i came to the place
i asked what is this place lovely place
it looked like honolulu
in world war ii was a runway there said
you don't know
this is loma linda headquarters for
missionary aviation fellowship
for the amazon and they flew me out
wow you escaped from prison
five times so what uh what stands out to
you is the most difficult
or miraculous escape in the bunch
the most black miraculous was when i was
in the courtroom in spain i think i was
i was on the third floor of real high
and i ran across a courtroom handcuffed
kicked the window out
and i looked down and it was above the
palm trees i thought there might be a
power line or something i could grab on
as i went down
there was nothing and there was a car
parked a station wagon on the uh
jumped out i jumped out from 31 feet and
on top of that car
and it exploded in the street the
windshield went over three or four cars
it looked like snow going up and i
looked like donald duck with the thing
in handcuffs and i got out and just kept
running yeah i kept trying they ran me
down
and hit me in the back i still got a
dead spot in my back where the policeman
hit me with a shotgun
and they brought me back mari was there
they were saying
your husband is crazy that was
spectacular but i escaped from lubeck
maximum security prison
and i cut out of there and got out that
was a miraculous nose
in lubeck germany what was what was that
escape like
i was airing out whether it was going to
uh extradite me back to the united
states where i still had all these
charges in 25 years special parole
and uh i was cleaning the uh
lawyer's visiting room and on it was uh
bars that looked like a piano notes or
this way
to make it pretty but there was a little
bit so i got a rope from a guy
where they made boats in there and i uh
i had 20 minutes
so i went in there and i wrapped it
around and i put a broom handle in it
that was cut off and wrapped it around
until it pulled the bars together on
that side and then i pulled them
together on the other side but that only
put me in
inside the prison yard where the uh
soccer equipment was kept but they were
putting new windows on one side of the
prison and they had it scaffold up to
the fourth floor
so there was a little recess there and
there was guard towers every
100 feet or so i mean they would shoot
and kill you
so i got behind that uh and climbed up
holding to the bricks on one hand and
the scaffolding on the other
and went to the roof i lost my shirt and
most of my clothes going through the
window
i got all the skin off of me i thought i
was gonna die and i was trying to go
sideways like this and finally i got a
grip
and the bars let me through and took all
the skin off of me
so i got up on that roof and i have
asthma and i just lay there trying to
catch my breath
didn't bring my inhaler so
with blood everywhere oh i was bloody
yes and so i got down to the end
and on the end the reason i did it they
would put it they was putting a new wall
again
again around the prison to make it
larger
and they had taken all the wire off
above the sally port where they could
join the two walls together and i saw
that when i came up
and there was a guard a half of a
like a dome sticking out of that brick
building where there's a guard there
with a gun and he'd kill you
i mean he was made they were surely
trained to kill you and we had some bad
people in that place
so i lay up a one one flew above it and
i saw a guard and his wife come with a
double umbrella it was just pouring down
rain
here i am without a shirt on bloody and
he had a little boy she had a little boy
with him under that double umbrella
and i knew him and when he come and she
started back from the sally port
i hit the top of that guard tower bam
with both feet and i jumped i guess it's
three more floors
i jumped there was a pile of sand like a
cone where they were digging it there
and i hit that and my feet buried up to
the knees but i didn't fall and i ran
straight towards her so he couldn't
shoot me and then i went around some
bushes and went downhill
and then i heard bam bam bam blam behind
me and i looked and that food woman was
in a big old car
and she was knocking down the parking
meters behind me she was trying to run
over me
and i ran behind the car oh wow and she
tore the fender off of her car
trying and yelling yeah yeah yapping a
terrible evil looking face at me
screaming at me
and the sirens going off into prison
and there was a fence there a wall and i
jumped up on it to jump over and it was
had glass in bed and i cut my hands and
my arms all up getting over that
and i hit the ground on the other side
and it was like it was that
much milk where some farmer had dug it i
dug in there and murray had slipped me
into prison and i had that in my shoe
and i lost my shoes and that mush
anyway i got out of there and got to
holland really heck of a story hug
did that what was uh what was prison
like whether it's germany or
whether it's australia what were the
some of the darker moments
in prison the united states prisons are
awful
awful evil places now and just really
there's nothing nice about them
there's the guards in l.a
which they never went out everyone i
went to it seemed like the further east
i went to oklahoma and it was nicer
but all of them on the west coast there
was hatred there
