Speaker 1: Pushkin, previously on deep cover. By the late spring of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, Ned Timmins was deep into his investigation
Speaker 1: of the drug smugglers. One of the three major players,
Speaker 1: the Gentleman Smuggler, was now behind bars, but Ned was
Speaker 1: still on a mission to get Mike Vogel, the grocery guy.
Speaker 1: I had it in such a way, did I really
Speaker 1: control the marijuana industry in Michigan. His other target was
Speaker 1: Lee Rich mister beach club. I'm the boss, Okay. I
Speaker 1: called the shots. If they wanted to load, or if
Speaker 1: I was going to load something, I could secure the boat,
Speaker 1: playing whatever. But for now Ned couldn't do much about
Speaker 1: the case because in the fall of that year, his
Speaker 1: cover was blown and there'd been a threat on his life.
Speaker 1: So the FBI sent Ned and his wife Kathy off
Speaker 1: to northern Michigan to hide together. They had to sit
Speaker 1: quietly and wait it out. This is not any kind
Speaker 1: of a life that I want to lead. This isn't
Speaker 1: what any of us signed up for. For Kathy Timmins,
Speaker 1: going into hiding wasn't just scary. She had her own work,
Speaker 1: her own career at the FBI that she now had
Speaker 1: to put on hold. She was tired of Ned's undercover
Speaker 1: persona Ed Thomas, messing everything up. Oh. I was very angry.
Speaker 1: I was very upset. I was scared, you know. And
Speaker 1: then I just had to let it be, let it go,
Speaker 1: just be up there and sit and wait to make
Speaker 1: matters worse. She didn't feel well. I thought I was
Speaker 1: sick or something, or maybe just really really tired, because
Speaker 1: I just kept falling asleep. And then I started feeling
Speaker 1: the queasiness and everything, and I thought, oh, maybe I
Speaker 1: got pregnant. After being in hiding for about three weeks,
Speaker 1: the FBI calls and tells Nedd and Kathy the coast
Speaker 1: is clear. They had caught the bikers who had planned
Speaker 1: to kill Ned. So Ned and Cathy come out of hiding.
Speaker 1: They go home. Kathy, who's still not feeling well, visits
Speaker 1: the doctor and learns she is pregnant. In a way,
Speaker 1: the timing wasn't ideal. Their lives had just been turned
Speaker 1: upside down, and yet Kathy took this as a sign
Speaker 1: like God meant it to be, because we had been
Speaker 1: married for how many years by then, and I had
Speaker 1: never gotten pregnant, and I never did anything not to
Speaker 1: get pregnant. So I just thought, oh, okay. You know
Speaker 1: I'm Catholic. You know, it's like, okay, this is meant
Speaker 1: to be. Now. All she had to do was tell Ned.
Speaker 1: I thought that he would be thrilled and that this
Speaker 1: would really help to bring a closure to all of
Speaker 1: this craziness with this undercover work. I asked, Ned, what
Speaker 1: were your thoughts about having kids? Given the nature of
Speaker 1: your work, it wasn't time. Did you think you ever
Speaker 1: wanted to have kids? You know, I really didn't give
Speaker 1: it much thought, you know, I was just consumed by
Speaker 1: work and what we were doing. So when you get
Speaker 1: back from this trip to northern Michigan and she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm pregnant, what is your reaction? Well, yeah, it's just well,
Speaker 1: I guess we're gonna roll with it. You know. I'm
Speaker 1: Jake Halper and this is Deep Cover Episode seven. The
Speaker 1: honeymoon is over. After he comes out of hiding, Ned
Speaker 1: is back working on his case against Lee rich Mister
Speaker 1: Beach Club, but for the time being, there was no
Speaker 1: easy way for Ned or the FBI to apprehend Lee.
Speaker 1: Extraditions from the Caymans were rare, plus, Ned says down
Speaker 1: on the Caymans. Lee was kind of a robin Hood figure,
Speaker 1: a beloved outlaw. Lee was the robin Hood who had
Speaker 1: taken care of all the bankers and all the people
Speaker 1: on the island and buried friends and relatives and paid
Speaker 1: for everybody's expenses. He had a big heart, and he
Speaker 1: took care of a lot of people, and it would
Speaker 1: have been probably impossible to get him extradited out of there.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, Ned was frustrated that he
Speaker 1: couldn't apprehend Lee, but he also knew that Lee was
Speaker 1: kind of trapped, and he knew this because of a
Speaker 1: conversation that they'd had when they were in the Caymans together.
Speaker 1: We had always talked alone a lot, and I just
Speaker 1: turned him one day. We're probably having a drink or something.
