Speaker 1: Pushkin. About a year ago, I got my hands on
Speaker 1: this novel, unpublished but apparently based on a true story.
Speaker 1: It was written by this guy, Ned Timmins. The overarching
Speaker 1: plot was pure pulp. I mean, you could imagine the
Speaker 1: movie starring Steven Seagal and definitely straight to video. It
Speaker 1: tells the story of a newbie FBI agent named Ned
Speaker 1: from Detroit who grows a Fu Manchu mustache, goes undercover
Speaker 1: in a violent outlaw biker gang, and infiltrates a secret
Speaker 1: syndicate that's smuggling hundreds of thousands of pounds of pot
Speaker 1: into the country, and all that leads eventually to the
Speaker 1: invasion of a foreign country and the arrest of a
Speaker 1: brutal dictator. Skeptical, Yeah, so, as I see, I'm a journalist,
Speaker 1: and my specialty, if you can even call it that,
Speaker 1: his stories that seem too crazy to be true, stories
Speaker 1: that are on the verge of urban legend. Most of
Speaker 1: them turn out to be bullshit, which doesn't bother me.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the crux of my job, actually sorting
Speaker 1: through the bullshit. So naturally I had to go meet
Speaker 1: this guy one two one two, tell me, tell me
Speaker 1: where we are. Your office, Like, describe where we are.
Speaker 1: We're in a commerce township machine. Yeah, give me a
Speaker 1: little bit more than that. How long have you had
Speaker 1: your office here? Eighteen years? Ned is now in his
Speaker 1: early seventies, walks with a limp. He's bald, but you
Speaker 1: wouldn't know it because he likes to wear a weather
Speaker 1: beaten camo hat. Nowadays he's a private eye. His office
Speaker 1: is beige in a beige corporate park. Totally forgettable except
Speaker 1: for the bear. It's the first thing you see when
Speaker 1: you walk up a ten foot ground bear taxiger meat
Speaker 1: in the classic rearing up to Eat You pose. Ned
Speaker 1: tells me you got the bear on a hunting trip
Speaker 1: in Alaska. But the real trophy that Ned keeps in
Speaker 1: a plastic bag in his desk. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: bag air penises and wolf teeth, and the Inuits believe
Speaker 1: that that will protect you. The bear has a bone
Speaker 1: in his penis, and I recovered these, like after you
Speaker 1: shot the bear, you would not before I shut it.
Speaker 1: Nobody's going to take a bear dick when he's alive.
Speaker 1: The Inuits would make a necklace out of this to
Speaker 1: protect him. I just keep it in a bag because
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wear a bear penis necklace around the office.
Speaker 1: Do do you believe in it? It means you believe
Speaker 1: in the like it's power of keeping you safe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I believe in it. I've been all over
Speaker 1: the Arctic and lived two weeks at forty below zero
Speaker 1: and all over Russia and you know where there's nothing
Speaker 1: and keep a bare penis with me. I think there's
Speaker 1: something out there that maybe it's only in your mind.
Speaker 1: If it's in your mind and it works, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm still here and have had many many close calls,
Speaker 1: so here I am right. So at first read Ned's
Speaker 1: unpublished novel seemed like a classic airport pot boiler, typical
Speaker 1: cloak and dagger X cop kind of stuff, like when
Speaker 1: the hero heads it on a case. It reads. A
Speaker 1: quick shower and a breakfast of Alka seltzer and aspirin
Speaker 1: had Ned feeling three quarters human again. That voice is
Speaker 1: the actor Walton Goggins. We asked him to read from
Speaker 1: Ned's novel. And in this novel there's some great characters
Speaker 1: like the drug addicted pig and this pig he guards
Speaker 1: a drug lab while munching on onions soaked in meth.
Speaker 1: The novel tells us the dark and well bristled pig
Speaker 1: was eyeing them with the disturbing, calculating look that pigs give.
Speaker 1: Many of the details in the novel, like the pig,
Speaker 1: were so quirky and distinctive they felt like they had
Speaker 1: to be true. Other scenes seemed contrived, pure Hollywood. I
Speaker 1: kind of felt like I'd gotten myself a guide book
Speaker 1: that was about half accurate. There was a true story
Speaker 1: in here, a real piece of history. If I could
Speaker 1: just you know, extract it, Yeah, easier said than done.