and they got really stupid people hired
just incredibly
hatred by the guards and and the inmates
like i speak spanish and i walked in to
the spanish
tv room and it was saying no you can't
come in here
and i walk across to the black hey get
out of here
white boy it was just like what man i
like all you people you know
and so i walked down to the white people
and said show us your paperwork
you can't come in here until you show
your paperwork we don't let snitches and
homosexuals and all this sort of stuff
in here so
they have so it's just like man i don't
want to be in here
i mean it sounds absurd but you're
saying like the basic humanity is gone
completely completely into guards it was
just like
come here reeves and i walk up to him
and get the fuck out of my face
he sticks his chin out like for me to
break his jaw yeah
like what in the world man
i love people and it's just yeah you you
got this joy to you
yeah you have a joyful nature how
and it didn't seem like that broke you
not a bit
how did you persevere did you know i
didn't even think i persevered but i
i tried to enjoy my life wherever i am
every day i do
i uh i ran every day and like i told you
why do you run so roger i said
to help me suffer these fools and uh i
played a game of chess every day
almost of my life in there and i read
two books a week
and i talked with people storytellers
guys would come in and tell us another
story roger
give us a point tell us one they never
told us before and so it was just nice a
lot of them have original boys
they they picked their country music and
it was all right
red morgan freeman's character in the
shawshank redemption
says the following these walls are funny
first you hate them
then you get used to them enough time
passes you get
so you depend on them that's
institutionalized
is there truth to that 100 i couldn't
even see the walls
except whenever i was planning on
escaping in shawshank redemption
he spent so many years in prison that
he almost didn't know what to do with
himself with himself once he left
once once he was a free man that's the
you get so used to the the system
the the rituals having
to follow orders
even being treated poorly all those
kinds of things that you become
dependent on
well uh down in australia i spent the
first a little over a year
in in the shoe it was like um did you
see the movie the um
silence of the lambs thank you and he's
there i had five
five or six guards looking at me with
one-way mirror yeah
and that's whenever i thought i might
never get out i got a life sentence i
had all this time waiting
here in germany and so that's they had a
uh they had a computer in there but it
didn't have a program on it
and i wrote so i just started writing
these little stories of stuff that i did
in my life
and i wrote one line and i wrote a
million words
with them looking at me so it's after a
year they let me out it wasn't long
before they put me in a place called
self-care and
particularly i was in what they call the
lifers pod there was 268 men in
self-care there
and uh it was it was unbelievably good
that we were left alone basically they
was there
the guards were certainly there but they
had their their shack
and we had apartments for four
apartments to the building
and uh six men to the unit with your own
door and a key to it
in a kitchen dining room freezer
refrigerator and they gave you
allowed just 360 a week to buy groceries
and i cooked for about 16 years and uh
you learn to cook good and the people
and other people
make have their specialties and uh
so that was that was quite uh it wasn't
so like being in prison it was somewhat
living with me and it was difficult man
i had some good good fights and carry on
but
you don't get along with everybody but
uh
then whenever i came back to the united
states i was laughing and talking
and when i got off the plane in uh l.a i
had three
three marshals with me from australia i
was slammed upside the wall i mean
hard put ankle
max on him and handcuffed so tight till
he cut my
vein off face forward face forward lands
apart
good gracious and walked me up 50 steps
and he turned me over to the marshals
and they took part of that off that was
a border patrol that was there
over my marijuana charge from 1977
yeah from america for i did 11 years for
parole violation
now they want me for more violation and
they put me in
down in los angeles they put me in the
marshes put me in
in there and they put me in isolation i
thought what in the world he got me for
isolation for
i've done anything how long did you
spend in isolation
more than six months so i uh
after three or four days as the little
judas window slide open
and a man a nice looking man in the suit
coming hello reeves i want us
just want to see what you look like i
saw you a national geographic
documentary
and it does me pleasure to keep you in
isolation and he slammed the thing and i
couldn't get out of there
and by law the u.s parole commission is
supposed to give you a a hearing within
90 days
so murray paid a lawyer 7 500 and he
never picked up the phone
somebody got to him
who's that somebody you think
christopher cannon was his name and i
don't know who got to him but
some he didn't he didn't do anything to
get me out of there yeah i got one
15-minute phone call a month
and i couldn't get out so then after six
months they
