Surviving 33 Years in Prison: Roger Reaves' Shocking Tale | Roger Reaves DSH #1169

And put handcuffs on me.

And they put me in jail.

They put me to the jail.

Let me stop by.

And I remember Goyen Shirt.

And I got some clothes on.

And I

took me to the jailhouse, and they just put me in with a prisoner there, a big, nasty prisoner.

And he took a blackjack and robbed me of my 300.

All right, guys, we got Roger Reeves here today.

Come a long long way from the South.

Let's go.

Thank you, John.

Absolutely.

You grew up in the South, right?

In Georgia, yeah.

How long were you there?

26 years.

Wow.

I'm 27, so that's my whole life.

What made you want to move out?

Well, the Bloodhounds was after me.

The sheriff arrested me.

You got ran out of there?

And

every three months, the

what do you call it?

The circuit judge came through and they have the 24 men to decide where they got enough to make a bill from you.

I was around there in the soda fountain shaking everybody's hand.

Remember me?

I'm William Reeves' son, you know.

And the lawyer grabbed me and said, get out of here, boy.

You'll get more trouble interfering with the grand jury than you ever will with that whiskey.

So that's when your life on the ram began, 26?

Wow, no, I wasn't on the run because they didn't indict me, but that's the reason.

I might have to back up here and just tell the whole story.

Yeah, yeah.

Come on there a little bit.

All right.

I was raised on a three-mule farm in Georgia.

We had tobacco was about the only thing, made any money.

Other stuff we worked hard at peanuts and cotton and some corn and wasn't much, a 100-acre farm.

And my daddy was a bad alcoholic.

And so we lived poorer than we should have.

And I worked in the grocery store from the time I was 14 years old until I was about 18.

And

my daddy was 54 years old.

I was 17.

He died just one day, had an aneurysm.

And seven little brothers and sisters had a baby sister, six weeks old, in the house with my mother.

She was beautiful, 41 years old, and he owed more money on the farm than it was worth.

Wow.

So we went to work.

I mean, my mother,

I went to work.

And

we grew tobacco mainly.

We paid it out and watermelons.

But when I got 18,

I went up to Canada.

I hitchhiked up there to crop tobacco, picking tobacco, transit farm worker.

It was 1,100 miles, and they paid $20 a day in room and board up there.

And in Georgia, he only made $3 or $4 a day, what he could get.

And I went up there, and

big tobacco farm, beautiful big Belgium draft horses, and I'd pick my foot up and one put his down behind me.

And their nostrils was on me all day long.

And I was tough from working on a farm in Georgia, and that heat didn't bother me.

So

after we was into the crop a couple of weeks, boys came over from another farm and said, you want to go to the carnival tonight?

Sure, I want to go to a carnival.

So we got a 1949 Ford and away we went to Tiltsonburg, Ontario, Canada.

I don't know how far it was, 50 miles.

And we got there and it was a huge fair carnival.

Big tents.

It was the first thing was the Hoochie Coochie show.

I'd never seen anything like that.

Went in for our 50 cents.

And going down the road a little bit.

And there was a huge man on the platform.

And he's got a little bear in a cage over there in a circus wagon.

And he's saying,

brand new $500, $100 bill.

That anybody got guts enough to wrestle my bear and get in that cage and get all four feet off the ground.

What's your name, young man?

My name is Roger Reeves.

How much do you weigh, Roger?

I weigh 145 pounds.

145 pound man against 600 pound beast.

And he threw me in that cage with that little bear.

That little bear wasn't little at all.

When he started getting up, he got up all over that circus wagon.

And he had big pads on his feet, on his hands and legs, and he had a muzzle on.

So I wasn't too much worried about it.

So I ran into that bear's ram on, and all the things was loose, so it made a lot of noise for the crowd.

That bear took one swipe at me and laid me out about six feet tall level and I hit the ground.

Wow.

And the crowd here, whoo, sick him, Roger.

I'm not on my feet again before I'm laid out the other way.

Jeez.

So I thought something's got to change.

So I grabbed the top of that cage and I kicked that bear with all my might with my shoes on right in the head.

He went back up then and I run into him as hard as I could.

And I mean, I had, I knocked him off his feet for sure.

Wow.

That bear went insane.

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You pissed him off.

He threw me 20 feet into the other corner of that art.

I never had the breath knocked out of me so hard.

He dove on me.

I think weighed 600 pounds.

Holy crap.

And he just tore my clothes off with him with him like haws.

And the owner of the

place came in, put a kit chain on him, snapped him on, and ran it back.

And the bear run over him.

The chain got caught and part of the tent came down.

I go, he stick him.

Anyway, I couldn't work for a couple of days so i went down to um

uh lake uh

anyhow the lake there in canada lake erie turkey point

and i walked down on a long wooden pier and some guys tried to show me in and i kind of throwed them in a little bit and going out there there was three pretty girls sitting on towels

And as I walked by, I just kind of tipped my hat.

And I thought, wow, she's a hard stopper.

And when I came back, she said, Is that a university ring?

I said, No, this is a high school ring.

She said, We don't get high school rings in Canada.

May I see it?

And I said, You're from the Netherlands, aren't you?

She said, Sit down here and tell me how you know about Dutch accents.

I knew one person in the world that had that accent.

And anyhow, that's my wife.

Now that was 64 years ago.

Wow.

So I towed that in.

So

a couple of years later, we got married, and I was working, I got a a job on the railroad,

driving trains,

firemen on the diesel electric on the Atlantic Coastline Railroad.

And

I better back up a little bit.

Yes.

I want to tell, I forgot about when we came, we went to my daddy's funeral,

and

when we came out of the church,

the church was packed with white people.

And out under all the trees, it was just a multitude of black black people.

The men with the hat over there saying goodbye to Mr.

William.

He was loved.

Really, really, my daddy was a nice man.

Anyway, when we when we were going home down the sandy road from the highway, there was two records.

One had our pickup truck and the other one had our tractor behind it.

And they was towing it away.

Foskey Auto Parts, Douglas, Georgia.

What?

That guy was three times big as I am in his overalls.

Like, Mr.

Reeves owed us some money on this, so we got it.

Yeah.

So that's how bad it was.

Anyhow, I just wanted to put that out.

So we were just devastated.

No tractor, no way to go,

no money.

So now that's when I went up to Canada and worked and come back.

And

a couple of years later, I went up and

got Mari, and we got married and

came on back to the farm.

And I borrowed money against the farm.

My mother signed for me and we put in 36,000 lay-in chickens.

And the

price of feed kept going up.

And the price price of eggs kept going down until every time we'd pick up a dozen eggs, we lost a nickel.

So I was $78,000 in debt.

Wow.

And I thought, we're going to lose the farm for sure.

So

I started making moonshine whiskey.

And

I got bigger and bigger until I was making 1,000 gallons a week.

Wow.

And so I was selling it at $3 a gallon.

It took a dollar to make it, so I was making $2,000 a week.

I was paying things off.

And then somebody turned me in

and I went by and

going to the steel, I had the truck loaded with sugar and condensers and barrels.

And I saw a car in a place it wasn't supposed to be.

And I went down that little side road and two of them got after me and I went over logs and through the swamp and through the woods.

Finally, I jumped out and ran and eight doors opened and those men

shot.

They emptied their pistols at me.

I got nicked across the neck right there.

It wasn't bad.

But,

and then I had to, I went into Horse Creek, the big Horse Creek, and it was so cold until I broke ice getting in it.

Yeah.

And I must have swimmed down that creek two miles getting away from them.

And I go away from the bulldogs.

And

I knew they were going to be there soon.

And

I walked to my mother's house and then I went to see a lawyer.

And he said, if they didn't catch you, you all right.

But they didn't indict me.

And so

I was arrested for it.

That was the first thing.

And I think with that,

I saw how easy it was to break the law.

And if nobody knows, you're in pretty good shape.

So I think that was the beginning of my criminal career right there.

If I hadn't done that, I would have never got into the drug business.

Wow.

So that didn't stop you from making moonshine?

I went making moonshine.

So I went on that.

There was nothing for me in Georgia.

I lost my job with the railroad.

They fired me

because I had made moonshine.

And so I went out to California and I worked for a couple of years in construction.

And then I got a job on the Redondo Beach Fire Department.

And I thought I had won the lottery.

I really did.

And so I drove, I spent most of the four years that I was on the fire department driving the back of a hook and ladder truck.

And on my days off, we only worked 10 days a month and we worked 24 hours a day.

So we got 20 days off.

I would go back to Missouri and buy antiques.