Speaker 1: I started making a to do list, like I was
Speaker 1: going to the grocery store or something. Only mine went
Speaker 1: something like this. One. Reach out to your contact at
Speaker 1: the FBI, make sure ned's not a kuk. Two call
Speaker 1: the CIA here like they'll tell you anything. Three visit
Speaker 1: the guy who smuggled three hundred thousand pounds of pot
Speaker 1: into the US in a single shipment, supposedly now lives
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. Four track down that long lost mistress who's
Speaker 1: living somewhere in South America. Shit. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the story felt like one of those five thousand piece
Speaker 1: puzzles that my kids like to open up on vacation
Speaker 1: and just spill across the floor, and then you see
Speaker 1: a corner piece and a matching edge piece, and damn
Speaker 1: if they don't fit, and then well there goes your vacation.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Halbern and this is Deep Cover, Episode one,
Speaker 1: The Masked Man. All that I really remembered about the
Speaker 1: drug wars of the nineteen eighties was there was this
Speaker 1: huge problem that the government was trying to fix with slogans.
Speaker 1: You might remember, just say no. That was the battle
Speaker 1: cry of President Reagan and his wife Nancy, distributed all
Speaker 1: the way down to our teachers in high school. I
Speaker 1: remember these lectures and thinking even then that they were
Speaker 1: an idiotic remedy to the drug war. I even wrote
Speaker 1: an op ed in my student newspaper just saying no.
Speaker 1: Know to just say no, corny, I know, I was fourteen.
Speaker 1: A little slogan was not going to kill the demand
Speaker 1: for an entire drug market, and it sure as hell
Speaker 1: wasn't going to stem the flow of marijuana that was
Speaker 1: pouring into the country. And he kind of had to
Speaker 1: wonder where was all that marijuana coming from anyway, and
Speaker 1: how is it getting in? Historians are still debating this question.
Speaker 1: You can find reams of conspiracy theories, like it was
Speaker 1: the CIA behind all the drug smuggling. That's still a
Speaker 1: hot one. In fact, the CIA will eventually figure into
Speaker 1: this story, along with celebrities, politicians, heads of state. But
Speaker 1: we're getting ahead of ourselves now, because this story really
Speaker 1: starts in Detroit with Ned Timmins at a rowdy roadside
Speaker 1: biker bar. The bar was a roadhouse out in the sticks.
Speaker 1: The dirt parking lot was full, mostly with motorcycles, nearly
Speaker 1: all of them Harley Davidson's Those are the opening words
Speaker 1: of Ned's novel, and where we'll begin our story. It's
Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties. Ned Timmins is in his mid
Speaker 1: thirties and early in his career at the FBI. He's
Speaker 1: working fugitives, just basically going down at checklist and rounding
Speaker 1: up wanted men. This was not a desk job. It
Speaker 1: was an assignment for guys who wanted some action. As
Speaker 1: Ned tells it, he got a tip about a fugitive
Speaker 1: who was supposed to be at this biker bar in
Speaker 1: the outskirts of Detroit. So Ned grabs his jean jacket
Speaker 1: and his three fifty seven Smith and Wesson and heads out.
Speaker 1: There was some mean motherfucker was in there. You know.
Speaker 1: There was a hard ass, hirdcore biker bar. They're doing
Speaker 1: shots and drugs. And it was a scene out of
Speaker 1: a movie or a novel. In fact, here it is
Speaker 1: in Ned's novel. A single sodium street light out on
Speaker 1: the for edge of a parking lot, shone down on
Speaker 1: a pay phone from that lonely pool of light. The
Speaker 1: darkness of the parking lot reached out a good twenty
Speaker 1: five yards before the glow of neon beer sign signaled
Speaker 1: the borders of another America. This was the lawless America.
Speaker 1: This was the rebel yell. This was easy money, fast
Speaker 1: bikes and girls that were easier and faster than both. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: it's hard to appreciate just how right our novelist is
Speaker 1: about the lawlessness of biker botters in the eighties. Today
Speaker 1: we might think of these guys as old graybeards who
Speaker 1: putter around and three wheeled Harley's, but not back then.
Speaker 1: These were dangerous men, drugging, partying and fighting. Here's ned
Speaker 1: novelist again. The smell was the first thing that hit
Speaker 1: old beer piss, bo reefer smoke and puke. The second
Speaker 1: thing to hit was a cover charge two bucks and
Speaker 1: a guy demanding it was the size of a freezer.
Speaker 1: Bikers seemed to come in one of only two sizes,
Speaker 1: big and really fucking big. Probably smells like sweat and
Speaker 1: beer and Jack Daniels all mixed up together all the time.