shipped me to um put me on conair
double shackled and black box on my
hands
and i went to went to oklahoma and they
let me out on the
the uh on the floor i couldn't imagine
then i could call after a couple of days
and they said there was a man here from
washington give you a
parole here and you only got here at 3
30. so he left he said he'd be back next
year
what i've been in now over six months so
then there was a lovely little lady she
was a
case manager or something she said you
can ask for parole on the record
and i said please he said i sent him an
email and the next day i got my parole
90 days later they sent me to terminal
island put me in
the place there with the infillet i
guess since i'm as old as i am
78 years old so they put me in the
people and they're dying in
wheelchairs and legs off and arms off
and cancer so i was in there and i
pushed the fellas around
and uh i went come out the chow hole
there
and i went to go to the right to get me
a haircut and
two mexican guys there lieutenant
another one walked between us and he
went like
i could outrun you and they slammed me
put me on the ground
handcuffed me and put me in the shoe for
a week
i got out man they put me in the back in
the place they treated me rough
so i got in a little more trouble and
they put me back in the
in the shoe and i wouldn't come out they
had that uh
the virus was out killing people so they
killed eight people in that unit i was
in
oh wow so i mean i wouldn't even come
out to take a shower i had
i had a little straw that i put in the
in the sink and i'd
i'd take a sock that i had and scrub
myself with it with some smoke
and glass water over my head and then
cleaned the floor up and put it in the
toilet
so that was your time during the
coronavirus pandemic
i got out last april right in the middle
every night and they were dying
bad in there so i was treated worse for
that last year in america than i was for
the whole 20 years in australia
18 years in australia and then you were
a free man at the end of that year they
put me out and sent me home and
and the parole officers couldn't even
come they weren't working they were just
doing everything by video
better not have a drink the only
condition the thing was i couldn't even
have a drink of wine
so uh after a year they uh i had i had
to take psychiatric treatment
every week i had to go talk to the
psychiatrist psychologist
and me and her got along great she was a
good christian woman we just chatted and
talked
and i think they said so i had to pee in
the bottle every week i said i've been
in 33 years how many pissed
you think i've had never been dirty the
only thing if you don't want to clean
when you come get me
before i talk to you about love let me
ask you
a difficult question you write in your
book
i don't consider myself much of a
criminal i don't lie
cheat or steal and i always take up for
the underdog
violence makes me sick yet i know i'm an
outlaw
and those that break the law must be
punished
i think many people listening to this or
some people listening to this
will see you as a criminal as a bad man
who increased the amount of suffering in
this world
what do you have to say to them
i would like to tell them that they have
been indoctrinated by the spin
of news and politicians and they don't
know the truth of the situation
he lay the truth out there in an
envelope let me open it
besides something else that is false and
it's staggering
the truth is that i was a tobacco farmer
and tobacco kills 500 000 people a year
in america
and 6 million have a debilitating
diseases because of it
drugs all drugs combined kill between 10
and 15
000 people a year by overdose and 60
of those are pharmaceutical now then
when i was a tobacco farmer
come sit on the front pew mr reeves come
on up here you're a gentleman
you just joined the masonic lodge and
you joined our church
and you just come on and sit down with
the good people you grow two marijuana
penalties get out of here you scumbag
and marijuana doesn't hurt anybody it's
just
that's the truth of it and so
in your career you were you walked
amidst violence but you never
participated in the violence
i didn't even see it
just didn't happen around me in prison
it did i sewed people up they called me
doc i
had dental floss and uh
one one time i had to get a blade and
try to help keep them from my
patient from getting again but i don't
was just like if i shot at those people
i shot
them to keep them from killing me i did
i certainly didn't mean to kill them
so that's that's just some people are
evil and they will kill you and hurt you
and lie to you
i just don't do any of that it's just it
makes you sick
i've seen it i was when i was in the
shoe three guys tried to kill a guy and
they stabbed him so many times but
their stab went blinking the blood
getting out of the room and actually
gonna kill him you're gonna kill him
and save his life drug him up there
where the guards could see him
there's stuff like that i'm just not of
that nature of those people they're just
evil
there's people born evil i believe yeah
it is heartbreaking to hear that the
basic humanities gone in prison
in the united states that's
heartbreaking because that basic
humanity
is actually the light at the end of the
tunnel it's the thing that saves us
as opposed to uh when it's absent it's
the thing that destroys