There was a lot of them there on the west side of the Mississippi River.

As the settlers would come, the people go into California and Oregon, they would come with their furniture and their dishes and stoves.

But when they crossed the river from getting off the train,

they got across the river, they couldn't get it in those wagons.

Those wagons were Studebakers.

Nobody much knows that.

And they later prairie

schooners, but that's what came across.

And they couldn't get half their furniture in it.

So millions of large pieces was left on the river there.

And I'd get semi-trucks and bring it back every month and have an auction i was making pretty good money and on the fire department

and uh so i bought an airplane then i bought a bedroom and another one and i just was uh my hobby was to fly so i'd fly down to uh mexico and mule particularly and mari would come with me and the babies with us and

she would lay in a hammock and read a book and I'd go fishing and she party trained the babies there.

And says, guy said, why don't you bring some marijuana back back with you?

I said, I don't know anything about that.

Mr.

What's the deal?

He said, it's the hottest thing since pancakes, man.

There is

nothing better than that.

I said, what'd it pay?

He said, I'll introduce you to

someone.

So he introduced me to a really nice guy.

He was paralyzed.

I didn't realize he couldn't walk.

Beautiful voice.

And he said, you got an airplane?

Bring some pot back?

I said, I don't know.

What would you pay?

He said, let me bring somebody.

So he called somebody, came over, I'll give you $10,000.

Wow, for one trip?

Yeah, I said, throw some of that shit in there.

That was about two years' pay take-home from the fire department at the time.

So I went down there and there was nothing to it.

They put some bales of marijuana in there and I flew it up and unloaded it and give it to them.

They gave me a shopping bag full of money.

I took it home and dumped it on the bed.

Mari put her hand over her mouth.

What?

And the babies grabbed $100 bills and crawling around and we just laughed and went out to dinner.

And I thought, this can't be real.

That's two years pay.

You could buy any house there in Torrance or Redondo Beach for $30,000 at that time.

Wow.

So I went to see a criminal defense attorney.

I questioned and I put a $100 bill on his desk and I said, Mr.

Lawyer, one question, what would happen if I got caught bringing pot from Mexico in my airplane?

He said, what's your criminal history?

I said, I don't have one.

He said, oh,

tickets, speeding tickets, whatever.

I said, said, mister, I've never had a parking ticket in my life.

He said, what?

He said, you'll get probation.

And you work on the fire department.

I said, yes, sir.

He says, you'll get probation at the very, very worst.

If you got the worst judge in town, you get one year and you spend four months raking leaves at some base, some camp.

So I went and asked somebody else, and it's about the same thing.

There was nothing to it.

So I went and bought me a bigger airplane.

I took that money and bought me a Cessna 207.

That thing was big to me.

And now I can bring 1,100 pounds and I'm making $40,000.

And so I was going to make $300,000 to go to the farm.

Well, I made $300,000 so quick that it wasn't even funny.

And Mario says, Roger, you don't remember the mosquitoes and the ticks and the rattlesnakes and the cottonmouth moccasins

and the hard work.

I'm not going back.

So she put her heels in the ground and

we didn't go back.

So I just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Wow.

And that's how it started.

That was how it started.

That's marijuana business.

And you ended up becoming the biggest drug smuggler of all time, right?

International?

That's what they claimed.

That's what they say online.

That's what the DEA said.

Yeah.

When did it start getting serious, you'd say?

Like it started getting kind of risky and your life was on the line.

Well, it came all of a sudden.

I was

at 207.

I would do a load every day

and Mari would uh go to the store and buy toys or us she'd buy little toys and put boxes of apples and candies and everything she could think of for the children of that poor poor village called Peachylinghi and

every day I'd land more and more children were showing up so I was Mr.

Santa Claus come and I knew I didn't so on on level on number 13 I thought uh-oh I had a little thing going off inside, like, don't do it.

Gut feeling.

Now I listened to it.

At that time, I knew, but I didn't listen.

Now I will run.

So I landed and stopped about halfway down the run.

I think the runway was 800 or 900 feet long.

It was just enough to take off empty with fuel.

And I must have stopped about halfway down.

And the men came out and we fueled the airplane up.

And then I walked to the village through the starving donkeys and the washed out roads.

And I

spent the night there.

And the next morning before daylight, I walked down to the river and and brush my teeth.

The river's about knee deep.

And I got in the airplane and a young man named Pedro get in with me and he was maybe 100 pounds.

And he would fly with me and we'd go maybe 30, 40 miles away to some highway.

And when I come, a truck would come out and block the traffic.

It had the guys with their guns on it.

Then way down there, a mile or two down, another truck would come across and block the highway, freeway,

big road.

And I'd land between them.

And the truck would come up with a marijuana and they

put 1,100 pounds in there.

And I had plenty of time.

I'd shake hands with everybody in their big sombreros, and I'd get in the plane, take off over it.

And I remember sometime there was just a row of traffic on the other side, and there was a highway patrolman sitting there with his blue dome, but it wasn't turning.

Wow.

So that they were in on it.

No,

they were scared.

You get that many men with guns, hey, they ain't gonna bother you with their little pistol.

Yeah.

So, number 13,

I got in and I fired the engine up.

I heard bow.

I thought a tire blew out.

And I'm looking, hot tires hang out.

And Pedro's punching me, policia, policeia, policeia.

Well, it dawned on me.

So I just shoved a throttle to the firewall.

I didn't have a chance to go to the other end and turn around.

I might have had 500 feet in front of me.

And when I got right to the end of it, I was about 40 knots, I reckon.

And it would probably somewhat fly with full flap.

So I

stood it up.

And when I did, I was looking at airspeed indicator and it just disappeared.

A bullet hit it and just knocked it back into the dash.

Wow.

And

all the windows was mowed out and a bullet went up by my head and went into the gas tank and just ruptured it left of me.

And the water fuel was just pouring over on me.

I had to lean way over to get out of it.

Jeez.

And I was hit several times.

And

I found out now that I thought that they had shot the elevator cables in two, but I found out now I was just hanging on a stall and it feels that way.

So I don't know if I did the right thing.

And I just thought that thing was going to burst into flames any second that a spark flew in there.

All that gasoline was all over me.

So I pulled the power and I crashed into the river.

And the first hit, the wings came off.

And the second hit, the nose came underneath and just left me sitting up on top of that thing.

And I must have been knocked out.

Dr.

Pedro was saying, come on, Roger.

Come on, Roger.

And I jumped out and coming down the runway,

we can't call it a runway, but the airstrip was two of those Federalis and they were coming, they were still shooting.

Wow.

And two of the bullets hit the plane right by.

Well, I carried a nine millimeter high-powered Browning, and I have a, my finger is a little short, the trigger finger.

So I have to use that pistol.

Some of them big pistols, I have to shoot with the other finger, but I can shoot that Browning.

So I had it in a holster on top of a radio taped up there.

Now with the thing turned upside down, that thing is laying right there.

So I pull it out and I fire a few pop, pop, pop.

Down, I'm not trying to kill anybody.

Certainly don't want to kill the policeman.

So they run in the rocks.

And I say, reminded me of the, when the rabbit get the gun, the farmer, he run.

They ran in the rocks.

And Pedro and I took off and up the mountain.

And I wanted to go down.

through the river.

Oh, no, no, they'll come that way.

So we went on up through the cactus and I looked and Pedro's foot was almost shot off.

Jeez.

The bullet had hit him in the right-hand side of the ankle and just tore it out.

It wasn't even bleeding.

It was in shock.

And so we came and came to an old donkey, a long-haired, big donkey, and she must have been 30 years old.

She was from the village and named Charlotte.

And Pedro, Charlotte, Charlotte, and we jumped on that donkey and got away.

No way.

Yeah.

So that's a whole chapter in my book.

about how we got away and getting out of that place and being shot up like that.

That's insane.

And that wasn't enough to stop you, huh no i went bigger bigger airplane now wow because i feel like that incident would scare a lot of people you know and they would stop uh it scared me because i didn't realize it but uh i'd run over a rock in the road with my pickup and it would hit underneath the pickup and the hair would just stand up on the back of my head from memory of those bullets hitting that airplane i reckon damn that is crazy so how did they get close to you guys i thought they were being blocked off nah the guy just lying oh really really?

He was a hair-lip piece of shit.

You know, that's what he was.

He was

starving donkeys and he's kind of headman there.

He didn't pay anybody off.

Damn.

So he just kept the money.

Exactly.

Wow.

That's crazy.

So what happened from there?

Let me see.

I got a bigger airplane.

I bought a plane from the Beach Boys.