Speaker 1: That's Kathy Timmins, also an FBI agent in the Detroit
Speaker 1: office and Ned's wife at the time. She remembers going
Speaker 1: to one of these biker bars with Ned on another
Speaker 1: night just to serve as cover, you know, his actual
Speaker 1: wife pretending to be his girlfriend. And then if people
Speaker 1: actually need to breathe, they go outside because the smoke
Speaker 1: in the bar would be just that thick that even
Speaker 1: a smoker couldn't tolerate it. You know, I mean people,
Speaker 1: you know, the big fight going on over here, and
Speaker 1: everybody else over here just sitting and talking. Other people
Speaker 1: are shooting pool, just chaos. On this particular night, Ned
Speaker 1: says he was looking for a fugitive named Toby Anderson.
Speaker 1: Toby had quite a rap sheet. Apparently Toby's file was
Speaker 1: about six inches deep and a lot of real violent stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, someone guns down on Kentucky and you know
Speaker 1: this guy was a crew of criminal. He also happened
Speaker 1: to be a country western singer, and his band supposedly
Speaker 1: had a gig that night. This was one of their hits,
Speaker 1: snitches that Rivol must die, Vol Must Die. I've been
Speaker 1: called the sucker, but I killed the pick. Motherfucker that
Speaker 1: tries still something of mine. As Ned tells it, the
Speaker 1: bar was crowded with outlaw bikers. Ned knew that walking
Speaker 1: in here as a plainclothes agent was extremely dangerous. Everything
Speaker 1: was about the brotherhood, the code, your fellow bikers, even
Speaker 1: the music. So Ned had his eyes on the band,
Speaker 1: looking at the singer. He knew that Toby was supposed
Speaker 1: to make an appearance on stage tonight. But could it
Speaker 1: be that the lead singer of this band, the guy
Speaker 1: up on stage right now, was his guy. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of good people sitting in jail, Mom, punk
Speaker 1: to the pigs, what they've done, well, we get in
Speaker 1: all of that. If it took our ball math start
Speaker 1: killing the snitches for fawns, So Ned says, He saunters
Speaker 1: up to the bar, takes a seat on a stool,
Speaker 1: and just waits for his partner to show up. It
Speaker 1: wasn't his regular partner, just a guy providing backup that
Speaker 1: particular night. In the novel, Ned describes him as a
Speaker 1: blue blooded preppie who arrives at this biker bar dressed
Speaker 1: in penny loafers and to tie. The two of them
Speaker 1: watched the stage together trying to find their fugitive, figure
Speaker 1: out just who Toby was. All they had was one
Speaker 1: flimsy clue, a picture that was six or seven years
Speaker 1: out of date. There wasn't really any mark, scars or tattoos,
Speaker 1: which is nice if the you know, the guy's got
Speaker 1: a swashtick on his cheek or something that. There was
Speaker 1: nothing we could look at other identifiers. We just we
Speaker 1: weren't sure. Ned waited for the band to take a break,
Speaker 1: and then he went to suss things out. I followed
Speaker 1: him in the bathroom and um, you know, I was
Speaker 1: taking a piss beside him, and I said, hey, aren't
Speaker 1: you Toby Anderson. He goes, nah, yeah, okay. I was
Speaker 1: down in the keys with Toby and I swear you're Toby.
Speaker 1: You just canna know, man, you get the wrong guy.
Speaker 1: And UH said, don't you remember Sow and Sow his
Speaker 1: boat on Big Pine Key. H We partied down there
Speaker 1: and he was yeah, Oh yeah, I'm Toby. You know
Speaker 1: what the fucks that to? You said? We just you know,
Speaker 1: had a good time the night. Will I reach out
Speaker 1: to shake hands with him, and I and I get
Speaker 1: his hand and I'm shaking hands with him, and I
Speaker 1: just lean up to his ear and said, Toby, FBI
Speaker 1: and nine. He goes, fuck you and he starts to swank. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's freeze frame right there in midpunch, because this is
Speaker 1: not exactly textbook or rest protocol. I mean, there were
Speaker 1: other ways to handle this, like waiting until Toby headed
Speaker 1: out to the parking lot, or even just following him home.
Speaker 1: But this is the first thing you need to understand
Speaker 1: about Ned, and it's also the first thing that Kathy
Speaker 1: ever knew about him, going back to when they first
Speaker 1: met as smalltown cops. If somebody was in a foot chase,
Speaker 1: you know, you might you know, we got his ID,
Speaker 1: we got his car, you know, we can pick him
Speaker 1: up tomorrow or whatever. Ned would chase that guy down
Speaker 1: until you got him. She tells the story about Ned.