us the prisoners are filled absolutely
filled with people that have some mental
problems
now you see tent city all the way up and
down here i guarantee you every one of
those people
have mental problems some degree
however little it is but they're a
little bit off now then you get a dea
agent
that wants to make a name for himself he
goes down there and gets two of them
one of them to sell a little two grams
of methamphetamine to the other one
and he gets a conviction and a young
prosecutor he gets a conviction he wants
to make a judge
and we got to judge and where was it i'm
going to give him a million
what's his name gilbert i'm going to
make i'm going to give him in a million
years before i get off the judge
you get fools like that in charge
you're going to fill prisons up with
pitiful humanity and those are the ones
and then the other
is people over drugs
and drugs should be a uh a health issue
you can't you cannot
police it enough it's just they know
like the only thing that overdoses
is opioids the heroin and if they can
give it to them it costs about a dollar
a day to give the worst attic is
his fix but they'll give it methadone
which is from a pharmaceutical company
which is just as bad
why in the world we tried it all over
the world
in uh portugal and england and when they
give the
the girls cleanup no more stolen cars
why who who wants to keep this forest
going
they just perpetuating it like oh every
little
police place is getting all these suits
and armor and machine guns
it's just like oh it's it's such a spin
it's
sad do you think all drugs should be
legalized
i don't know about that but they
certainly should be controlled if a
person is an addict
he should be able to go down and get his
fix with somebody there to help him with
a clean needle
and a glass of orange juice it's so much
cheaper
than prison so much cheaper than him
stealing cars
or prostitute having to go to work
that's sad
you've lived one heck of a life
looking back there's a there's a lot of
young people that listen to this
high school college students what advice
would you give them
how to live how to have a successful
career
how to have a good life how to be a good
man
a woman to be a good man or woman
if i had to do over with i'll just tell
you what i'd have done
i would have paid attention and studied
my lesson and did the best i could
um in school in school yes and went as
far as i could have
i would have liked to been a doctor i
just didn't have the stick ability or
anybody to tell me
hey go there and do that and if you
can do that at a very young age start in
a trade
learn to do something doesn't matter
what it is
if you learn to do something good there
is a great demand for you
and i would say that in prison the
prison system should come in and
you get a thief a young fan is a thief a
robber and you say all right
we need um we need carpenters we need
plumbers we need electricians we need
sheep
sentence them to that trade and when you
get an a plus in that
where you can go out and make you thirty
dollars and fifty dollars an hour you go
home
now you can you mess around ten years if
you want to or you can do this in two
i think that would uh that's just for
the prism but anyway
i would say that they find somebody and
be true to them
that we have um
just be honest and true in your life
you mean like relationships
relationships yes i mean
so many so many people particularly
our children are from relationships
where
they not wanted their divorce their
fathers left they don't know who their
daddy is
they dis in foster homes 500 000
children in foster homes in america
today
and and we have in our government
inadvertently as in encouraging those
people
my daughter is a doctor and she
delivered a couple years ago
a baby from a 10 year old child
that child and she said in the
individual room is four generations all
of them on welfare
now we got one more and it reminds me of
elvis presley's song
in the ghetto so for an individual
learn a trade become a craftsman of
sorts yes
and uh find somebody to love and who
loves you that's right have
have a family in in and uh and stick
with it
they just be surely you're gonna get
angry you're gonna get disappointed
you're gonna get all kinds of stuff but
but come back and make up before before
you go to sleep
well i i did half of those things i got
the first one and working on the second
one so i appreciate the advice
[Laughter]
well mari thank you so much for joining
us can you tell me the story of how you
two met
well um my parents every summer would
go to the lake in in canada and the
place was called turkey point which is
on lake erie
and just have a nice summer holiday
there water skiing
swimming you know sunbathing this was
back in the 60s
and i was sitting on the pier with a few
girlfriends and
telling them my story you know and then
all of a sudden i looked up
and i saw this figure in the distance
coming
onto the pier now we're all dressed in
bathing suits and swimwear we're
swimming and this that and the other
and here he comes dark trousers in fact
they were black
white shirt and a tie and
a straw kind of a panama hat
and you know so he was very he stood out
yeah
and uh so i invited him to come and sit
down and
so he continued to talk and we just
talked and talked and talked and then
later moved
