Speaker 1: Pushkin. Previously on deep cover, Ned Timmins was finally getting somewhere.
Speaker 1: His big breakthrough came in the spring of nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: when Clinton shined Anderson flipped. Shine was in charge of
Speaker 1: vetting everyone in this smuggling network. I know it was
Speaker 1: a massive operation, and I knew that we had the
Speaker 1: key to the safety deposit box to open it all up.
Speaker 1: Shine pointed Ned to a spot on the North Carolina
Speaker 1: coast where he said his bosses had smuggled marijuana into
Speaker 1: the country. So Ned picked up the phone and called
Speaker 1: the FBI down in Wilmington, North Carolina, asked them if
Speaker 1: they have any intel on drug smugglers who were using
Speaker 1: shrimp boats. They tell them, yeah, actually we had this
Speaker 1: one case in particular involving an abandoned drug boat, a
Speaker 1: ghost ship. Ned quickly begins to realize that so many
Speaker 1: of the answers he's seeking about the ghost ship, the smugglers,
Speaker 1: their system are right in Beaufort, North Carolina, perfectly camouflaged
Speaker 1: in the underbrush. Well, we're heading out of Beaufort right now.
Speaker 1: We're actually going Highway seventy east. It's about a twenty
Speaker 1: minute ride to Back Creek, twenty minute ride, so yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll get to see a little bit of the country.
Speaker 1: That's Carl Cannon Jr. He's a big, strapping guy with
Speaker 1: this epic beard. The word swashbuckling suits him well. Carl's
Speaker 1: a local guy, born in Bred and Beaufort. He's showing
Speaker 1: me around the area. Now, if you can picture a
Speaker 1: map in the United States, We're on this little marshy
Speaker 1: spit of land that sticks out from North Carolina into
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Ocean. This whole area is just a tangle
Speaker 1: of overlapping inlets and waterways, a giant aquatic maze. Really,
Speaker 1: this is where Ned and Shine came back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. It was just one of many trips they
Speaker 1: took together across the country to gather evidence. I went
Speaker 1: down to Beaufort to retrace their steps. So as you
Speaker 1: can tell, like I say, the stuff's getting dense. You
Speaker 1: see all these little canals that come up in these
Speaker 1: little areas. This is North River to our right. We're
Speaker 1: headed to Back Creek, to the very spot where the
Speaker 1: ghost ship was supposed to unload its cargo if everything
Speaker 1: had gone according to plan. You know, as you can
Speaker 1: see now, the trees are starting to thick end, which
Speaker 1: is pretty typical for most of our country roads and areas,
Speaker 1: you know, in land and coastal. You're basically going to
Speaker 1: cross several places that are basically wide open either swamps
Speaker 1: or wooded swamps, much like you have in Everglades. The
Speaker 1: little road that we're driving on, it eventually ends at
Speaker 1: the water's edge. I take this a baby eagle. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it. Carl and I get out and walk
Speaker 1: along the shore for a bit. The vegetation is dense,
Speaker 1: insanely thick. Carl starts pointing down the shore at what
Speaker 1: looks like just another clump of overgrown bushes. They would
Speaker 1: have come up through the canal, which is the darker
Speaker 1: set of trees. You can't see the entrance because it
Speaker 1: kind of disappears. I can't. I can't see it at
Speaker 1: all from here. No, it's just I can tell by
Speaker 1: the line of the woods where it's at, where the
Speaker 1: opening is. But you can if you kind of see
Speaker 1: a drop and then another drop, that drop is where
Speaker 1: that creak is. As they looked out on this vast,
Speaker 1: watery expanse, I started to get it, started to see it. Here.
Speaker 1: You had a spot with enough boat traffic that a
Speaker 1: decent sized ship would not attract attention. But then you
Speaker 1: also had a maze of coves and inlets where that
Speaker 1: same boat could suddenly disappear. It was perfectly concealed, invisible.
Speaker 1: Really clearly someone knew what they were doing. I'm Jake
Speaker 1: Albert and this is Deep Cover, Episode four, The Gentleman Smuggler.
Speaker 1: There are a few things to know about my local
Speaker 1: guide Carl. First off, he has a not so secret identity.