Speaker 1: I said, Lee, why don't you get the hell out
Speaker 1: of us? Just quit And Lee said I can't. They'll
Speaker 1: kill me. And I believe he meant the Columbians would
Speaker 1: kill him. Lee was on the hook for a million
Speaker 1: pounds of marijuana that he'd ordered from the Colombians. And that,
Speaker 1: by the way, is he shitload of marijuana. Look, this
Speaker 1: isn't an exact science, but I talked to was a
Speaker 1: smuggler who once saw this much weed down in Colombia
Speaker 1: and he described it as a quote fucking mountain end quote.
Speaker 1: He actually built a small fort up on top of
Speaker 1: it and slept there. So you get the idea. Lee
Speaker 1: was under pressure to move that much marijuana. And remember
Speaker 1: Lee's go to guy, Stephen Kaylish, the Gentleman's smuggler. He
Speaker 1: was in custody at this point, so Lee pushed ahead
Speaker 1: without his star smuggler, tried to move at least some
Speaker 1: of it. He arranged for a tug boat to to
Speaker 1: a barge with one hundred and sixty five thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of pot on it up to Virginia. The boat was
Speaker 1: intercepted by the US Coastguard and the cargo was confiscated.
Speaker 1: It was a total disaster. It's all scrapped. It was done.
Speaker 1: You know, at this point, Lee is finally feeling ready
Speaker 1: to just get out of the business. You know, I
Speaker 1: was just I was tired of it. I didn't need it,
Speaker 1: And I blame a lot of that on myself for
Speaker 1: not being strong enough to tell people I don't want
Speaker 1: to do this, I'm done. It was a moment of
Speaker 1: reckoning for Lee. Remember from the very start. Lie says
Speaker 1: he'd gotten into the marijuana business so he could chill
Speaker 1: with his buddies, non violent beach guys, you know, lived
Speaker 1: on the beach to surf and fish and never hurt anybody. Okay.
Speaker 1: Even as his business grew and he became really wealthy,
Speaker 1: this was still his credo. He had the yacht which
Speaker 1: the queen borrowed, and the beach club, but the funny
Speaker 1: parrot and the cool house that rock stars came to visit.
Speaker 1: It had been fun for a long time until suddenly,
Speaker 1: well it really wasn't anymore. And then, as if this
Speaker 1: weren't already perfectly clear, Alvin Connor came knocking. I know
Speaker 1: Lee rich. For years Alvin was the chief Inspector of
Speaker 1: narcotics for the Cayman Island Police Force back in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Were used to search all his private plea and you
Speaker 1: come in eer week two three time were all these girls?
Speaker 1: Pretty girls used to bring. Alvin says he had suspected
Speaker 1: for a while that Lee might be involved in the
Speaker 1: drug trade. Nothing solid, just chatter, which isn't surprising this
Speaker 1: was a small island. Inevitably people talked. Alvin says, he
Speaker 1: searched Lee's private plane and number of times, but never
Speaker 1: found any drugs. But then one day in January of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, about six months after Ned had left
Speaker 1: the island, Alvin says he got a tip which led
Speaker 1: him to believe that Lee might have some drugs at
Speaker 1: his house. This was all that Alvin needed, just a lead,
Speaker 1: a whiff of something, because on the island, Alvin had
Speaker 1: a reputation for chasing assent. If can't you see me
Speaker 1: come in to see the dog is here? You called
Speaker 1: me the dog? Wait? Why do they call you the dog?
Speaker 1: Mar Juanna, I smell it. They say that I smell it.
Speaker 1: If day I'm gonna find it. They called me the
Speaker 1: dog to see the dog? Come, no, and the dog.
Speaker 1: He was coming for Lee. He didn't know about Ned
Speaker 1: Timmins or the FBI investigation. He just wanted to bust
Speaker 1: Lee rich. So he heads over to Lee's house. I say,
Speaker 1: we're here to look for drogs. Alvin says. He searches
Speaker 1: the room and finds about an ounce of cocaine. He
Speaker 1: arrestedly on the spot for drug possession. Lee says the
Speaker 1: whole thing was a setup. They planted a two or
Speaker 1: three grams or coke in my house and came in
Speaker 1: and raided the house. My mother's in the house, and
Speaker 1: I think I had about eight people staying in the
Speaker 1: house at that time. So it was a big scene
Speaker 1: when they took Lee away in handcuffs. The whole thing
Speaker 1: was upsetting for Lee, in part because his mom was there.
Speaker 1: She started making a fuss, and Alvin confronted her. I say,
Speaker 1: if I'll shut your mouth, I rescue you and jadge
Speaker 1: rob structing police officer saw. I rescue you and charge
Speaker 1: you and charge you for the school keen too. The
Speaker 1: message to Lee seemed to be clear, I'm not afraid
Speaker 1: of you. I'll mess with your mom if need be.
Speaker 1: Alvin took Lee down to the police station, booked him,
Speaker 1: locked him up, but soon Lee got out on bail
Speaker 1: around five thousand dollars. That's the amount that Alvin recalls anyway,
Speaker 1: which was nothing to Lee. Yeah, you were like a king,
Speaker 1: big shot, like a big shot, and nobody could touch him.