to the beach and um i think the next
time i saw him he was talking to another
girl and i thought
yeah you know yeah man i know
i was okay okay next yeah well
about six months later i receive a
letter
and it's a letter from roger and then we
start this lovely correspondence and we
just start writing you know in those
days
you just wrote everything and uh
and then the next summer he was coming
up again
he was on his way to alaska and
um he says i would like to come by and
see you and i said well i'll be in the
same place that i met you last year
and so when we when he came up this time
for some reason roger reached for my
hand and i reached for his
and man that was it it was like
love and for first touch that was love
it was just like a silence you know and
oh my gosh and we didn't even look at
each other it was just oh my goodness
what happened here
and i was the type of person i never
wanted to get married not
way way way down the road never have any
children
and i wanted to see the world first and
then do all that you know
and um but that was it that was love and
you've been together ever since
yeah well
the thing is about the love the the two
you have for each other
is they had to persevere through quite a
heck of a journey
so how did uh rogers
drug smuggling change the nature of your
love
and your relationship well lex that
remained steadfast it uh it endured
and since roger's been home i think
we've rekindled
the love that we had when we first met
yeah what
but but i think my faith um
you know my faith my steadf fast faith
and also the fact that roger and i
communicated we wrote letters you know
he
he never complained i know there were
the children there he never had
mistreated me i love this guy
and we had a lot of experiences it was
just even though
good looking charismatic he's pretty you
know yeah and he's
he was adventurous you know and
would you say that again but um
yes it was just i know i you know i
missed him physically but
he was just we were just so strong in
spirit
you know and um we could talk to one
another
yep well what was it like
uh roger when you're a free man
seeing mari for the first time in person
again i uh i cried for three days
everything i'd look at a picture of her
i came home and
uh there's she prepared a meal for me
and uh there was the old oak table that
i'd
redone and the chairs the same one and
the green
placemats in the same china that we had
and the same silverware
and it just just all of it just brought
back the same paintings on the wall
it was like unbelievable after 35 years
she had all my clothes cleaned and my
shoes shining and
i put the shoes on and i walked out on
the strings on this and the soles came
off but the shirts and all fit perfect
and everything so it's just
wonderful and just just to see her and
then just to think about
see her picture of her 50th birthday or
her 60th birthday or her 70th birthday
i wasn't there in the picture of her and
with the children it just
it was heartbreaking and about the third
day i thought man up fella i mean
you've got to so uh i got over and quick
quit
with the uh quit the tears but it was it
was
it was everything was just pulsating
with life it was just
unbelievable to get out of that place it
really was
is there uh do you regret
the the the drug smuggling that took
you away from the woman you love oh yes
100 just you know
i wouldn't have done it again if you
don't think you're going to get caught
and uh it's just no was just i did it
for money and i had everything in the
world i wanted before i did that
so the adventure i mean it was one heck
of an adventure for the two of you for
the both of you
yes were you able to enjoy it or was it
always
danger was what is was it always
something that threatened
your relationship your love your family
are we able to enjoy the adventure of it
you know we all die
life is short and to live that kind of
adventure
well whenever i did the first loot i'm
about ten thousand dollars
and that was just about that was just
about two years pay on the fire
department take home
and i broke that home and i put my hand
over my mouth i said
shook
let's go have dinner and so we went to
the restaurant that we would norm we
would go to you know
and he said don't you dare look on the
right hand side of the
of the menu he said just order anything
you
want and it was just as we were in the
restaurant you know it was just we were
giddy about it
yeah i was giddy about it and um were
you afraid that
i mean did you think about the fact that
it's illegal
and uh roger gonna end up in in prison
oh yes did you guys talk about it
well i just i kind of thought i was
bulletproof i mean they didn't catch you
i thought if they didn't catch you you
was all right it was hard to get y'all
hard to catch you in in the air yeah so
you never thought
to catch you in there
i didn't know that if your friend told
on you five years later you'd still go
to
right that was a problem i didn't know
that did you
did you guys ever talk about walking
away
i asked roger to walk to walk away and
he says
i can't marry just now you know and then
of course the
the uh amount of people that he began to
support
the family and the gifts and the use
the deals yes the deals big ones
yes and then you always want to do what
do you do with the money
you know so you want to i guess you