Speaker 1: Before they even started dating. Ned knew where her family
Speaker 1: would be celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, so he just showed
Speaker 1: up and blended right in as if he were some
Speaker 1: long lost cousin, chatted up her dad got along famously
Speaker 1: with everyone. Most people don't have that level of confidence
Speaker 1: to be able to just walk in and just immediately
Speaker 1: become a part of the crowd. So cornering Toby in
Speaker 1: a bathroom aggressive a bit reckless, classic Ned okay, back
Speaker 1: to the biker bar, and I just lean up to
Speaker 1: his ear and said Toby, FBI and he goes, fock
Speaker 1: you and he starts to swing, and right then Ned's
Speaker 1: partner comes into the bathroom. We kind of overwhelmed them,
Speaker 1: so we get him in cuffs. We're going through the
Speaker 1: bar and everybody's starting to realize he's in handcuffs and
Speaker 1: he's like they're superstar and people are pushing a Shelvin
Speaker 1: and Ned says, he and his partner Frog March Toby
Speaker 1: threw a bar of drunk bikers and out the front door.
Speaker 1: I had Toby on the hood of the Bronco and
Speaker 1: he's still wrestling around, but he's handcuffed behind himself, behind
Speaker 1: his back. So we had told I actually can't be
Speaker 1: sure if this story at the bar is one hundred
Speaker 1: percent true. I talked to Ned's partner from that day,
Speaker 1: and he didn't remember it. I talked to another biker
Speaker 1: who knew Toby very well, and he remembered hearing some
Speaker 1: version of this story at the time. Unfortunately, I can't
Speaker 1: ask Toby himself since he died back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. But I did track down Toby's son, who
Speaker 1: gave me at least a better sense of who this
Speaker 1: guy was. I remember right on the motorcycles with him,
Speaker 1: with me on the back. He was just kind of
Speaker 1: reckless and dangerous. I was screaming, holding on for dear life, right,
Speaker 1: and he just thought it was funny. Today, Jesse Anderson
Speaker 1: is an executive in the auto industry. Back when he
Speaker 1: was a kid, he got out real close view of
Speaker 1: all the madness and chaos that his father was in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was afraid of my dad. Everybody's fraid. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: yeah he was. He was reckless, which is what everyone said.
Speaker 1: The friend of Toby's told me that Toby would cut
Speaker 1: you or even shoot you without hesitation, and this gave
Speaker 1: Toby's street cred in the criminal world. He was the
Speaker 1: real deal, which appealed to Ned. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Ned interrogates Toby the prisoner. Look at Toby here fucked. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've been, You've done time in seven fucking federal pens.
Speaker 1: This time you're going back for life for a long time.
Speaker 1: So what do you want to do? Snitcher the rebolse
Speaker 1: must die. Snitchbols must die. It's squeal all friends, so
Speaker 1: they golf just should die. This is Toby Anderson singing
Speaker 1: one of his hit songs with the legendary chorus Snitches
Speaker 1: and rip Offs must die ned. Timman still remembers going
Speaker 1: to question Toby. He brought him breakfast pancakes and he
Speaker 1: ate him with his hands. He had syrup all over
Speaker 1: his face and all over his fingers and probably hadn't
Speaker 1: eaten in a day or so. You can see he
Speaker 1: was just I mean, he's just like totally burned out
Speaker 1: and weak. Now I didn't have all those buddies that
Speaker 1: we're going to help him. Let's look at Toby. You're fucked. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've been, You've done time in seven fucking federal pens.
Speaker 1: This time you're going back for life for a long time,
Speaker 1: So what do you want to do. We spent several
Speaker 1: hours with him, you know, and finally says, well, there's
Speaker 1: probably a couple of things I can do. So they
Speaker 1: started working together. Toby knew better than anyone the dangers
Speaker 1: of working for Ned, of becoming an informant for the FBI.
Speaker 1: They had to be careful. Ned says. They spread a
Speaker 1: rumor that the charges against Toby were dropped because no
Speaker 1: one wanted to testify against him. This story would keep
Speaker 1: any of his biker buddies from thinking that he'd flipped.
Speaker 1: Even while cooperating, Toby tried to maintain his own kind
Speaker 1: of biker ethics. He would not write out friends or
Speaker 1: members of his own gang, but he willingly betrayed his enemies.