Speaker 1: We name be Captain Carl Cannon Junior, I portrayed Blackbeard. Yep,
Speaker 1: Carl is a pirate reinactor. Fiddler's Green is a please
Speaker 1: I've heard too well. Pirus good when they don't go
Speaker 1: to hell with the girls who are all pretty, and
Speaker 1: the beer is all free and there's bottles over him
Speaker 1: hanging from every tree. Wrap me up in the Carl
Speaker 1: volunteers at the local museum. He became Blackbeard because he
Speaker 1: had the one major job requirement. His beard he was
Speaker 1: born kind of dangling down his chest. He was already
Speaker 1: braiding it too. People would tell him, hey, you look
Speaker 1: like Blackbeard. And then came the job opening. Because the
Speaker 1: former black Beard kind of might have a fall from grace,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and he was dismissed by the museum
Speaker 1: fall from grace. What do you mean he was doing
Speaker 1: some things that wasn't thought to be quite family friendly appropriate.
Speaker 1: You might say that he was had a side job
Speaker 1: that he was performing as Blackbeard and a funny kind
Speaker 1: of you adult manner. He was doing adult parties. Carl
Speaker 1: is kind of the mascot at Beaufort, North Carolina, because
Speaker 1: the place now sells itself as Pirate Town, USA, and
Speaker 1: every other storefront you'll see a skull and crossbones the
Speaker 1: Jolly Roger flag. But Carl is not just some random reenactor.
Speaker 1: His family has lived here for generations, and he says
Speaker 1: that the ghost ship wound up here precisely because of
Speaker 1: this pirate legacy, and these pirates they tended to come
Speaker 1: and go depending on the boom and bus cycle of
Speaker 1: a local fishing economy. Carl remembers how after a few
Speaker 1: bad shrimp seasons, some fresh faces showed up in town.
Speaker 1: Some of the drug cartel folks came in and just
Speaker 1: gently started asking questions around some of the fish market
Speaker 1: and boat owners, and then encouraged them to get their
Speaker 1: friends to come together and basically they'd presented to them
Speaker 1: around town. They had secret meetings. It was all word
Speaker 1: of mouth. My dad was made an offer the same way.
Speaker 1: One of his friends came to him and he said,
Speaker 1: I've got a deal for you. Dad had bought a
Speaker 1: boat in seventy four, had mostly paid it off, but
Speaker 1: as all commercial fishermen find out, hards a couple of
Speaker 1: hard seasons, you need a new engine, or something happens.
Speaker 1: They offered my dad if he would come make a
Speaker 1: certain amount of runs for him, run out and meet
Speaker 1: a mothership, come back and go up into the base
Speaker 1: and unload away from pride and eyes. Carl says his dad.
Speaker 1: He never went to any of these meetings, never took
Speaker 1: the offer, but a lot of people that Carl knew, did, So,
Speaker 1: you know, the temptation was there, and they knew, and
Speaker 1: they knew the temptation was there that they could offer
Speaker 1: to pay someone's boat off. You know, when three much
Speaker 1: your boats paid for and you'll never see us again.
Speaker 1: So this is pirate Town, USA, a place where pirates
Speaker 1: and smugglers had been plying their trade for well centuries.
Speaker 1: And this only made me wonder more what exactly went
Speaker 1: wrong with the ghost ship if these smugglers were such
Speaker 1: probs and this setting was so perfect, what the hell happened?
Speaker 1: Why was the ship abandoned the twenty nine thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of drugs in the hold? To find out, I visited
Speaker 1: Doug McCullough, who at the time was the first assistant
Speaker 1: US Attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina. He
Speaker 1: still lives in Beaufort. We met down at the harbor
Speaker 1: just as the storm was coming in. Some wind up here.
Speaker 1: It looks like there's some weather coming in here. So
Speaker 1: where are we? We're standing in Beaufort, downtown Beaufort. Doug
Speaker 1: points out to the spot where the ghost ship first
Speaker 1: appeared on the horizon as it was coming in from sea,
Speaker 1: and there was another boat with it too, a small skiff,
Speaker 1: almost like a guide boat, leading it in. They came
Speaker 1: through this narrow passageway known as Beaufort Inlet, and Doug
Speaker 1: kind of points it out to me in the distance.
Speaker 1: And there's something else that Doug wants to show me.