The Twin Beach.

That thing was so nice.

It was criminal to take the inside of it out.

Pigskin, all the seats with

maps on it from different woods of like a jigsaw puzzle all that thing was pretty and i bought that and boy that was big going up from a cessna to a beach 18 was was something big for me i flew to atlanta and picked my wife up mari and we had to roll out the carpet on the international runway so it was so i i uh i flew with that plane there uh that one

i flew so many loads until I brought the price down from $100 to $60 a pound in California.

Damn, that year.

And they was catching a lot of pilots.

They was catching almost everything coming across the border called Operation Star Trek.

And so I figured out a way to beat it.

I'd come out of southern Mexico or wherever I was coming and go to the middle of Baja, California.

And there was a ranch there, a goat ranch where they made cheese.

And it was 20 miles to the nearest road.

And there was a strip there.

And I landed there and asked a guy named Juan if I could unload my marijuana there while I went to town for fuel.

Sure.

So I gave him $500 and I'd go to town.

We'd put it under the musquet trees, the doves.

It was such a beautiful place, unbelievably beautiful.

And I'd go to Moulahe and

they'd wash my plane, fill it up with fuel.

I'd have lunch, maybe rent a room and have a nap.

I'd fly back out there in the afternoon and load back up.

And I would take off and go west.

And there was an island of Guadalupe.

200 miles off the coast of Baja.

And I would go there and then I would head northwest until I was 300 miles off the coast of San Diego.

And I I put it down pretty low.

And then I went north until I got behind the Santa Barbara Islands and they're 4,000 feet tall.

And then I'd come in low behind them and there was an airstrip there and I'd pull up and go on out into the desert and unload.

Wow.

I did that over 100 times.

Holy crap.

And they never caught on.

They never caught on to what I was coming in.

Dang.

So I didn't tell that until

recently.

So that was my marijuana.

I like to tell one about

on the way down.

I said, I better stop.

I was

going south and

I better stop at the goat ranch and see if everything's okay before I go get a load.

I'd usually go down to Carver St.

Lucas and that was before the road was even made and it was dirt streets.

And so I stopped and Juan came up on his fast-walking mule.

Hey, little one, come and stop.

How is everything?

Not so good, senor.

I said, what's the matter?

He said, when you left last time, the Federal, the soldiers came.

Oh, 50 of them.

And they camped under all these trees here waiting on you to come back.

And they ate my goats.

What?

I said, he said, look, and he took me out of the pot.

There's a pile of bones that big.

I saved the bones to show you.

I said, how many?

He said, they just shot the nannies, the ones closest to the pot.

Say my goats.

And so I said, how many did they?

And he said, I believe he said 50 that they ate.

And there was a pile.

I said, how much for each one of them?

And I forget what it was, $30 or $50 a piece.

And I had money in my pocket.

I gave it to him and he was happy again.

Holy crap.

That's ruthless.

So they did catch on a little bit.

Well, then I couldn't use that place anymore.

Oh, well, I did.

I put a piece of tin on top of the goat house.

And if it was up, I was all right.

If it was down, I knew not to land.

But I said, is there any place here to...

to grow marijuana.

He said, he had 25,000 hectares, 60,000, 70,000 acres.

He said, not here, senor, too many people, but I know a place.

So I spent the night there in the airplane, and the next morning we went, got on two fast-walking mules, and we went and it had rained in the country, and the whole place was covered in flowers.

It was just heavenly.

And we came by

a mesa.

He said, I killed two big mountain lions there last week.

What?

Yes.

I said, how'd you do it?

He said, well, I roll rocks off of that mesa.

And when they go down through the bush, the deer run out.

So I killed, that's how I killed deer.

But this time, two mountain lions ran out, and I killed them.

And I said, what do you do with them?

He said, we ate them.

I said, you ate the lions?

He said, gee, senor, we're very good.

So we stopped for lunch, and he had a stack of tortillas.

One of them had a big fly in it.

He just pinks the fly out.

And he had this dried meat and

very nice.

And he made, took some dry cactus and made a little invisible fire, but it was a fire.

And he heated heated those tortillas up and put that little sauce in there and put that meat in there, grounded like sausage.

I said, That's after about 10 of those.

I said, that's mighty good.

What kind of meat is that?

He said, Leon.

Leon.

So I had lion for lunch there.

Wow.

That's cool.

I wonder how that tasted.

I've never had it.

It just tastes like sausage.

They put the hot spices in it and things.

Damn.

Some mountain lion.

Those things are big, right?

Yeah.

So

that was

what I did with those people, yes.

And when was the first time you got arrested?

Was it shortly after that?

I was trying to think just exactly how that happened.

Oh, yes.

On the

some back before that, after I got,

it took me about three months to get over the gunshots in my and

I had to keep my foot above my head.

That thing thumped.

However, harder.

Your toe got shot off, right?

Yeah.

So it

went, I went to Hawaii.

We had a lovely time with children pouring pina coladas on me and Mario there.

So

I went back to Mexico and I had another fella out from out there, and he was going to come down and pick up the load that I had paid for.

So he got arrested in Hermaceo.

Somehow he messed up.

And

in his pocket was my phony name in the hotel I was staying.

Cool.

So a nice gentleman came and I was in the pool.

He said, are you Roger Reeves?

I said, yes.

And he just shook my hand and put handcuffs on me.

And they put me in jail.

They put me to the jail.

jail, let me stop by, and I remember Goyen shirts was popular.

And I got some clothes on.

And I

took me to the jailhouse, and they just put me in with a prisoner there, a big, nasty prisoner.

And he took a black jack and robbed me of my $300 in my wallet.

He took my wallet and everything I had.

They put me in a little cell.

And I guess it was...

20 feet long by 12 feet wide.

And sometimes it must have been 20 prisoners coming there.

Jeez.

And I stayed there three days.

And

I remember I didn't have anything to eat.

And I had a Pepsi bottle.

And I'd get the boy to go and get a spigot.

And he'd get some warm water and bring it to me.

And there were some rough-looking fellas came through, a handsome man, and they was being transferred from one prison to the other, going to Trace Maria's out there in the ocean.

And he sat down and a little woman came, very nice.

beautiful.

It was his mother.

And she brought a basket of food and brought it in, give it to him.

And I was sitting beside him on that concrete floor.

And that stuff smelled so good.

It was little chickens wrapped in tortillas.

And he offered me some, and I said, I said, please.

And so I ate two or three of them, and it was just delicious.

And I said, thank you, senor.

Thank you.

So it might have been the best summer I ever had.

Don't thank me, thank God.

That was nice.

And so they put me back into the after that, they put me in the torture chamber.

Jeez.

And they really did a number on me.

They beat me until there wasn't anything on me.

It wasn't red, black, or blue.

Oh my gosh.

And then they put my head under like a seltzer water and three of them would hold you down.

If you took a swiff of that, that carbonated water or whatever it was, I guarantee you, six of them couldn't hold you down.

It would just make your head explode.

Wow.

So I learned after the first time, right before you have to breathe, act like that, go into a frenzy.

So

they executed me with catalypods and they had a paper.

If you sign the paper, it's all over.

Well, I knew if I signed a paper, I was in prison for at least six years.

If you don't sign it, somebody can get to somebody and pay out.

So I'd already learned that.

I knew that.

So

they,

after, I don't know how long I was back there for a month, I guess.

And

they

took me out and stripped me naked.

and strapped me over a barrel or something.

And they had these winches and put my arms far apart like this.

And they come in and they buttered up my bum.

Uh-oh, what they fixing to do now?

So anyway,

it was a terrible fellow.

He came there and he just crammed me full, big, big thumb, crammed me full of

hot chili pepper.

Jeez.

Right up my rectum until it's full up.

I mean, it was excruciating painful.

That's probably the nastiest pain I've ever had.

And after that, I laying on the floor recovering, and they brought a dead man in, a slim black man.

And he was dead and he was wrapped in newspaper,

just like a mummy, from the top of his head all the way down, all of them, you couldn't see anything.

And they had a meat hook in him and they hung it on a bolt on the side.

Of course, they'd had that bolt there for ages.

And you next, son of a bitch, you next.

Well, that didn't bother me too bad.

A dead man is awful, but...

And then he started thawing out, and it looked like he was crying.

He had his head was like this, and the tears running down his face.

It was the formaldehyde running out of him.

And then his orifices opened up, and it's puddling down on the floor.

What an awful smell.

And I went smelling that formaldehyde.

I had

hallucinations.

I saw pink flying pigs with wings on them all in that cell.

And I put my face under the door.