Speaker 1: So he and Ned would find a target, for example,
Speaker 1: a drug house we'd set up undercover surveillance, sent him
Speaker 1: in there, and you know, we had vans and different
Speaker 1: stuff with high tech cameras and stuff that we're on. Periscopes,
Speaker 1: just little pariscope comes out of the top of the van.
Speaker 1: Oh the good old days when the drug dealers didn't
Speaker 1: know what every TV writer knew. Unmarked vans with periscopes
Speaker 1: meant trouble. So then we'd develop a raide plan and
Speaker 1: get a search warton, kicking the doors all the way
Speaker 1: up to the nineteen seventies, the Bureau wasn't really focused
Speaker 1: on drug suppliers. That had been the job of the
Speaker 1: Drug Enforcement Agency, the d EA. Now, the DA did
Speaker 1: have some big investigations, but they were mostly one off busts.
Speaker 1: You know, they'd seize the drugs, lay them out on
Speaker 1: the table, big photo op, busted, end of story. But
Speaker 1: by the early eighties this approach wasn't cutting it anymore.
Speaker 1: President Reagan's Attorney General empowered the FBI to get involved
Speaker 1: in the drug wars. After all, the Bureau were the
Speaker 1: ones taking down the mob. Something big had to be
Speaker 1: behind all of this. The feeling was this couldn't be
Speaker 1: just a bunch of local, mom and pop drug dealers.
Speaker 1: Here's what the Attorney General, William French Smith said at
Speaker 1: the time. Quote The popular notion that the syndicate or
Speaker 1: traditional organized crime stays out of drugs is simply not true.
Speaker 1: Many of the syndicates families have developed elaborate drug network works.
Speaker 1: Virtually every one of them is involved in drugs in
Speaker 1: one way or another. End quote. But that's not all.
Speaker 1: Smith also told Americans precisely who was distributing all the
Speaker 1: drugs for the syndicates. Quote. Over the past decade, some
Speaker 1: eight hundred outlaw motorcycle gangs have developed around the country
Speaker 1: and in foreign countries, and drugs represent their primary source
Speaker 1: of revenue. The strategies of the Attorney General and Ned
Speaker 1: Timmins had what you might call synergy. As Ned saw it,
Speaker 1: Toby was his way in and up the ladder. So
Speaker 1: the FBI came up with a plan Ned would go
Speaker 1: undercover and become a biker. Ned's wife, Kathy, remembers how
Speaker 1: quickly things changed. I didn't like that. He of course
Speaker 1: started growing his hair out and he had a Fu
Speaker 1: Manchu stash, and when we would go out, we'd always
Speaker 1: people look at us and we'd get seated like way
Speaker 1: at the back of a restaurant, you know, like like
Speaker 1: we were creepy. The mustache was just the beginning. Ned
Speaker 1: knew he needed to up his skills as a biker, so,
Speaker 1: like any good FBI agent, he went to school the
Speaker 1: Ontario Provincial Police Motorcycle School. Ned says he learned to
Speaker 1: ride his bike upstairs and lay the bike down at
Speaker 1: high speeds. I rode a bike a lot for the FBI,
Speaker 1: and you're very vulnerable and after you've been to school,
Speaker 1: you realize just how dangerous a motorcycle is. After graduation,
Speaker 1: Ned went back to Detroit. He created a new persona
Speaker 1: and carefully chose a new name, Ed Thomas, because you
Speaker 1: wanted something that was close to Ned. A couple of
Speaker 1: times I was undercovered an airport and old colleagues, buddies,
Speaker 1: Tarryann and Tolman, they're going, hey, Ned, and it's an
Speaker 1: awkward situation if you're with a bunch of bikers, Ed Thomas.
Speaker 1: It was close enough that you can stumble through it.
Speaker 1: Ed Thomas a badass biker with money and connections. If
Speaker 1: you wanted the chemicals to make meth, Ed Thomas is
Speaker 1: your guy, and the ruse worked. Ed helped the FBI
Speaker 1: take down other outlaw bikers on at least one occasion.