Speaker 1: As you and I look out, there's an island right
Speaker 1: in front of us. And then over the top of
Speaker 1: that island you can see a big flagpole with the
Speaker 1: American flag and that's at the US Coastguard station. That
Speaker 1: station was here back in eighty two. In fact, that night,
Speaker 1: two coastguardmen known as coasts noticed the shrimper and the
Speaker 1: little guideboat coming in through the inlet, and both vessels
Speaker 1: appeared to be drifting out of the channel. They were
Speaker 1: just a bit off course, so the coasts went out
Speaker 1: to investigate. First, they pull up alongside the little guide
Speaker 1: boat and in it they see someone who is clearly
Speaker 1: not a fisherman. He was dressed for a disco. This
Speaker 1: is the eighties member Saturday Night fever, flared pants. He
Speaker 1: had a shirt that was a silk and it was
Speaker 1: open to his sternham. He had gold chains, he had
Speaker 1: the stacked heel shoes, and all these items you don't
Speaker 1: wear on an open boat in carter At County. The
Speaker 1: coasties knew something wasn't right. Eventually they decided they want
Speaker 1: to check out the shrimp boat too. It had since
Speaker 1: pulled up alongside and nearby fuel dock. So one of
Speaker 1: the coast's boards of the shrimp boat and makes a
Speaker 1: move to go down below deck. He said he was
Speaker 1: going to inspect the hold, and that's when heard a
Speaker 1: shotgun rack around makes a very distinctive chunk sound, and
Speaker 1: anybody's ever been around a gun has heard that sound
Speaker 1: would recognize it immediately the coast. He's back away and
Speaker 1: go to get help. A short while later, the police
Speaker 1: show up. The shrimp boat's still there, but its crew
Speaker 1: has fled. From the outside it was it had its nets,
Speaker 1: and it had the boom and the other accouterments that
Speaker 1: you would expect on a shrimper. It's only when you
Speaker 1: got inside that you saw things that didn't match. All
Speaker 1: that remained was the cargo twenty nine thousand pounds of pot.
Speaker 1: They had a few early leads names that turned out
Speaker 1: to be bogus, all dead ends. The story made headlines
Speaker 1: in part because the FEDS had almost nothing on the
Speaker 1: ship except that it was there. What was like a
Speaker 1: ghost was the fact that we didn't get any people
Speaker 1: at that time. You know, everybody got away. It was
Speaker 1: a very frustrating investigation because case just sat on the
Speaker 1: shelf for almost three years. All the law enforcement agencies
Speaker 1: just kind of moved on, and we were all just
Speaker 1: in a state of waiting until Ned Timmans contacted the
Speaker 1: nearest FBI office to Wilmington, and he says, I've got
Speaker 1: the witness you're going to need, and that witness was Shine.
Speaker 1: If we had to turn one person, this is the
Speaker 1: guy we wanted. So after Ned calls down to the
Speaker 1: Wilmington office, Ned and Shine make their trip down to
Speaker 1: North Carolina. They meet with Doug McCullough. But that's not all.
Speaker 1: Shine also take Ned on a little swamp tour to
Speaker 1: a hidden cabin that the smugglers used. They just laughed
Speaker 1: at They all still mattresses all over and coffee and
Speaker 1: stale food, and they just got the hell out of there.
Speaker 1: And whoever owned the cabin never came back either. So
Speaker 1: far Shine's story was checking out, and Ned was slowly
Speaker 1: building his case. We're out in the swamp, were identifying
Speaker 1: where they stayed, where they rented cars, the hotels, they
Speaker 1: stayed in, motels, any tracks that we can establish evidence
Speaker 1: that these specific people were there. Shine explains that everything,
Speaker 1: every last detail was orchestrated by the syndicates. Master smuggler,
Speaker 1: a guy who went by the name Skip. He says,
Speaker 1: this Skip character, he was so sure of himself that
Speaker 1: just six months after the ghost ship was captured, he
Speaker 1: tried it again. Dare to pull off the exact same operation,
Speaker 1: same route, same offloading site, used another shrimp boat, only
Speaker 1: bigger this time, and it worked basically. Shine explains, while
Speaker 1: you guys were scratching your heads over the mystery of
Speaker 1: the ghost ship, we doubled down and slipped another shipment
Speaker 1: right under your noses. Skip was so confident of his system,
Speaker 1: of the camouflage that he had created, that he was
Speaker 1: unfazed by the loss of a single ship. So not
Speaker 1: a fiasco, but a tiny glitch in the system. They'd
Speaker 1: steered a bad course into the harbor and had led
Speaker 1: a guy on board who shouldn't have been there. Remember
Speaker 1: the guy in the disco outfit. Yeah, him. It's a
Speaker 1: mistake they wouldn't make again, because Skip, he was a perfectionist.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, I tracked down the legendary's Skip.
Speaker 1: Turns out his real name is Stephen Kalish, and he
Speaker 1: lives in a beautiful mansion in Hawaii. So I'm in
Speaker 1: my rental car heading out to the house of Stephen Kaylish, who,
Speaker 1: back in the eighties was a master smuggler, the guy
Speaker 1: sneaking in tons and tons of marijuana into the US.