clean it up or you want to invest in a
in an enterprise or in a business
well it just doesn't work they know the
source of it and they take it and run
every one of them yep yeah but he was
very
generous extremely generous and
benevolent
and and when i started i uh i would ask
about it i went to a lawyer and
a good good people a number of people in
in california that time wanted to
legalize marijuana
back 1973 and i went to a lawyer and i
said
mr lawyer i put a hundred dollars on
today what would they do if they caught
me
bringing marijuana across the board he
said uh if you have a criminal record i
said no
i've never had a speeding ticket not
nothing nothing not even a traffic
ticket
i said he said he worked for the fire
department i didn't know saying i said
yes sir
he said you'll get probation the worst
you'll do is you'll get
one year and you spend four four months
raking leaves on a military base
so my mother my father died some years
before and my brother mother and baby
sister came out and
i took him down to disneyland and she
said what you doing boy
i said i'm hauling pot mom she said how
much you making us
making forty thousand dollars any day i
want to go
and she said what they do if they catch
and i told her what the lawyer said
four months at the most with rick and
leaves that's what do you think she said
do you need a co-pilot son
yeah money is money yeah
is um so
your relationship persevered through
some some big challenges is there advice
you can give
about what makes for a successful
relationship
oh well you know i think the initial
igniting meeting someone you know that
that's the love that's it and that
that that little fire just that fire
just keeps burning
and burning and burning you can't put it
out no matter what
it's the the love fire
but it gets difficult as far as it's
funny the love fire so you're saying the
love fire is all it takes to to
persevere through the difficulty well
no i well that's a huge part of it
and also i contribute my my individual
situation to
um in order to endure what the prison
years is my faith
faith in god yes and
friends who were unconditionally still
loved me no matter what
yes so she had love
around you i did and my children
they you know and that was a real
purpose
to guide them and to love them and
to help them become citizens
what about you roger what advice would
you give
i just don't know how to do it but i i
do know that you have to work on a
relationship
laura and i have had problems i mean we
could really you guys get in fights
oh yeah oh yes
but not they don't let them laugh long
yeah you know but
certainly we are so we're we're the same
and yet we're so
different yeah yeah like little stuff
little stuff yeah
and uh it might be big but i usually
winter over you know
but it's but anyhow i just feel like
mario was always
there it was like she was in my anchor
yeah i was coming home
i was always coming home to her and the
children and you can see
throughout my life i'm working on
getting there
are you afraid for his life by the way
oh yes oh yeah there are times
yeah but you know i had some i had faith
in him he was an
excellent pilot for example i always
said roger if the ship's going down
i'm jumping in the lifeboat with you
because i know we're going to get to
shore you will save
us and so i had that i have that faith
in him
you know i mean he's he's a man but yet
he's the one you want to get into the
lifeboat with
definitely but then there is uh
you know pablo escobar one of the most
dangerous humans in history
plus the us government
uh very difficult uh very difficult to
get away
in terms of your faith how has
your faith helped you to be the woman
you are in this relationship
in in in seeing love the way you see it
well i think
my faith gives me hope i have lots of
hope
it helps me to um
dwell on the good side you know when i
ever i
meet someone and there's some negative
i try to see why they are like that or
what's the source of all that
and i try to pull out the good i really
do
not that i'm a goody goody but that's
what your faith does you know you
see them as god sees us you know
how has he changed over the years roger
yeah he's still the same
actually i like him better now
he's a little calmer yeah he knows crazy
oh yes
and happy to be you know at home or
he'll say
murray i am just so happy to be with you
here in this condominium
i'm content because i used to call him
my homing pigeon you know i just have to
let him fly
i couldn't you know he has to fly but he
always came home
[Laughter]
do you think about the end of this ride
our mortality
do you think about your death i do oh
particularly i'm going to have
um a heart valve replacement in about
seven days where
i could could not make it you know it's
a very serious operation and i think
about that
very much and um
i asked for peace i just lost my brother
about 10 days ago
so unexpectedly and that really
put you know makes you think of your
mortality
are you afraid um somewhat and some
and and yet not
yeah the party i want to live lex i want
to live
you know this life is fun yes
do you think about your death roger i
have visions
i have visions and they often happen
very very clear
like what i have seen in the future
scientists might call it wormholes or
and the old testament they call it
prophets but i i see