It was about a half inch, and I put it under that filthy blood-stained door, sucking air.

And of course, I went unconscious.

And I woke up in the hospital with a doctor with a respirator on me saying, breathe, man, breathe, man.

I almost died from that.

Wow.

So I was sick and I had a terrible headache for like two weeks.

Anyhow, my wife came down and

paid the bribe.

And one morning at four o'clock, they threw something on me and come, come, come quick.

And we went out the back door to prison like I'd escaped, but it was a payoff.

Holy crap.

And that was the first of five prisons.

That's the first of five prisons.

Four more after that one.

That one sounds like it might be the worst, though, right?

That sounds intense.

Or was Germany worse?

That was the worst thing ever happened to me in my life.

Yeah.

By far.

And nothing else even laugh at the rest of it.

Damn.

Yeah, that sounds insane.

They were nasty.

And I found out that there were seven DEA agents there.

Really?

To tell them to stop Roger Reeves.

Whatever you do, stop him.

So he's got an

wow.

So the DPA has pulled in other colors.

They were there.

They was joint with him and and uh they that was they came the and these uh federales were not local they were from mexico city that came to arrest me wow so it was a put up job by the americans but they couldn't find any evidence on you they had none so they're going to get me stopped in mexico

they were trying to get you to to route out people maybe they're going to put no they just put me in prison to stop me yeah i was bringing a load every week

and they knew it but they didn't know i was getting it in yeah wow that's insane.

So where'd you go after that?

Did that scare you from Mexico?

I know I had one more counter.

I was in the hotel room and they arrested me.

And they took me out to a, with the same DE agent.

They took me out to a

past a prison where I'd been, went on and passed a railroad track, and they turned down the railroad track, Bumpy Road, and they stopped right in about an acre where they dumped the

the corn from the highway.

They pick up the dead cows and burrows with a winch and they bring them to this place to rot.

And I guess every year they take a bulldozer and they push up the bones and the cow hides and there's the jungle right behind that.

So they stopped right in the middle of that, three carloads.

I was in the middle of LTD Ford's new.

And I stepped out to Ford and they said, Don Des Su Avions, where are your airplanes?

I said, I don't speak Spanish, sir.

He slapped me upside the head with a big, knocked me plumb off my feet.

I said, my Spanish improved a little bit.

So

they tied my hand behind me with a belt, my own belt, and pulled a shirt over me.

And oh, did they work me over?

And they had a cattle prod.

And they burnt me with that thing.

And that guy was big, and he was red-faced.

And that went on for about three hours, cheese.

And he looked like he was tired of it as I was.

My nose was bloody and I just, the shirt was bloody and my knees was all, the meat was gone off the inside of where they had me squatted down like that.

And so

the batteries got bad on the cattle prod.

So they called the boss.

And when there was five of them around me, and when four of them went up there where the car was to talk with that boss,

I had got my hand loose and I got a rock,

a good size, about like a baseball, and I had it in my hand.

And he'd been having that thing under my face and telling me to sign.

And I went, Senor, I sighed, I sighed.

And he came over like, what?

And when he did, I came over with that rock and I hit him in the head and I took off.

I mean, I sounds like a movie scene.

It was at the time.

And I guess 50 feet away or 100 feet away was that pile of dirt and the cow hides and the bones.

And I ran over that and the bullets started flying at me.

It was all dry and red, and the bullets were flying.

And right when I jumped over it,

a machine gun, a little pistol, like probably a MAC 10, opened up.

It just slid into the...

foliage above me and my nose caught right on a vine and it threw me backwards, wham.

And I'm behind three or four feet of dirt.

And I went hollering,

like I'd been shot.

Anyhow, I scrambled through the forest and got away.

Wow.

So I got to, oh, yeah.

That is insane.

There's quite a bit to that story.

I wrote a whole

chapter about that.

I got to.

I mean, I was just right next to one.

I heard his radio crack.

And then I had to crawl across a little pasture with a horse playing with me.

And I get across, and there's like a thousand acres of mango trees.

And I get up in the second row because I figured that there's a helicopter coming.

And I watched 17 soldiers get out of a big soldier and go into those woods where I was.

What?

And I sat up there all day long on that little, and if I move, the tree shakes.

Oh, my God.

I could hardly, when the helicopter flew away, I got down out of that tree after a while.

And I had to walk a mile or two across.

You could see forever under there.

And I come to an old chicken house and there was some, I guess the water hadn't run.

They'd tell me, I washed the blood off of me and

caught the back of a school bus.

There was a lot of dirt on the back of it and I grabbed it and I got away on the back of that school bus.

That's insane.

You've escaped out of the city.

So then that's when I found out that the Americans were there to stop me.

So

I quit Mexico.

I said it's too dangerous now.

And I didn't know how bad I'd hurt that Federale.

And I knew if I ever got caught again,

they paid me back with spades.

Yeah.

They're there had to kill me.

Yeah.

You think you survived that federale?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Didn't that didn't have to be next-dried back to Mexico for sure?

You ever find out who it was?

No.

Really?

Never even tried to.

Yeah.

It's funny seeing the mob guys

talk to FBI agents now on podcasts.

You know, the guys that hunted them down.

Yeah.

So

same thing, just different, different side.

Yeah.

So which agency was after you?

Was it the DEA?

DEA.

Wow.

That's crazy.

So you went to a different country after that?

i started in um in in colombia you flew there or you took a ship no i flying flying out of there flying a a a dc3 hauling pot out of there

and um

uh it was during the world series baseball game in 1981 that i was down there and uh i was on a i went had to go too far and the guy lied to me about how far it was and and i had to put it down on a strip and i'm having lunch at the place till i'm waiting for the right time it's in the guerrilla the uh

the guerrilla territory around close to brazil

and uh

i was having some lunch there and

uh laying in a hammock and wham i mean

and i looked up in the ass and two two military jets going straight up just turned they came back down that runway and just tore it up with machine guns damn and i run got in my airplane

and a couple other guys got in there with me and i get the guy took off of my $80,000 in the truck.

And I should have got on that truck with my money.

I got an airplane.

I didn't think they'd shoot me.

So I took off, and the two planes was right beside me.

And they was trying to get me to go to Villa Vincencia.

That's a military base not too far away.

And I said, uh-oh, they were just right there, you and I looking at nice-looking young men.

And I just hold up the old piece side.

So one of them had to leave.

And the other one got underneath me.

And the 20-millimeter cannon was just shooting up.

It looked like, and the tracers looked like they were curving up from my, they were close.

So I pushed it over so that I couldn't, he couldn't get under me anymore.

And he thought I was trying to run into him.

And then he came and

he tore the wing up and put bullets in the tail.

And I had a lot of barrels of fuel.

Aviation, I said, if one of those tracers goes in that, I'm a fireball.

Wow.

So anyway,

I went went into a thunderstorm, tried to get away.

And I went up like 20,000 feet and I come out there.

He was right there.

He had me on his radar.

This guy was persistent.

So I

went back in and I pulled it up into a spiral stall.

And I went down and I got away from him and I got under the clouds.

And I thought, I've done so far down here.

I'll go get to marijuana now.

I was bulletproof.

And the other two guys begging me to go out.

Let's go to, let's go

back to San Jose, Costa Rica.

But I went and I saw a long, long stretch by the river Guayvieri.

And it looked like it was 10 miles long with just grass on it.

And I said, that looked like a spot to stop and rest until I can go back to see the gorillas.

And I've kept with that big airplane.

That thing weighs 30 tons.

And

one strip after the other.

I just put those big tires, big diets, big semi-tires.

And it looked like a really good runway.

And I had a guy, Al, he was a co-pilot.

And so I'm going to stop this time, Al.

So when I stopped, I almost come to a stop, and I said, take your feet off of the brakes.

He said, not on the brakes.

And I knew what had happened.

That thing had fallen through.

It was a hard crust, and underneath it was mud.

And the plane started, and I just gave it full power, but it was too late.

And it stood up, and it just stood up on its head, stood up.

It's 100 feet long, 100 feet wingspan.

That plane stood right up on its head.

And the two big engines.

kept it from caving in on me.

Wow.

The whole front caved in right to us.

All the instrument found and everything.

Just that close to getting killed.

And

when it stopped,

the

escape hatch is in the tops.

It's the bolts you're nothing to do.

I stepped out

on the grass and got my satchel.

And Al got out with me and the other guys had to get out from the, they had to skim me down hoses to get out.

Anyway, we had quite a time.

with our suitcases and

I tell the story in full in the book, but anyway, I went on down the road.

They went on down the road and I went down the trail.