Speaker 1: Looking for a big house with a red roof. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's gotta be it. That's beautiful. That is a big
Speaker 1: house with a red roof. Eventually, I pull into this
Speaker 1: big gate, you know, one of those imposing things with
Speaker 1: a keypad on the side. So I punch in the
Speaker 1: code that Stephen texted me and there goes Kate is opening. Okay,
Speaker 1: the Kingdom has opened. I pull up to the house.
Speaker 1: It's this mansion with a perfect view of the Pacific.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine the last scene in the Hollywood movie
Speaker 1: where the hero lands. Well, very well, this is the place.
Speaker 1: So get out of the car and I see him
Speaker 1: skip aka Stephen kaylish him to see you, and I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you at sixty seven, he's this really handsome
Speaker 1: guy with a perfect tan and a ponytail and a
Speaker 1: trim muscular physique. And almost right away he takes me
Speaker 1: to the stables on his estate because well he's got
Speaker 1: to feed his horses. RB nice. Stephen starts preparing their meal,
Speaker 1: which starts off simply enough, so let's just facene for
Speaker 1: their coach. Now. I don't know if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: someone feed horses, but I can promise you that's not
Speaker 1: what's going on here. I see Stephen mix at least
Speaker 1: half a dozen different pretty obscure seeming ingredients with such precision.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm watching a world class pharmacist prepare a
Speaker 1: highly complicated drug. And then this is organic sea kelp,
Speaker 1: which has minerals in it. This is bokashi. It's organic,
Speaker 1: it's made here on the island. It's like a probiotic.
Speaker 1: They get this in the morning, in the evening. I
Speaker 1: feed them about seven fifteen in the morning, in about
Speaker 1: four thirty and one alfternoon. And just watching you feed
Speaker 1: your horses gives me a little bit of sense of
Speaker 1: your organizational nature. I like things to be in their place.
Speaker 1: It makes life easier. Did you have some version of
Speaker 1: that philosophy when you're running your your smuggling business hundred percent?
Speaker 1: And it's all about being organized and having plants in
Speaker 1: place and backup plans in got plans always, always, always.
Speaker 1: As we walk through the stables, Stephen explains to me
Speaker 1: that there is a very deliberate feeding sequence based on
Speaker 1: where the horses are in the pecking order Archie's number one,
Speaker 1: Danish number two, Sonoma's number three, Sky Guy our quarter
Speaker 1: horses number four. How do you see that pecking order
Speaker 1: like they figure it out. Do you think that's true
Speaker 1: of people too to some extent er, Well, yeah, there is.
Speaker 1: I mean some people are natural born leaders and some
Speaker 1: people are or not. By was a natural By was
Speaker 1: a born leader. Growing up. By was always the leader,
Speaker 1: but the neighborhood kids. I had a paper out from
Speaker 1: the time I was twelve years old to about fifteen,
Speaker 1: and I had the neighborhood kids working for me. Later,
Speaker 1: when he was in high school, he made headlines when
Speaker 1: he organized a protest in front of the state capitol
Speaker 1: in Austin his cause marijuana. In a newspaper article that
Speaker 1: I found, Stephen is identified as the leader of the
Speaker 1: quote beautiful People's Republic, and he makes the case for
Speaker 1: a decriminalization. Meanwhile, back at home, his father, an arch conservative,
Speaker 1: wasn't too happy. His dad was a heavy drinker who
Speaker 1: sometimes beat him. Stephen ran away to California for a time,
Speaker 1: taking and selling LSD, but he eventually came back to
Speaker 1: Texas and re enrolled in high school. He lived with
Speaker 1: some friends to support himself. He started selling pot and
Speaker 1: found out he was good at it, and he was
Speaker 1: even better at teaching others how to follow his lead. Basically,
Speaker 1: I started buying a few pounds a pot and breaking
Speaker 1: it up and then letting my friends sell it to
Speaker 1: their friends. So, while still in high school, he created
Speaker 1: his own multi level marketing scheme the way Avon sells perfume,
Speaker 1: only it's weed. Eventually, the market grew and Harve's buying
Speaker 1: more pot, Dan shoving more pot. I finished my junior
Speaker 1: year at Beller High School, and by that time I
Speaker 1: was making a couple of thousand dollars a month. Stephen
Speaker 1: eventually expands his efforts begins smuggling larger quantities of weed
Speaker 1: in from Mexico across the Rio Grande, and then he
Speaker 1: ups his game again. He teams up with some Columbians
Speaker 1: and starts using shrimp boats to bring in even bigger
Speaker 1: loads to a small marina in Texas. At this point,
Speaker 1: he's in his late twenties, and then in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: a guy at the marina they were using turned out
Speaker 1: to be an informant, so Stephen gets indicted and is
Speaker 1: facing a four year sentence. He was out on a
Speaker 1: federal appeal bond when he made the biggest decision of
Speaker 1: his life. Bye got them fake ID together. I got
Speaker 1: a birth certificate of a deceased person, got a passport
Speaker 1: in the name of Thomas Franklin, and flew Downder the
Speaker 1: Cayman Islets, and he just pretty much vanished, making himself
Speaker 1: a fugitive. In the coming years, law enforcement occasionally got
Speaker 1: wind of this guy who went by so many different names,
Speaker 1: mister Franklin, Frank William Brown, Stephen Sloane, and simply Skip.