Speaker 1: Ned told me that they cuffed him as well at
Speaker 1: the arrest, made sure it look like he really was
Speaker 1: a criminal. The FBI wanted to protect his cover because
Speaker 1: Ned he was really good at this. You know who
Speaker 1: was not so good at this whole undercover thing. Toby,
Speaker 1: Ned's wingman. Toby was still living the biker life, and
Speaker 1: increasingly there were problems. Like the time that Toby was
Speaker 1: out at a bar and watching another band play. The
Speaker 1: lead singer was playing this fancy and very pricy less
Speaker 1: Ball electric guitar, and Toby liked it a lot. What
Speaker 1: happened next is kind of a legend. I heard it
Speaker 1: from a few different people, including another biker who was
Speaker 1: there that night at the bar, So out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: Toby screamed FBI at the top of his lungs, whipped
Speaker 1: out his gun and started shooting. He snatched the guitar
Speaker 1: and bolts out of the bar like he deputized himself
Speaker 1: as an FBI agent or something, and then totally went
Speaker 1: rogue and for a while he got away with it.
Speaker 1: Toby now has this sweet Les Paul electric guitar, and
Speaker 1: right away he started touring his local haunts with it.
Speaker 1: Not a worry in the world because that's Toby, and
Speaker 1: because it's Toby, that's not the end of the story.
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, Toby's performing up on stage and
Speaker 1: he gets shot. We don't know who did it for sure,
Speaker 1: but everyone I spoke to said it had to be
Speaker 1: the guy he robbed and stole the guitar from a
Speaker 1: few weeks earlier. So Toby he's shot and bleeding out
Speaker 1: on stage across town. HiT's bedtime at dad's house when
Speaker 1: the phone rings and I get a call again, like
Speaker 1: ten o'clock at night, So you'd better get down to
Speaker 1: this bar. Toby's been shot, and so I raced down.
Speaker 1: It's like a forty five minute drive. He's still laying
Speaker 1: on the floor in the bar shot. I get there
Speaker 1: and say, look at you gotta go to the fucking hospital.
Speaker 1: It's okay, I'm going of if you'd go with me. Well,
Speaker 1: I got a call from somebody in my family to
Speaker 1: say that my dad has been shot, and that was
Speaker 1: that it was pretty severe. That's Jesse Anderson again, Toby's son,
Speaker 1: and that day, the day his dad got shot, it's
Speaker 1: always stayed with him. On the way to the hospital,
Speaker 1: they got stopped by a train and he almost bled
Speaker 1: out in the ambulance because the train was so long.
Speaker 1: And at this time I now think, I think I'm
Speaker 1: about twelve years old. But again, for me to hear
Speaker 1: that my dad was shot, it's like going to the store.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the stuff happened all the time. Something
Speaker 1: like this happened all the time. Toby recovered from being
Speaker 1: shot and just kind of carried on. As crazy as
Speaker 1: that sounds, this was normal life for the Anderson household.
Speaker 1: In fact, hearing Jesse talked about his dad like this,
Speaker 1: it helped me understand what life was like in Toby's world.
Speaker 1: Mayhem just seemed to follow this guy everywhere. Everything was
Speaker 1: topsy turvy. Even jumping in the car to pick up
Speaker 1: a pizza became an event. All I remember is pulling
Speaker 1: up to a stoplight and up in front of us
Speaker 1: is a guy mugging another guy, and my dad's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to stand for this, puts the car
Speaker 1: in park, sets his beer up on top of the roof,
Speaker 1: gets out, beats the living crap out of the guy
Speaker 1: who was mugging the other one, stole all the money
Speaker 1: that he had, split it with the other guy, got
Speaker 1: back in the car with me, grabbed his beer, and
Speaker 1: just drived on. And you know, Son, looks like we've
Speaker 1: got some dinner money or something like that, and just
Speaker 1: no big deal. Didn't say another word. That's my dad,
Speaker 1: a little vigilante justice. That was a good night. But
Speaker 1: it could get darker with Toby, a whole lot darker.
Speaker 1: Let me come back, ned wades deeper did Toby's world.
Speaker 1: He had that dark look you know what I'm talking about, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that crazy look in your eyes that you think this
Speaker 1: guy is a psychotic person. I better not push his button.
Speaker 1: Ned's wife, Kathy met Toby on a number of occasions.
Speaker 1: I remember telling Ned that he resembled to me Charles Manson,
Speaker 1: and Kathy knew the telltale signs of a dangerous guy
Speaker 1: at the FBI. She works street gangs in Flint, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Toby didn't aspire to anything other than the moment, when
Speaker 1: people only aspire to you know, how am I going
Speaker 1: to get out of here in the next fifteen minutes?
Speaker 1: And they don't care if they don't think consequence, They
Speaker 1: don't think of any of that. Gang kids are like that.
Speaker 1: They just do in the moment what they have to do,
Speaker 1: and if it means killing you, they'll think about that later.