I said, I'm not going down the road after all this.

And they went straight to prison.

They spent a long time in Bogota.

And I went on down.

I was 11 days in the jungle.

Wow.

And I got rides and dug out canoes with the indigenous people.

And I bought a blockage of

brown

sugar, I think the caramel type stuff.

And I'd put that in a bag from a cleaner bag, shake it, and that's what I lived off of.

And so the indigenous people there would get, would give me some food too.

And this is in Colombia?

Yeah, down there close to, yeah, Venezuela, Brazil, that area right in that corner.

And so after 11 days, and here's a little spiritual,

I was in a dugout

and I was trying to communicate with Mari.

And I said, I'm all right, Mari.

I'm all right.

Because they thought maybe I was dead.

I knew they would think that I was crashing an airplane like that.

And she said she was taking a shower and she heard me say it clearly.

Wow.

So I don't know, but she

said she wasn't worried anymore.

So after 11 days, came to a place.

I kept asking the Indian Dondista Avions.

And where's airplanes?

And Loma Linda, where is it?

Leijos, long way.

So I went several hundred miles.

And

I came to Loma Linda.

And it was like Hawaii World War II.

Ship lap boards, beautiful, just like what in the world?

Big airstrip there and several airplanes.

And a nice lady there said, how did you get here?

Well, I'm just touring the Amazon.

We don't have tourist ships.

And I said, what is this place?

And she said, you don't know.

This is Loma Linda, headquarters for Missionary Aviation Fellowship for the Amazon.

And I had originally learned to fly to be a missionary aviation fellowship pilot, to fly the missionaries in and out and the sick people.

That was my idea when I was younger.

And so they flew me out.

They flew me right to that military base.

And a military policeman took my satchel out of the, out of the, the miss, out of the plane, and same military base of jets had tried to get me to go to.

Wow.

So I said, all right.

So they interrupted a World Series baseball game.

Said, American DC-3 has just been shot down by the Colombian Air Force.

But he's up.

He's up and away, ladies and gentlemen.

I took off again the first time.

And then they said, so, but anyway, they said, this is the first plane shot down on Reagan and New York War on Drugs.

So it did interrupt the World Series baseball game in 1981.

Wow.

So they had to delay the game.

Pardon?

They had to delay the game or what happened?

No, they just, when they speak in at halftime or something, they tell what's going on in the city.

Oh, okay.

So that's crazy.

I didn't hear several people heard it.

Wow.

So that was your plane?

They were talking about it.

They talked about me.

Holy crap.

It wasn't nobody else.

Dang.

Yeah.

What a story.

First plane shot down on the war on drugs.

Yeah.

So those two guys went to prison.

Did you talk to them after?

No, I never did talk to them.

I sent one of them.

The one guy was all right, but I begged him to come with me.

I said, you work for me.

Yeah.

Come on, man.

Because that guy's seven feet tall and got big muscles don't mean he knows what he's talking about.

He already got us in this trouble himself.

I'm tired.

I'm going with Dan.

Seemed like people with big muscles seem to talk, you know.

get

so i said you go with him but you're on your own were you worried about them snitching on you riding on you?

Nothing about that because in Mexico, in Colombia, and those places, if they don't catch you, you're in pretty good shape.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

United States

is one of the few places that just dog it after you from here to Vietnam to Russia.

They'll go after you everywhere.

Like they just, it's a game with them.

They want to put people in prison.

That's their, I put the cuffs on him.

I'm so proud of myself.

I shot him and I killed him.

And even in prison, they put the high-five stuff on him.

Get out of here.

There's 50 of you and those two little guys.

Yeah.

Cowardly.

Yeah, they take a lot of pride in arresting people in the U.S., right?

Oh, yeah.

And then how many years you can get?

Like, they asked for life sentence for me.

You're insane.

They wanted life for you?

Yeah, I asked for a life.

Wow.

The guy got 35 years for possession of marijuana.

What?

Now it's legal.

Exactly.

And so I think all those guys are

jumping ahead of it a little bit,

way ahead of it.

But

I thought, all right, I need a landing strip halfway between Columbia or wherever I was hauling out of and

Louisiana.

So I went with my family to Honduras,

San Pedro, Sula.

It's about halfway.

And we went into

Lake Azul.

Oh, how beautiful.

And we was looking at farms and ranches.

And we got muddy and we got in the river and had two little girls.

And

we came back back

to the hotel and we put our clothes in the laundry.

And

so when we went for him, it wasn't ready.

I said, come back in the morning.

I said, well, our tickets to New Orleans

is ready.

But we've got to go in the morning.

So I told Mario, I said,

I'll go to the laundry and you go.

take the children and get on that plane.

It's easier for one to

stand by and then two.

So I went to the laundry and got our clothes.

There's a big bag of them and got on the, got the taxi and the old man.

I tried to get him to go faster and I gave him a $100 bill, go faster.

He just blew the horn faster and that old car didn't go any faster at all.

So I got there and the plane was brand new 727, taxiing out.

And I ran out around the building and I waved to him and the young pilot waved back at me.

And then I saw Mari's facing the cockpit.

At that time you could go up and she's telling him that.

And so he stopped.

I saw the nose wheel go down and he extended the ladder and I'm running for the ladder then he takes off again just like you a hitchhiker was

and he's playing with me then he stops and puts it out and I get on the airplane and the whole crowd cheers and I go back about halfway and my little girl Miriam's about nine or ten nine years old and she's sitting there and

she moves over to the middle seat and there's a gentleman there Right here he is, Mr.

Barry Seal.

And

I sit on the outside and the plane takes off and the wheels come up with a thud.

And then in a few minutes, it's another little click-click.

And Miriam said, what was that, Dad?

And I said, he just turned on his autopilot.

The guy leans across.

You fly these things?

I got a few hours, mister.

He said, I do, too.

My name is Barry Seale.

And

he talked and he said he just got out of prison that morning.

He had blue eyes.

He

looked like a CIH.

He didn't look like a fellow just got out of prison.

And I thought he was just trying to get me to talk.

Yeah.

So he chatted away all the way to New Orleans, and I didn't believe a word he said.

So when we got off, though, there was a bunch of people.

There was his mother and his wife and little children crying and egging on him, kissing him.

He'd been in prison for a year down in Honduras.

Wow.

And I said, he's sucker telling the truth.

I tell him, Arizona, give him his father number and address.

So I went over, I said, Barry, come out and see me.

I might have some work for you.

So that's how I met Barry Seal.

So

after

some kind of bad experiences down in Columbia, I'd get a load of pot and I'd come up and it wouldn't be anything like what I bought.

But so I quit.

And so I had the fellow, he says, I know

the money's in cocaine.

Let me introduce you to someone.

So we flew to Medellin and went to the top of one of those high rises.

And there was a lavish apartment of condominium there with glass all around.

And the guy was drunk.

He could speak several languages, brilliant, but he was drunk.

And he stayed drunk for months when he did.

And while we were talking, in come a woman, high cheekbones,

rabbit furs all over, rabbit fur boots.

And she's sacheting around and she kisses everybody three or four times on the cheek at Sonia Di Atila from Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

And she was his Bolivian collection.

And I'm there with that lawyer and we're just sitting there.

Now we're just, she don't pay us any attention.

So Fernando asked her where she's going.

She's going to Miami to buy an airplane.

Well, this lawyer is smarter than I am.

And he says, Roger has an airplane for sale.

And he winked at me.

And

she asked, what kind of airplanes do you have?

I said, I have a queen heir.

Queen air, huh?

She liked the idea of a queen heir.

She thought she was queen.

Ah, yes.

And she says, how much do you want for it?

And the lawyer's going,

so I told her price.

She said, okay, you bring it.

If I like it, I'll buy it.

I said, well, now, I'll tell you, this is a pretty long feast from California to Panama

here.

I said, I'll have a man to bring it down, but it costs $5,000 for fuel.

Oh, give the man $5,000, Miguel.

So he gave me $5,000 and brought the plane down.

And so she liked it.

And I flew around with her entrage.

And the shaw of Iran had just died out there on that island.

We went out there.

And then she said, okay, you want the money to go to Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Take me.

So her crew got all in there and we went to Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

And

you might want to cut this story out.

We landed and the police was all.

bowing down to her and they put us in a police-stacked limousine and we go out through the town and the sirens go in, and the flags on the front of it.

Oh, she is queen.

And we come to her house under the water tower there at Santa Cruz, Bolivia, big water tower.

And it's look like it's made of marble, look like a mausoleum or something.

It has a

wire fence all around it to protect it.