Speaker 1: And this Skip character. He flickered on and off the
Speaker 1: radar of law enforcement like a UFO, and with time
Speaker 1: he became kind of a legend. People called him the
Speaker 1: gentleman smuggler. Roy Fuget, the detective down in Louisiana who
Speaker 1: had investigated one of Skip ships. He heard about him.
Speaker 1: They said he never wore gone, that he was not violent,
Speaker 1: that he was really smart, really organized, very intelligent, good
Speaker 1: with the ladies. If he had been in the military,
Speaker 1: he'd probably be a general, I mean good organizer. He
Speaker 1: had a really professional army of drug smugglers that he
Speaker 1: was supervising. And as it turns out, around this time
Speaker 1: the FBI was also getting interested in this Skip character.
Speaker 1: We heard this name Skip, and apparently we realized that
Speaker 1: Skip was a pretty pretty much a shaker and a
Speaker 1: mover in the organization. That's Stan Jacobson, an FBI agent
Speaker 1: down in Tampa who'd been on Skip's trail for some time.
Speaker 1: Skip's name kept coming up in various drug investigations, but
Speaker 1: he was a master at eluding the authorities, beginning with
Speaker 1: that nickname. It's very frustrating because you know, you go
Speaker 1: to have a major player, and I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people named Skip in the country, so
Speaker 1: you know, trying to find out who that was. Because
Speaker 1: he maintained a pretty low profile. I mean, this guy,
Speaker 1: he wasn't out there like, you know, like a mafia
Speaker 1: done who sometimes liked to like the sound of their
Speaker 1: own press. He may have kept a low profile, been anonymous,
Speaker 1: but they knew that he was no ordinary smuggler. We
Speaker 1: weren't dealing with someone that robbed the bank and you know,
Speaker 1: with a note, we were dealing with a major operator.
Speaker 1: If he had been in a major US corporation, he'd
Speaker 1: have probably been a CEO. Stephen Keelis should become almost invisible,
Speaker 1: which was basically his entire business model, staying under the radar,
Speaker 1: making sure everything was unseen. He didn't hire speedboats to
Speaker 1: make deliveries or get planes to drop bails from the sky.
Speaker 1: For a fishing village like Beaufort, North Carolina, he leased
Speaker 1: shrip trawlers and just motored right up to the offload site.
Speaker 1: He had his own crew, but he also used locals,
Speaker 1: the folks that felt most at home there and had
Speaker 1: the right vibe. Guys like Bobby Webb, a local Vietnam
Speaker 1: vat who was looking for work Vietnam did something to me.
Speaker 1: You know, we got adrenaline, and you know, you live
Speaker 1: one adrenaline and it kind of chad changes you. It
Speaker 1: makes you take chances that you wouldn't take before. Bobby
Speaker 1: was a gunner in Vietnam on a small fifty foot
Speaker 1: aluminum vessel known as a swift boat. We're in at
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, twelve hours on, twelve hours off,
Speaker 1: and by the time that skipped met him, he was
Speaker 1: still jones in for that adrenaline. Oh yet excitement, because
Speaker 1: you know you're on that boat. We had two fifty
Speaker 1: calibra machine guns, a fifty calibual on this side, at
Speaker 1: fifty calor on this side, and sometimes at M sixty
Speaker 1: in the wheelhouse, and we always had two in fourteens
Speaker 1: shooting news guns, you know, and one of us had
Speaker 1: to run the boat or the others shoot the damn guns.
Speaker 1: Shooting this side and run of that side. What's that
Speaker 1: feel like? Oh? Doesn't like it when you're doing it?