sometimes in the future around the
corner it's clear as we're sitting right
here
what's that look like i was on a porch
and i believe i was in like central
america place
i was an old man with khaki pants and a
white shirt
and this it was a chair with a wide uh
arms and it was straight
and there's like the the beams coming
out above my head and i'm on the porch
spoken video and and i uh
i come i i have out of the body
experiences also
and i came out of my body just i just
floated out of my body
and went into a veil and like into a
mist
and i believe that's probably why it
happened you talk about
you talk about like it's in your past
this is you know this isn't my future
but this is something he has seen you
know in the passion
yeah no i know but it's funny just yeah
the tents you use
it happened and yet it's something that
will happen
yeah both are true it's just
unbelievable that and i
i i don't know how many people have it
but i have it i've walked out of my body
just like just where i could come up to
you and look and set up on the radio i
used to
be at work on the railroad and i had
them there how do you explain that
what the heck is going on in this
universe that's that's possible
oh i don't know but uh certainly it's
certainly a phenomenal which it happened
and uh there's a guy bill monroe that
wrote the book on it out of the body he
tells about it
and who is the guy that writes uh
the alchemist those things
he has them also just like that and and
he tells about how it happens on him
might happen differently
and but you certainly can come out of
your body
what do you think the meaning of this
life is
maybe from from from your faith
but also from just the amazing adventure
that you lived through
how do you make sense of why the heck
we're here
i don't know i just it's just kind of
like who you are even when i was a child
i was like
i'm different from other people
you know and just as a boy i was like i
uh i don't know could you put into words
how you were different or was just the
few yeah like my brother i mean
he kept his hands clean and his shoes
shining here i was barefooted catching a
wild hog or
a wrestling a a horse trying to get it
down you know i saw pictures of you
climbing a tree
recently when i first got out of prison
always something like that yeah i just
so i don't know it's just that uh
and i noticed that something about me is
sometimes in prison there'd be a knife
fight and people just
you see them rough guys that turn white
from it
it i just kind of almost like smile i
mean unless
if they come at me i'll turn white and
get away
but it doesn't those things like sudden
bother me i just
prison didn't bother me so you don't
know what the heck the meaning is you
just know you're a bit different
than the others and then maybe
well um maybe the
the whole point is you want to realize
you want to let that
madness flourish that uniqueness
flourish
that's the whole point of life we're all
different in our in like
very interesting little ways yes and the
more different you are you want to let
that
you want to let that become you want to
let it be it's full
it's like a garden you know all the
different flowers yeah
you did mention um you weren't sure if
there's a free will or not
um do you think it's all predetermined
or do you think would make
no choice to make our decisions i just
said if it is i hope that
but i know that we make our decisions
and i agree
and i i know that we are spirits that
are living in this
in this flesh that's beyond a shadow of
a doubt with me
if you walk out of your body and have
out of body experience you will know it
so the body is just the temperature the
spirit lives on
eternally with no beginning and no end
it just
and that's hard to fathom yeah this is
just a little shit this is a shell
to contain that spirit you know this is
the way we work on earth you know
but yeah i know i'm an eternal being
so are you do you think there's a why to
it
you know do you think there's a meaning
to this life well i think the why is
beyond
my capability of understanding it's
someone greater
than me i don't understand it but
it's awesome i just know that it's
awesome
and one day we will know the answers
once we get to that cross over the other
to the other side i think we will
understand
clearly it says you know now we see
through a glass darkly
but then when we are face to face with
god we will understand
and until we know let's just
enjoy this beautiful life yes well we
got it
and we're meant that was my guilt i love
everybody and everything
i do and it's just and i'm sorry if i
put a stumbling block in anybody's way
i wouldn't want to but these are these
things and i just think about oh
what a hypocritical world we live in
though
like almost anybody out there listen
okay he's a drug dealer
and i would say most of them are
committed to adultery that's a cardinal
sin
and yet they move through throw rocks at
me for moving uh
uh marijuana cocaine across the road
yeah
it's just if you saw the two different
things you'd say what a
terrible difference it is but we become
conditioned with
this mad society that we have
you mentioned that your daughter miriam
wrote you a poem you mind reading it i'd
be glad to
i was uh doing 11 years up in lombok
penitentiary
maximum security prison for parole
violation
for possession of marijuana in 1977.