And all the help is outside the gate, and they're wringing their hands and crying.

And he said, What's the matter with you, fools?

What are you doing?

She said, Your lion is eating the baby.

What?

And she runs in, and I walk in behind her, and she has a mountain lion, and he's eating a baby.

A little baby looked like about a year old on the floor.

It was a terrible scene.

Sometime I tell it, and it's too gross to tell.

But that lion ate that baby, had blood all over its face.

And she grabbed little Tommy, put him in another room, and goes out there.

Get away from here, you stupid people.

Never want to see your ugly faces again.

Leaving a lion.

leaving a baby on the floor with a lion in the house.

And that's what that was my, and then later.

on.

Was that her baby?

No, it was

one of the maid's babies.

Wow.

So later on, if you want to read about her, she's in the book, The Big White Lie and the CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic.

She told on me.

She told on a lot of people and put me in prison.

So yeah,

she was bad.

She was a black widow of Bolivia.

Sonia D.

Attila.

Sonia.

Yes.

So DEA got to her?

Pardon?

DEA got to her?

What happened?

Oh, they got to her and they just turned her and she just went, she just flipped.

She didn't care.

Wow.

wow because she wasn't even a u.s citizen right no but they they was all they they all over they'll extradite you out of there i don't know how they got her damn but that book the big white lie the cia and the crack cocaine epidemic it's a good book and uh they they put a whole chapter um me and her in that chapter so she brought down a lot of people i don't know but i'm they did what she did what she wanted to she's living here in the united states and witness protection wow so you never wanted to go that route oh absolutely not You know, which is respectful.

Either snitch or not.

Yeah.

A lot of people you work with, though, like some guys here, every one of every one of them snitches.

Every one of them?

Every single one of them.

Wow.

I was doing some work, and I'll just tell you about this.

I told my friend Jerry when I first started saying, Jerry, that guy's an asshole.

He said, Roger, remember this.

In this business, if you don't work with assholes, you're going to be lonely.

I love that.

About the truth.

Yeah.

Not all of them, but there was plenty of them.

They just low life that'll tell on you in a minute.

Yeah.

So you had to live pretty cautiously who you kept around you, right?

I didn't, I didn't, I didn't smoke the stuff.

I didn't, I didn't do it.

I didn't fool with those people.

So I had nobody around me.

I come home when my family went to church and went and bought groceries and went down the road and whatever I had to do, you know, plowed my garden and I lived a normal life.

Yeah.

So Apple had

was going to make a series of my life and

they were going to make me sort of like a

forest gump going out doing all these things, getting blown up and coming home to loving family.

And

anyhow, that didn't fly.

So we were starting over again.

Yeah.

I don't think that's the right angle for your story.

No.

I mean, you obviously were smart enough to survive it all.

That's not a forest gump portrayal to me.

They were saying, where he's going out, you know, getting Vietnam and getting shot and all these things.

And he's coming back home with a sweetheart, you know, or whatever.

Yeah, but anyhow, that's how they wrote it.

The pilot

didn't work.

Yeah.

So after

Bolivia, you ended up in Germany at some point, right?

No, I have some different between now.

This guy, Fernando Correo, the one that, where Sonia came in.

His wife, he said, go see her, Marta.

She was a nice lady, too smart.

And she said,

he'll sober up one day and he's got unlimited amounts of cocaine he wants to bring to the united states he pays five thousand dollars a kilo and just wait he will sober up he may stay drunk for three months but he he was he was a brilliant man really and truly just unbelievable when he was

where we could talk to you so she called me and said come down uh fernando's having a birthday party and we're having it over on the coast and we're flying over with avianca airlines is flying the crew everybody over so i flew over.

I got there and I flew down commercially and went to,

I guess,

Medellin, I guess it was.

And we flew over, might have been Cali.

We flew over in the little shorts and one right after the other.

And we landed at that runway.

It must have been two miles long.

And that's where they loaded marijuana

on the ocean.

He owned miles and miles of that beach south of Panama.

And

so I landed there and I looked and there's airplanes up on the side, waltz nest under the next, under the wings.

It was like that's when if they wanted to buy a new airplane, they'd take the numbers off of that old one and just buy a new one in the states and paint it on there.

And they just, so those old airplanes, there were millions of dollars worth of junk there.

Wow.

D8 tractors, just

track off nothing.

They didn't have anybody to fix anything.

So

I landed there and

on the way over, I met Mario and

Matilda Sanchez, beautiful couple.

And she was trying to sell them launches to go out to the load the boats with, I believe.

But she spoke perfect English, beautiful English.

So

I walked down.

There was an old log house there on the

fast-flowing river.

And

I pulled my shoes off and was

walking on the beach.

And a woman, a young woman, started walking with me.

was chatting along.

It's all red clay in the beach.

And Matilda and Mario come the other way and says, Roger,

Mario tells me that you're walking with the girlfriend of the most vicious killer in Colombia.

He suggested you get away from her.

Thank you, Matilda.

So I excused myself from the young lady.

She was telling me, I don't know.

I've never rode in an airplane before.

I don't know this man just invited me.

And I said, I know why he invited you.

You might not.

But she looked like a poor girl from the barrios.

And

so that night I'm in with a bunch of men in the

bunkhouse.

The imported people got

houses on stilts by the beach.

Anyhow, that woman comes flying in the room, slams into me.

And then that guy comes in.

And

Jaime Ordonis, he had killed 16 judges.

He got caught with a ton of cocaine.

Whoa.

So he was bad, but anyhow, his friends caught him up.

So

that weekend was

a big, big meeting.

And I believe that's when the Medellin cartel was formed.

They had judges and actors and people putting on skits and police from every city in Colombia.

And

they decided to make

an insurance policy.

If the cocaine's worth $10,000 a kilo in Colombia and it's worth $40,000, $50,000 in New York.

If you give it to us, if it gets busted between you giving to us and we're giving it to your man, we will replace it in Columbia.

So I understand they got 100 tons put on them, five guys, Yo Choas, Escobar, I don't know who all they were, but they had plenty of cocaine.

So

the imported people left and we was waiting for the airlines to come pick us up the next day.

And I got me a plate of food and went around behind the old log house and was laying in a hammock

reading the book the MMK the Far Pavilions

right by my head blood spattered on me and spattered on book Wow I rolled out that hammock and I just kept rolling and when I looked up there was a black man and he was tearing the pistol out of a white man's head and his young black man who looked like he'd about 20 years old a 60 year old Columbian and he put that pistol right behind the other guy's the his head and click click click click click there were no more bullets and I saw that the the white white man had shot and shot a dog right in the head.

He had a big black spot around his eye, just like in the little rascals.

And that dog was turning, flipping blood.

And he had shot the black man in the leg in the femorial artery, and he was bleeding profusely.

So he started hobbling off.

And I lied.

I'm not a doctor, but I said, I'm a doctor.

I do have a lot of first aid training.

I said, I can save you.

He put that pistol right at me, and I didn't want to go click, click, click.

So he went on down the road and died.

Wow.

So, oh,

that

native people under those trees back there, they was on.

They were grieving and carrying on.

And

they come and said, you know, that the white people had come in here and was causing a lot of trouble and this and that and the other and they killed that boy and there was going to be lots of trouble before daylight.

Well, it got dark and the generator went out.

They'd poured sand and water in the tank.

And

I was

I was concerned.

Yeah, I would be too.

20 or 30 of us white people left there and just actresses and,

you know, unimportant people, we just guessed.

So I stayed right close to Matilda.

She had a little 32 pistol.

And

we put

diesel in cans and put a little gasoline on the rags and had little tiny smodgy plots all night long.

And the next morning, the soldiers came.

Of course, that's just a heck of a story.

But anyway, that's how I met the people in the cocaine business.

So Mario took me to Invigado

and we went up a little road that had the toll gate or the gate, we called it,

and went by the guns and then went up a little road and cobblestone for half a mile, wound around beautiful Rome Iliads in the trees above the road and come to an old house.

And it was old.

I mean, two or three hundred years old.

And me and all out, 30 or 40 of them in the front yard with their fedoras and his hitching rails and stone they was waiting to see a hefty and i was ushered right in really pretty woman come in watch be careful for the hole in the floor there was a hole that big in the floor but it's all polished and the floor was uneven that thing had been it was it was nice so they ushered us right in to see jorge ochoa and he's sitting behind a desk almost this big and he's got He shakes hand, he speaks a little English,

and he got 12 telephones on his desk, and each one of them is a different color.

And I what's with these telephones?

He said, well, each one of these from a different city.