Speaker 1: Doesn't like it. Bobby was the perfect guy for the job,
Speaker 1: a gutsy dude with the resume of a modern day pirate.
Speaker 1: It makes sense why Steven would want guys like this.
Speaker 1: I mean, why not go right to the folks who'd
Speaker 1: hunted and fish this land for generations, the guys who
Speaker 1: may have been the very descendants of Blackbeard's own men.
Speaker 1: Bobby remembers being approached by a guy who worked for Skip.
Speaker 1: Skip had an army of advanced men. He used them
Speaker 1: kind of like a movie director would use a location scout.
Speaker 1: They traveled the country looking for possible sights. One of
Speaker 1: them reached out to Bobby. He called me up, just
Speaker 1: to shoot the boom, he said. Bobby united place. Some
Speaker 1: of us boards unled some pop, I says, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Once Stephen committed to a given location, he began managing
Speaker 1: every aspect of the operation and Beaufort. He began by
Speaker 1: studying road maps and topographical maps. His guys measured the
Speaker 1: depths of the water along the inlet. He moved his
Speaker 1: security team down to the area months before a load
Speaker 1: would come in just to do reconnaissance. He set up
Speaker 1: a safe house just for him in the top brass
Speaker 1: in the organization. He had his guy's tail. The local
Speaker 1: police study the patterns of where they patrolled and when
Speaker 1: they monitored parking lots which might serve as staging grounds
Speaker 1: for large scale police raids, and he listened to everything.
Speaker 1: We would monitor all the police frequencies, coach guard frequencies.
Speaker 1: We would by a variety of speedboats depending on the
Speaker 1: area we were operating in. We would have boats that
Speaker 1: we could use to evacuate crew members or off float
Speaker 1: personnel in case of an emergency. Over the next couple
Speaker 1: of years, it got to be very precision and very
Speaker 1: military four innit. Eventually Stephens started using airplanes. He had
Speaker 1: Assessna two ten lookout plane, which he used to make
Speaker 1: sure that his boats weren't being tailed by a coastguard
Speaker 1: cutter or a navy boat. And as for his own
Speaker 1: smuggling ship, he customized it. I mean I outfitted the
Speaker 1: boat so it wouldn't be detected from there Coastguard over
Speaker 1: flights that they were making at this point using it
Speaker 1: for red technology to detect heat signatures in the holds
Speaker 1: of shrimp boats. So to avoid that, we installed refrigeration
Speaker 1: units on our shrimp boat. One thing that Stephen says
Speaker 1: he didn't do is arm himself. Said he was a
Speaker 1: pacifist at heart, and that usually neither he nor his
Speaker 1: men carried guns. It's a little hard to imagine, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, all these guys, all this marijuana, and no
Speaker 1: one is armed. For Stephen, the no guns thing, it
Speaker 1: was all part of his philosophy, you know, being the
Speaker 1: gentleman smuggler, a consummate profession. He even took all of
Speaker 1: his employees and their significant others on accompany cruise as
Speaker 1: if everything he was up to was totally legit. By
Speaker 1: July nineteen eighty four, Stephen was poised to pull off
Speaker 1: his biggest feet yet he'd smuggle one million pounds of
Speaker 1: marijuana in a single load. There was just one problem.
Speaker 1: More on that. When we come back after the break,
Speaker 1: I'm surrounded by fat and they say, Stephen paylicks, you're
Speaker 1: under arrest. Just to give you a sense of how
Speaker 1: much one million pounds of weed is in Colorado, where
Speaker 1: weed is now totally legal, that's more than they sell
Speaker 1: in an entire year. Stephen Kaylish planned to smuggle it
Speaker 1: right up the Mississippi River and unloaded at an old
Speaker 1: turkey farm in Missouri. He'd have twenty five tractor trailers
Speaker 1: on standby twenty five and unloaded quickly. Stephen would have
Speaker 1: to invent a new machine. He actually had a conveyor
Speaker 1: system custom made that he paid three hundred thousand dollars for.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was my pride and joy. Stephen gave
Speaker 1: the operation a special code name, Operation America's Heartland, because
Speaker 1: we were bringing the barts up through the Port of
Speaker 1: New Orleans, up the Mississippi River all the way up
Speaker 1: to Saint Louis, headed east in the Missouri River into
Speaker 1: America's Heartland in the middle of Missouri in a thousand
Speaker 1: acre turkey farm that I at least America's Hartland. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a perfect name for my last stop,
Speaker 1: his last op. But isn't that they always say, yeah,
Speaker 1: his last op. He could quit any time he wanted.