they should have given me six months but
they gave me 11 years because they
wanted me for
what they call silent beef anyhow while
i was in that dungeon
i received a letter from my daughter
miriam
it's called daddy's poem a year ago i
became a poet
when i wrote your birthday prose and
here i am today ready to give it another
go
first i would like to wish you a very
happy birthday to be
and to thank you so very much for
without you i would not be me
secondly i want to say that your support
has been immense
it has been true honest loving and free
of all pretense
thirdly it goes without saying your love
has
surpassed all my wrongs and you always
made me smile
with one of your country songs
i can remember on cuervo daddy with you
holding me in your arms
as you sang jim reeve songs and talked
about the farm
i can see you walking through the door
from one of your travels far and wide
and the thought of you coming home daddy
kept a twinkle in our eyes
i can smell you as i did when i used to
climb into your bed
and you would talk to me again about one
of the adventures that you led
i can see me and mario asleep in one of
your airplanes extraordinaire
and remembering wondering to myself why
there wasn't an available chair
i remember having to meet you and
worrying that you wouldn't be there
but you would pop up from behind some
counter and give us all a happy scare
you gave us presents in kievis king and
hotels pleasure galore
and three dozen roses so we came through
the airport door
i can see your face in amsterdam with
the luggage carousel
and you look like a boy with a secret
that you were just dying to tell
you taught me mathematics in the sands
of far away places
and taught me to sail and we left
without any traces
we climbed glaciers in argentina and saw
the blue of the beautiful caves
and witnessed the majestic beauty of
such a jaggling
maze i learned how to change gears on
the dirt roads of brazil
we ate hot dogs in paraguay a memory we
smile over still
we talked about lions elephants and
bears on a hacienda and
uruguay but decided it was better if the
europe we did fly over the old world and
all its luxury
what a good time it was from south
america to the krasmapalski
i think we fell in love the european
jaunt well
it is considered a book in itself but
it's a story about beauty and knowledge
suspense
and worldly wealth we went from holland
to sweden a woman from france to spain
and i promise you i have no regrets i
would definitely do it all
again i would see the world with you
anytime sir
there's no doubt in my mind because
being by your side daddy
always ensures a wild good time
so our past took a turn and we're back
in the us of a
but life here isn't so bad and i'm
content to stay
i'm happy to be near you although i'm
not as close as i was before
but because of your love and
encouragement i've been able to open
your doors
i'm grateful to be in school and i'm
generally happy where i am
and i even like when you call and tell
me to study for the next exam
what a life you've given me daddy it's a
tremendous and a magical gift
we already have so many stories to tell
there are far too many to list
but i want to thank you again this day
with a very big happy birthday to you
and to tell you just a few more things
that i knew in my heart to be true
i love you daddy with all of your wrongs
and your rights
that you're ahead of our family and
you've kept us all bound tight
that you have a honest love in your
heart for god and all mankind
and you truly do believe in yourself
when you say it will all be fine
i know you will be there to catch me if
ever i waver a slip
and i know i'd want you as captain on
any sinking ship
i also know a new chapter is written
it's almost time to move on
it's time to sail another sea and to
witness a brand new dawn
it'll be good to see you at the helm
again as you point out our destination
to laugh and dance on the upper deck is
while the boat glides through
it'll be good to see you on the go
because i know you like to be
and to know you can open any door
without any key
but while we revel in our days together
we will know better than to hurry
because as you told me many times life
is an incredible journey wow
that's beautiful yeah
roger i'm really honored that you would
take the time
to visit uh me in texas and to uh
sit down and talk with me thank you so
much roger thank you so much thank you
it was a pleasure thanks
it's been a real pleasure yes beautiful
thanks for listening to this
conversation with roger reeves and thank
you to
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to support this podcast and now let me
leave you with some words
from pablo escobar all empires
are created of blood and fire
thank you for listening i hope to see
you next time
you