Speaker 1: So why did Ned just walk away from him, let
Speaker 1: him go back to prison, move on? Because Toby was, yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely dangerous, but also kind of like a dead end.
Speaker 1: I mean, he wasn't some kind of kingpin or even
Speaker 1: a trusted lieutenant. He was just a violent and unpredictable guy.
Speaker 1: But Ned, he just had a hunch he felt that
Speaker 1: by slipping deeper and deeper into Toby's world, somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way there'd be a payoff. And because he was
Speaker 1: spending so much time with bikers, Ned kept hearing chatter
Speaker 1: well ahead sources up in northern Michigan bikers, and they
Speaker 1: would talk about, Okay, there's a shipman in or whatever.
Speaker 1: The bikers would get their supply of weed when these
Speaker 1: big shipments would come in, you know, which is fifty
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, one hundred thousand pounds or whatever into the
Speaker 1: Detroit warehouse. If such a warehouse really existed. It was
Speaker 1: the El Dorado of drug houses and confirmed what the
Speaker 1: Attorney General had said that elaborate drug networks lay behind
Speaker 1: all the small drug busts that have been happening. So
Speaker 1: Ned goes and tells his bosses, there's this huge deal
Speaker 1: out there and involved shrimp boats and barges and airplanes.
Speaker 1: And so I told my bosses about it, you know,
Speaker 1: and they kind of said, yeah, you know, you know, right,
Speaker 1: Tim is when he's smoking. Around the same time, Ned
Speaker 1: says he arrested another biker and tried to flip him,
Speaker 1: just like he'd done with Toby, only it didn't work.
Speaker 1: In fact, during the arrest, the guy just taunted Ned.
Speaker 1: He says, well, he says, you're missing the boat on
Speaker 1: one of the biggest fucking deals going out there. You
Speaker 1: don't even know what's under your own nose. But he
Speaker 1: alluded to this massive deal where there's hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of pounds of weed and coke coming in and then
Speaker 1: basically said fuck you. And that was any wasn't going
Speaker 1: to cooperating for Ned. This intel was just too enticing.
Speaker 1: His bosses might have been skeptical, but Ned stuck with it,
Speaker 1: kept hanging with Toby. It's just I knew he was
Speaker 1: out with them all the time. I just until I
Speaker 1: would hear from him. I would many many times just
Speaker 1: sit there and think, oh my god, something's happened, and
Speaker 1: then he'd call, and then I'd be relieved, and then
Speaker 1: I'd be mad because because of all distress and the worry,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just Ned's safety that concerned her. Will
Speaker 1: you hang around Matt Long with a bunch of bad
Speaker 1: guys and fitting in with them, your behavior is going
Speaker 1: to change, and your your own personal bars, you know
Speaker 1: where you draw the line changes. This would be the first,
Speaker 1: but not the last time that Cathy was right to
Speaker 1: worry about her husband and where he was drawing the line,
Speaker 1: especially when it came to Toby. You know, I was
Speaker 1: supposed to meet him or whatever. And I went down
Speaker 1: to the house on my motorcycle and pulled up in
Speaker 1: the yard and put down the kickstand and walked in
Speaker 1: and there's dead guy laying there in a pool of blood.
Speaker 1: And I go, Toby, what the fuck? And he goes, Bros.
Speaker 1: Masked man came through the door, shot this guy. I
Speaker 1: guess he didn't like him and ran. That's all I know.
Speaker 1: A masked man. Come on. Really, this was Toby's story.
Speaker 1: A strange guy wearing a mask breaks into his apartment,
Speaker 1: shoots this guy who's currently lying on the floor, and
Speaker 1: then runs away, leaving Toby to take the rap. I mean,
Speaker 1: this has got to be the homicidal equivalent of the
Speaker 1: dog ate my homework. I later asked Toby's son about it,
Speaker 1: whether his dad was the kind of person who was
Speaker 1: capable of committing murder. It pains me to say it,
Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't blink when I when I say,
Speaker 1: you know, could he have done it? Did he do it?
Speaker 1: Has he done it? I'm sure the answers ysked all
Speaker 1: of them, and I don't I don't think twice about it.