If that one rings, it's New York and that one ring it's Chicago.

I know which one it is.

Wow.

So anyway, we had a chat and he says, asked what kind of airplanes you had.

And I told him I had a DC-3, a B-18 turbojet aerial commander, and what kind of experience you have.

And I told him a couple hundred loads coming across the border.

So

he said they had all the work I could do at $5,000 a kilo.

I said, how much you put in there?

300, 500 kilos.

I thought, well, that's $2.5 million a day.

Jeez.

I think I want to work with you.

So he said, let me call my compadre.

So he sent the pretty woman somewhere, and she came back with a man, introduced himself, Pablo Escobar.

And just a man, my size, 5'8, whatever, and looked about benign as you could, and khaki pants.

Did you know who he was at the time?

No.

You never heard of him?

Never heard of him.

Never heard any of them.

They were not any famous at that time.

And so he told me the same thing.

He didn't speak in English, but I spoke bogana Spanish.

And he said, we have all the work you can do, senor.

So I went home and got my airplane and I started flying.

And I mean, it was jam up.

So

they kept making me go further and further in the jungle down towards Brazil.

And I went to see them.

I said, no, listen, I just can't make it.

It won't make it that far.

And they say, well, next time I landed, Pablo Escobar landed in a new helicopter right beside me at a

banana plantation down there.

And he introduced me to a guy named Benjamin.

And Benjamin got in the plane and said, go where he tells you to.

So we loaded up with cocaine and Benjamin got in there and we took off and went and landed in a military base in Nicaragua.

I met the general there and they cooked lunch and steaks and with the egg on top of it.

And he said, land here anytime you want to, but radio silence.

And we'll fill you.

plane up with gas.

You can spend the night, stay as long as you want to, and go north when you want.

So, I mean, that was like unbelievable.

So, that was

before the Oliver North and the Ran-Contra.

Yeah.

But

so I got above, I think I had about six or seven loads.

And I got above the clouds one night and couldn't get down.

I got above the fog.

And so I was in dire states and I thought I was going to die.

I said, what am I going to do?

I can't get down.

It was too foggy.

It was just fog, just a layer of fog from, I guess, the cargo to Orlando or somewhere.

I didn't have enough fuel to go where it wasn't.

So it was late at night and the moon was shining bright.

And I just had to go out and

all the airports closed.

And so I came down the glide slope at

Louis Armstrong International Airport there in New Orleans.

and bounced down the runway.

I couldn't see anything.

And

I'm not that good good a pilot.

Most people aren't.

So

I got stopped halfway down and I walked a mile to the end, a mile the other way, and I'm off in the gravel on one side between the lights.

And I stayed there all night long.

It was still 0-0 everywhere.

So the next morning, I guess it got seven, eight o'clock, and the sun came out.

You could see right up through it, but you couldn't see two lights down the runway.

And I couldn't stand it any longer.

I thought some little

security truck or something is going to come down this runway and find me.

I'll be a life in prison.

Yeah.

So when it just a little bit of cleared, I took off and I didn't have to go 30, 40 miles.

Place called St.

Tamothy Aviation over at

across Lake Poncha trains.

And the guy Harvey that

I was paying to land, nice fella, I talked to him on a walkie-talkie and he said, it's still fogging in here, Roger, but it's breaking up and I can see up.

I can see you.

I said, I can see you too.

He said, but when you get down in, it's going to be snot.

So I didn't have much fuel left.

I just pulled the power and headed for that runway.

And I got landed.

And I said, I am through.

I'm never going to do it again.

It's just in my life's not worth it.

So

Leto was in Miami.

And when I took the load to him, I told him that was it.

I was quitting.

And, of course, they was making their living off of me.

And oh, please, Roger, please, no.

And said, You have anybody, anybody to fly?

And I thought,

well, heck, I got the thing down.

So I said, I'll maybe have somebody.

So I went and asked Barry Seal if he had fly.

Yeah, heck, yeah.

So I put Barry to work, and he started flying.

And they had so much, I bought him three or four of those Panther conversions.

And so I asked my old friend Jerry Wills if he wanted to fly.

Yeah.

So I had two airlines running.

Wow.

They was bringing two loads a week up.

So I was like $5 million a week.

Jeez.

So it was just, it was unbelievable amount of money coming up.

And I said, when do you want me to come back?

We're waiting on you, senor.

That is nuts.

Did you have an end game?

Did you have a number in mind that made you want to quit?

Not really, but

it all comes to a screeching end before you expect it to.

I took a load of money to Grand Cayman Island.

I

chartered a jet.

I forgot what kind it is, but it was a pretty good size little jet.

I don't know how many millions of dollars.

I think I had $15 million in it.

And I flew down to Grand Cayman Island.

And

the pilot says, oh, we want to stay for a few days.

And so I flew back commercially.

And when I landed in Miami, I was arrested.

I was charged with continuing primal enterprise, which carries life in prison for possession of marijuana.

And

so I gave up my property, my home, money, millions, and I got.

down to possession of 400 pounds of marijuana and tax evasion.

I got 35 years.

Damn.

And then the old judge was nice, Judge Terry Hatter.

And I think he'd have taken me home with him if he could have.

He said, I see you raised on the hog, on the farm-fed the hogs.

I guess you want to come out to California and live high on the hog.

But I don't know if you, Dr.

Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde, I see all these nice things you've done for people.

And I had 65 letters.

He said, I read every one of them.

Wow.

So he said, but I'm going to send a message to society.

And so he put me on 25 years special parole, five years probation, five years in prison.

Damn.

So that

was the end of that era.

So that was the beginning of my 33 years in prison.

Oh, that was the start of it?

Yeah.

Holy crap.

So you did five years in prison?

I did about two and a half then, and then was out on parole.

And then

I had heard Barry had turned.

While you were in prison?

Well, yeah, towards the end of it.

So I don't know how I heard somebody.

It was like, it wasn't right so i was home and uh murray had rented a house and it was nice and i was watching i was eating breakfast and there was ronald reagan news face on the news and uh there was a seat 126 barry's bailed in on the military strip there in nicaragua and ronald reagan's blue eyes said we have absolute positive proof that the communist sandinista government is in the cocaine running business.

And there it was.

So the the phone rang.

And Barry says, Roger, I'm coming out tonight.

Meet me at such and such a little French restaurant there in town.

So I met him at nine o'clock.

And I went in and he was sitting back at the back and the room was 20 people or more, all of them 25, 35 year old DE agents, of course,

women with the leather skirts and the men with the sport jacket.

And Barry was leaning back.

I said, Barry, are you wired?

He said, no, I'm not wired.

I said, well, I'm not going to say anything.

Just tell me what's happening.

So he went to tell me how that

he had been protected by the Clintons,

CIA, everybody, and they're unloading.

And

I was giving him $50,000 every time I landed for his protection.

So he said, they all abandoned me.

So I was facing three life sentences.

So I told everybody.

I told on all of them.

And they said, I've told on your part of it too.

I said, no, you can come to Miami and testify with me.

You can get a new passport, keep your money, live anywhere in the world you want to live.

I said, all of them,

but he just put his fingers over his eyes.

I mean, he's put his hands up, and the tears run between his fingers.

He said, I'm so sorry, Roger.

I'm so sorry.

I just couldn't do it.

I just couldn't do three life sentences.

And I said, Barry, they're going to kill you, friend.

No, no, no.

And I said, well, bring your head honcho over.

And the guy was Jake Jacobson, the guy that they had gone down and got one and a half tons

and put it in that C-126 and bellied it in in the runway there in Nicaragua.

Then they called Pablo Escobar and said, we need another airplane.

And Barry had a camera inside clicking and one under the wing clicking.

Wow.

He said you could hear them clicking.

And Pablo Escobar comes and you can see and you can read about this and he's got pictures of it in the book

Kings of Cocaine.

It's got a chapter about me in there.

And

so you see Pablo Escobar and some of those generals toting the cocaine from one plane to the other.

And they fly, take it on into Florida.

And then Lito, my friend, gets it.

And they drive him down the road in a motorhome.

And they have a dump truck with his DE agent ram into it.

And Lito's arrested.

And that's the end of the game.

So

Barry didn't, he's working for him.

So I've got to go

testify with Barry or spend the rest of my life in a penitentiary.

That agent says, you can go down tomorrow in first class or I'll take you down tonight in chains.

If I take you in chains, the only place you're ever going to see your family again, I promise you, is in a federal penitentiary visiting room as long as you live.

I said, I believe I go first class tomorrow.

So I went down and I went to see a famous lawyer or one anyhow that had some.