Speaker 1: But if he did quit this time, he'd retire a
Speaker 1: very wealthy man. There'd be about one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: million dollars in profits. But he knew that the Feds
Speaker 1: were snooping around. He'd been tipped off one of his planes,
Speaker 1: a lear Jet. He heard it was being watched, so
Speaker 1: he told his guys, put it away, hide it in
Speaker 1: a hangar. We can't even risk going near it. Stephen
Speaker 1: was used to living like this, He'd been a fugitive
Speaker 1: for years, but he was worried, so worried, in fact,
Speaker 1: that he'd begun to move all of his assets to
Speaker 1: a secret location in another country where he had a
Speaker 1: home and a whole nother life lined up. He was
Speaker 1: ready to leave the US for good. There was just
Speaker 1: one last thing he had to do. I had to
Speaker 1: go to Tampa to get my files and my documents
Speaker 1: out of my Tampa house and close it down. That
Speaker 1: was his safe house, and his documents were still there,
Speaker 1: his address book and some floppy disks and those discs.
Speaker 1: They contained a lot of logistical information about America's heartland,
Speaker 1: including names and job assignments of folks involved. Stephen was
Speaker 1: nervous not having all of this with him. It was
Speaker 1: a loose end, and Stephen he didn't like loose ends,
Speaker 1: so he flew to Florida to go to his safe house,
Speaker 1: and when Stephen landed, it's about one thirty in the morning.
Speaker 1: He looks out the window and he freaked because there
Speaker 1: on the tarmac was his lear jet just sitting there.
Speaker 1: I'm still pissed off. I mean, it was like totally unnecessary.
Speaker 1: There was no reason to pull that jet out of
Speaker 1: the hangar because we knew there was heat on it,
Speaker 1: you know, we just knew there was heat somewhere. But
Speaker 1: he sees that no one's there. The coast is clear,
Speaker 1: so he grabs a car and heads to the safe
Speaker 1: house to close it down. The next day, he drives
Speaker 1: back to the airport in his Bronco with two of
Speaker 1: his guys and drops them off with instructions tell the
Speaker 1: pilots to fly all of the jets out of Tampa
Speaker 1: right away, because if the jets are hot, you know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want them anywhere near him. The logic here
Speaker 1: is kind of kooky because by going back to the airport,
Speaker 1: he's right there alongside the jets. But you gotta remember,
Speaker 1: Stephen has a lot on his plate at this moment,
Speaker 1: and he likes to micromanage everything. We barked about a
Speaker 1: mile away or a half mile away, and I wait
Speaker 1: in the bronco. So I'm sitting out in the bronco.
Speaker 1: After about twenty minutes, just enough time that Stephen's spidy
Speaker 1: senses start tingling, and then he knows time to go.
Speaker 1: He's got to just slip away. So he gets out
Speaker 1: of the bronco. Go and I'll start walking away, knowing
Speaker 1: something's up. And I get about, but I don't know
Speaker 1: a quarter mill away, not even that, and I'm surrounded
Speaker 1: by fete and they say, Stephen, kayleish're under arrest. And
Speaker 1: I said who. I said, My name's Frank Brown. I said, dare.
Speaker 1: Here's my driver's license. They go, no, when we know
Speaker 1: who you are? And I go nope. They go, well,
Speaker 1: you're under arrest. They said, okay, five. Well they arrest
Speaker 1: me and they take me to their headquarters. He's taken
Speaker 1: to the FBI offices in Tampa. As Stephen walks into
Speaker 1: a room, he can see up on a big board
Speaker 1: the names of various suspects and their connections. He takes
Speaker 1: one look at the board and he realizes this investigation
Speaker 1: it's made very little progress. They don't know anything about
Speaker 1: our smuggling operation, and they're trying to figure out who's who.
Speaker 1: Stephen searched the board for his own name. He didn't
Speaker 1: see Stephen Kaylish up there. What he does see his Skip,
Speaker 1: and he realized these guys they haven't put two and
Speaker 1: two together. They don't know that he is Skip. All
Speaker 1: they seem to know is that they've arrested some fugitive
Speaker 1: named Stephen Kaylish who's skipped town a few years ago
Speaker 1: in Texas. They don't seem to get that they had
Speaker 1: the master smuggler right there. So he tells the cops,
Speaker 1: I have nothing to say to you. Guys, take me
Speaker 1: to jail. So they take me to Hillsboro County. Joel,
Speaker 1: what is your emotion that first night or two in jail? Well,
Speaker 1: partially relief. Relief because Stephen Kaylish, the small time drug dealer,
Speaker 1: was happy to take the rap in order to protect Skip,
Speaker 1: the global smuggling entrepreneur. And was there a chance that
Speaker 1: you would talk at that point? No, no, there was.