Speaker 1: Ned didn't tell Kathy about this whole episode with the
Speaker 1: masked man and the dead body. Oddly enough, he seemed
Speaker 1: to take the whole episode in stride. So in a way,
Speaker 1: if you're one hundred percent certain it was Toby to
Speaker 1: kill him, it was just a technicality that you weren't
Speaker 1: there to witness it. I'm not a witness. I'm not
Speaker 1: in charge of collecting evidence. FBI doesn't investigate homicides. It
Speaker 1: wasn't my job to investigate a homicide. Just don't kill
Speaker 1: somebody in front of me. That's it. Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: Ned says that he did call the police, and so
Speaker 1: when De Tray police came and told him the same story,
Speaker 1: and they didn't really give a shit. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just some shit head biker. Ned now had his line
Speaker 1: in the sand. The trick was keeping Toby on this
Speaker 1: side of it, which you don't make progress. And unless
Speaker 1: you're dealing with sociopathic, homicidal crazy people, that's who are
Speaker 1: in the inner circle of drugs, violence and whatever. So
Speaker 1: this is just part of the deal. It's part of
Speaker 1: the deal. Yeah, so what are you saying to him
Speaker 1: in that situation? You know, I just thought him would
Speaker 1: be advantageous not to continue to have bodies laying around
Speaker 1: in your house or in your yard, And I said,
Speaker 1: tell the fucking mass man to stay away. After listening
Speaker 1: to Ned's story, you know, in the shadow of his
Speaker 1: ten foot stuff bare, I still just didn't know what
Speaker 1: to make of it. When I got home, I reread
Speaker 1: his novel. Ned and his ghostwriter were giving me everything
Speaker 1: they thought I wanted, with all the film noir settings
Speaker 1: and Raymond Chandler dialogue. In the novel, Toby's like that
Speaker 1: two dimensional villain depicted on a target at a shooting range,
Speaker 1: you know, lone bad guy with a gun drawn. But
Speaker 1: what struck me most was what was missing from the novel.
Speaker 1: There's no mention of Jesse the Sun, or what it's
Speaker 1: like to grow up with Toby as your dad. And
Speaker 1: Ned's wife and colleague, Kathy, she doesn't even make a
Speaker 1: single appearance in the novel. I guess her Midwestern accent
Speaker 1: and by the book thinking didn't fit into the hard
Speaker 1: boiled narrative. It became clear to me that the truth,
Speaker 1: if I could extract. It was way better. But this
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be easy. Honestly, I didn't know if
Speaker 1: I could fully trust all of Ned's memories. Part of
Speaker 1: the problem was time. All of this happened thirty five
Speaker 1: years ago. I mean, memories fade and then those same
Speaker 1: memories had been taken off the shelf and reworked into fiction.
Speaker 1: But I was all in, and so for the last
Speaker 1: year and a half, I've been trying to put all
Speaker 1: the pieces together. I've been to dive bars and horse farms,
Speaker 1: to back water swamps and pirate museums. I've poured through
Speaker 1: FBI reports in court transcripts. The story is taking me
Speaker 1: to North Carolina, Maryland, Florida, Michigan, Hawaii, and the Cayman Islands.
Speaker 1: I've talked to agents from the FBI, the d e A,
Speaker 1: and u S, Customs, to US attorneys, pilots, ex girl friends,
Speaker 1: Detroit felons, and a bunch of big time drug smugglers,
Speaker 1: and all of this to find out whether a rookie
Speaker 1: agent from Detroit could really make a random bust in
Speaker 1: a biker bar one night and set off a cascade
Speaker 1: of events. The discovery of a gigantic drug warehouse, the
Speaker 1: collapse of a nationwide smuggling ring, a war in Central America,
Speaker 1: and the overthrow of a brutal dictator. Next time a
Speaker 1: deep cover, you know, you don't have to choose that path.
Speaker 1: You don't have to choose to work a case in
Speaker 1: that way. You don't have to choose to go deep cover,
Speaker 1: you know. But I know for him, he felt like
Speaker 1: it was just spinning into the next, into the next,
Speaker 1: into the next, and he told me that he felt
Speaker 1: like he didn't know how he was ever going to
Speaker 1: get out of it. Deep Cover is produced by Jacob
Speaker 1: Smith and edited by Karen Shakerge. Our story editor is
Speaker 1: Jack Hitt. Original music and our theme was composed by
Speaker 1: Louise Gera and Flawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Amy Gaines. Mia Lobell is Pushkin's executive producer. Ned's
Speaker 1: novel is read by Walton Goggins. Special thanks to Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Heather Fain, Carl mcgliori, Leta Mullad, Maya Caning, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Kadija Holland, Zoe Gwenn and Jacob Weissberg at
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Special thanks also to Jeff Singer at Stowaway Entertainment.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake albern