And I was telling him what the situation was.

And

he said, well, I'll represent you for $600,000, but I don't talk to snitches.

I said, no, I'm not a snitch.

I said, I got to do something.

I'm looking for professional help.

What can I do?

He said, being a snitch is like being pregnant.

You either are or you're not.

I said, well, I'm not.

So he said, well, there ain't nothing I can do for you.

He said, if you go

in that room and

testify before the grand jury, and you don't tell them one thing,

they can use everything you said against you to convict you.

Then you got to tell them everything.

So I took Marie and the children.

We fled to Brazil.

And we were down there a few months.

And Barry was assassinated.

Wow.

Shot in the parking lot.

The DEA begged the judge not to put him in into a place like that.

They said he will be killed.

And the judge said he should have thought of that before he did this.

So the judge gave him a death sentence.

Gave him six months.

Had to go in every night at six o'clock to a halfway house.

And

the guy that I flew up on the first load

was the guy that killed him.

No, he just got out after 40 years.

Just got out here a few months ago.

He did, I don't know, 40 years maybe.

We got

86, so he must have been 38 years.

Holy crap.

And he just got out?

Just got out.

So he put the head out for him?

Pardon?

He put a head on Barry from prison?

No, he killed him.

Oh, no.

No, he,

the Ochoa brother, I believe, put the head on, and he sent that guy up to to kill him.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, that guy sat on the back seat of, that's kind of interesting.

He sat on the back seat of the first load I did for him.

Dang.

And he had a little MAC-10, ugly man, skinny little ugly man.

I mean, sure enough, ugly.

And

we took off, and it was a banana plantation.

A lot of that stuff was down in the banana fields.

And it was clay.

It was raining.

So we took off the mud from the clay, filled up my wheel wells of that little airplane.

And

I couldn't get the wheels up.

Well, now they've been going 300 miles an hour.

I'm going about 200.

I can't make Louisiana or Arkansas with that

drag.

So I tell the guy, we got to stop.

And he no, no, Louisiana, Louisiana.

I could have been going to Argentina.

He wouldn't have known the difference.

But I told him, no, we got to stop in Belize.

And I got a place there that it's safe to stop.

I used to refuel for marijuana there.

No, no.

And he put the gun right up to my head.

I said, go ahead and shoot, fool.

You're going to die, too.

Either way, you're going to die.

So anyway, I landed with that gun to my head.

And

Mr.

Carter was there and he welcomed me good.

And I sent a boy out to watch the airplane and

fused it up.

And we ate on the verandah.

And that old guy, Ronaldo, was happy as a lark.

We had chicken and potatoes, and we flew on in.

And that's when Barry unloaded me that load.

And that's how he met Barry, so he knew who he was looking for.

Wow.

So that was the death of Barry Seale.

And did all the cases get dismissed because he died?

Yes.

But when they caught me, I had several.

I'll jump ahead.

When they caught me here in the United States,

they made me do 11 years for parole violation.

It's the longest in the world history.

I've never heard of anybody.

No, nothing in the United States.

132 months.

Jeez.

And back up there.

I'm getting ahead of myself there.

But so anyway, I stayed in maximum security prison for that 11 years, right there in Lompoc.

Wow.

So you ended up in Brazil, right?

Yeah, we went on down there.

I took my family and fled.

So I

was living in Brazil and living on the beach in an island called Guadalja.

And I like it.

When I got there, I was kind of looking over my shoulder, but I didn't have good paperwork.

And the helicopters and all kinds of was there.

Anyhow, they were looking for Mingal.

They had found his body, the angel of death.

They had been just two or three houses from where I had ran.

So anyway, I got a scare.

So after a year,

my little girl, she learned

to speak Portuguese and

10, 11 years old.

She played under the lifeguard place right in front of the house with all the children.

And she had a little moped on the, and we had a good time there in Brazil and went all over.

So my wife, I was thinking about growing soybeans.

So we got...

Brazilian passports.

We got everything perfect, our fingerprints in the system where we got married and inherited land.

All of that was paid for.

So

we were Brazilians.

Only thing I didn't speak Portuguese.

So I says, all right,

let's go see what South Africa likes.

Mari did not like to live in the rest of our life in Brazil.

But she's from Holland.

So the Boer, the Dutch settled South Africa.

And the language is still there.

It's a little different.

So we said, okay, let's go to Cape Town, South Africa, and see if we can find a home.

So, oh, we got off the plane first class,

my wife and Miriam, and our little son, like six years old, and Miriam must have been 11.

And when we got off the airplane, we just zippity-dooda, thinking nothing about it.

And we come up to immigration, and there's a big, big

Mexican-looking guy with the gold buttons and mustache.

Bondia!

Come, look, blue, blue, blue, blue.

God, my knees went out from under me.

I am wanted all over the world.

I don't speak Portuguese and I got a Portuguese passport.

It's like, really?

I thought, what am I going to do?

This is not going to work.

And my daughter came quickly around and she said, sir, my father is deaf.

And she said in Portuguese, oh, gee,

welcome, family.

Wow.

That is brilliant.

So that was our sojourn.

And so we lived a while in South Africa.

We just loved it down there.

I heard it's beautiful.

It is.

Cape Town is

a hidden jewel.

It costs 25%

there, what it does now, and it is superb.

Wow.

Yeah, I want to get out there.

I've never ever been, but I've heard great things.

Yes.

You know, it's lovely.

So you spend a lot of time in Africa?

Yeah, I like Africa.

It's got something of the.

Pioneer spirit that I have.

You know, it's just certainly, I travel all over.

I've had no trouble.

Yeah.

Man, we'll do a part two, but anything you want to close off with here?

I know you got the book.

Yeah, let me, I think that

I'd like to read my daughter.

When I got, after Europe, I got arrested in the United States.

I think I told y'all I spent 33 years in prison.

And this little girl that saved my butt there in

Cape Town, she

wrote me a poem.

Here it is.

Daddy's poem.

See, if you could see their picture, there they are right there.

I don't think you'll see.

Yeah, we'll throw it up on the screen.

Okay, all right.

Daddy's poem.

She wrote this when she was 17 years old after I got arrested and was back here.

I'd do 11 years parole violation.

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 very much, for without you, I would not be me.

Secondly, I want to say that your suspense has been immense.

It has been true, honest, and 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 old country songs.

Wow.

Did she write this to you while you were in prison?

Pardon?

While you were in prison, she wrote this to you?

She wrote to you when she was just a little girl, 17 years old in high school.

Yeah, I remember...

on queer voice daddy with you holding me in your arms as you sang jim reeves 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 remember 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 from behind some counter and give us all a happy scare.

You gave us presents in Key Biscayne and hotel pleasures galore and three dozen roses as we came through the airport door.

When I saw your face in Amsterdam at the luggage carousel, looked like a boy with a secret that you were just dying to tell.

You taught me mathematics in the sands of faraway places.

You taught me to sail, and we sometimes left without any traces.

We climbed glaciers in Argentina and saw the blue of their beautiful caves and witnessed the majestic beauty of such a jagged, crystalline maze.

I learned how to change gears on the dirt roads of Brazil.

We ate hot dogs in Paraguay, a memory we stalled or till.

We talked about lions, elephants, and bears on a hussy end into Uruguay, but decided it was better to Europe we did fly.

Oh, the old world and all its luxury, what a good time it was.

From South America to the Krosnopolsky, I think we fell in love.

The European chant, well, is to be considered a book all in itself, but it's a story about beauty and knowledge, suspense, and worldly wealth.

We went from Holland to Sweden and we went from France to Spain, and I promise you that 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 paths took a turn, and we're back in the U.S.

of A, but life here isn't so bad, and I'm plumb content to stay.

I'm happy to be near you, though I'm not as close as before, but because of your love and encouragement, I've been able to open new 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.

They're 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 know in my heart to be true.

That I love you, Daddy, with all of your wrongs and your rights.

That you're the head of our family and you've kept us all bound tight.

That you have an 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'll be there to catch me if ever I waver or slip.

And I know I'd want you as captain on any sinking ship.

I also know when your 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 and to laugh and dance as a boat glides through.

It'd be good to see you on the go as I know you like to be and to know you can open any door without requiring a key.

But while we revel in our days together, We will know better than to hurry because if you've told me many times, life is an incredible journey.

Wow.

Miriam.

That was beautiful.

Thank you.

Yeah, poetry is a lost art these days.

Yes.

That was beautiful.

We'll link the book in the description below.

All right, good.

Yeah.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Stay tuned.

You part two, guys.

That was fun.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Awesome.