Speaker 1: The story was way too big for the Feds. I
Speaker 1: mean literally, it was this is something you know, the
Speaker 1: guys on the task force just these guys couldn't even
Speaker 1: comprehend the story. And so Stephen goes to jail, starts
Speaker 1: serving those four years for the charges in Texas, the
Speaker 1: ones he's skipped out on. He ends up in a
Speaker 1: medium security prison in Texas, and he's prepared to do
Speaker 1: his time operation America's heartland. It's on ice for now.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to Stephen, another story was unfolding up in Michigan.
Speaker 1: Clinton Shine Anderson had become the FBI's star informant. He
Speaker 1: was talking revealing all the details of who Stephen Klish
Speaker 1: really was and how he operated. So this would mean
Speaker 1: trouble for Stephen. Meanwhile, Stephen starts hearing chatter that the
Speaker 1: FEDS are making progress in their case against him. He'd
Speaker 1: been hoping to get released to a low security camp
Speaker 1: outside the prison, but now the Fed said no. They
Speaker 1: were apparently worried that he might run for it, and
Speaker 1: they were right to worry, because Stephen he was a planner,
Speaker 1: and long ago he had anticipated being in this exact situation.
Speaker 1: I had a serious escape plan. Oh, I had one
Speaker 1: before I ever got arrested. So a friend of mine
Speaker 1: and brother had ran a special forces team. I put
Speaker 1: him on one hundred thousand dollars retainer to come and
Speaker 1: rescue me no matter where I was. So after I
Speaker 1: got arrested and I was in text or cannon, I
Speaker 1: had his brother come visit me, and I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I think it's time that we need to look at
Speaker 1: how we're going to get me out of here. So
Speaker 1: they did a recon of the prison facility and his
Speaker 1: brother came back to visit me and said, okay, we're ready.
Speaker 1: They can get you out. They were coming in with
Speaker 1: a helicopter to pick me up off the wreck yard.
Speaker 1: But there's only one catch. Problem was their guard towers
Speaker 1: with guards with rifles in them. They couldn't guarantee that
Speaker 1: one of the guards wouldn't be killed if they opened
Speaker 1: fire on the helicopter. They can't guarantee there won't be
Speaker 1: any loss of life. And this leaves Stephen Kaylish, the
Speaker 1: gentleman smuggler and devowed pacifist, in a bit of a quandary.
Speaker 1: Freedom is within his grasp as long as he doesn't
Speaker 1: mind getting some blood on his hands. Kaylish has arrest
Speaker 1: is a massive setback for the smugglers, but it's not
Speaker 1: a death blow. And this is essentially what Ned learns.
Speaker 1: There's someone else at the top of the syndicate, a kingpin,
Speaker 1: a long time money wanderer, a guy with deep ties
Speaker 1: to the suppliers in Columbia. And this guy, he's safe
Speaker 1: living down in the Cayman Islands, untouchable. Next time, a
Speaker 1: deep Cover Ned travels down to the Caymans and finds
Speaker 1: the kingpin. The stress is unbelievable, the mental stress. You
Speaker 1: don't sleep, You're worried about your door getting kicked in
Speaker 1: any minute. You have no weapons down there, you have
Speaker 1: no backup. You're not gonna be able to hit the
Speaker 1: radio and call nine on one. You're you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to call for help because nobody's coming. Deep
Speaker 1: Cover is produced by Jacob Smith and edited by Karen Shakerji.
Speaker 1: Our story editor is Jack hit. Original music and our
Speaker 1: theme was composed by Louise Gara and Flawn Williams is
Speaker 1: our engineer. Fact checking by Amy Gaines. Mia Lobell is
Speaker 1: Pushkin's executive producer. Ned's novel is read by Walton Goggins.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Julia Barton had their Fame, Carly mcgliori,
Speaker 1: Lee Tall, Mullatt, Maya Caning, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Kadija Holland,
Speaker 1: Zoe Gwenn and Jacob Weisberg at Pushkin Industries. Special thanks
Speaker 1: also to Jeff Singer at Stowaway Entertainment. Additional thanks to
Speaker 1: Terry Peters and to Doug McCullough, author of Ce of Greed,
Speaker 1: which tells the story of his investigation in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Calbern.