Speaker 1: He tells Lee, if the judge you won't let you
Speaker 1: go down, he based that boy, gonna do my job
Speaker 1: for Lee. The biggest fallout from all of this was
Speaker 1: that he had to give up his passport. The police
Speaker 1: claimed that he was a flight risk, so they insisted
Speaker 1: that he'd leave his passport with them at the station,
Speaker 1: so he'd have to go and ask for a back
Speaker 1: if you ever wanted to leave the island. Lee was
Speaker 1: beginning to feel trapped. Around the same time, he was
Speaker 1: hanging out at a local bar on Grand Cayman when
Speaker 1: he bumps into a guy he knows who works for
Speaker 1: Scotland Yard. Lee buys him a drink and he goes rich.
Speaker 1: He goes, I'm I'm gonna tell you something. Goes. Don't
Speaker 1: take your boat out past twelve miles, don't go out
Speaker 1: on the bank fish, and don't leave the island. They're
Speaker 1: trying to get you on a coastguard cutter or something
Speaker 1: off a Cayman, he said. And I'm just telling you
Speaker 1: that because you're a decent guy. It seemed like the
Speaker 1: walls were really closing in on Lee. Now his business partner,
Speaker 1: the gentleman smuggler, was in jail and quite possibly talking
Speaker 1: to US authorities. The dog was pursuing him on the island,
Speaker 1: and now the Scotland Yard guy was telling him don't
Speaker 1: take your boat too far off shore. So I knew
Speaker 1: then from what he told me that night, They're really
Speaker 1: onto my ass. Okay, and I started making arrangements. I
Speaker 1: was going to leave, and I was going to Europe,
Speaker 1: to Portugal. Actually, Lee's grandfather was Portuguese, and he figured
Speaker 1: if he could get there, he might use that familial
Speaker 1: connection to get his status as a resident. He thought
Speaker 1: he'd be safe there. So in May of nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: a full year after Ned first visited Lee in the Caymans,
Speaker 1: Lee got ready to make his escape, and then this
Speaker 1: chance would have it, Lee got a visit from a
Speaker 1: friend which derailed everything. And that friend was Tommy Lee Base,
Speaker 1: you know, from Motley Crue. Lee Rich was about to
Speaker 1: flee the Cayman Islands, but he had a scheduling conflict.
Speaker 1: A buddy was coming to town, Tommy Lee Basse, founding
Speaker 1: member of the band Motley Crue. In the mid nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee and his bandmate Nicki six were the bad
Speaker 1: boys at the heavy metal world. I remember you feel
Speaker 1: for the last time you motherfucker's liked the party? Is
Speaker 1: that true? Well, if you're a perverse fuck yeah, I
Speaker 1: fucking knew it. I just knew it. Tommy Lee and
Speaker 1: his bandmates had come to visit the Caymans a few
Speaker 1: times before. Turns out the band's manager, Doc McGee, was
Speaker 1: one of Lee's investors. They all got along famously. Tommy
Speaker 1: even wrote about the first time that he'd met Lee
Speaker 1: in Motley Crue's memoir The Dirt. Here's a clip from
Speaker 1: the audio book and just a heads up. For some reason,
Speaker 1: the narrator calls Lee Leigh. Anyway, Lay walked into the
Speaker 1: doc's rental house with a Natashak case. The first words
Speaker 1: we spoke to him were gimme, gimme, gimme, because we
Speaker 1: knew what was in that fucking attache case. Mountains of
Speaker 1: white powder to stuff up our noses. Lay opened the
Speaker 1: case and gave us a little rock. In the memoir,
Speaker 1: Lee then shuts his briefcase, locks it, winks and tells
Speaker 1: them if they can open the combination lock, Tommy can
Speaker 1: have the rest of it. We were so coked out
Speaker 1: that we actually thought we were coming up with every
Speaker 1: single permutation of three numbers. Finally, I went into the kitchen,
Speaker 1: grabbed a butcher knife and cut the top of lace
Speaker 1: thousand dollars leather briefcase, glittering inside like white gold were
Speaker 1: fucking dozens of huge plastic bags filled with coke. So
Speaker 1: there you have it. An epic drug dealer, an epic
Speaker 1: rock star who loved drugs. It was a friendship made
Speaker 1: in heaven. Tommy wasn't traveling to the Caymans alone. He
Speaker 1: was coming with the latest love of his life life,
Speaker 1: the actress Heather Locklear. She'd started in a few hit
Speaker 1: TV shows like Dynasty and t J. Hooker, where she
Speaker 1: played a rookie cop who once even goes under cover
Speaker 1: herself as a call girl. Yeah, hook where are she
Speaker 1: supposed to wear? Her water and my trick bag? An
Speaker 1: alcol girl never parts with her trick bag. Don't get
Speaker 1: any ideas about helping me on with it. It's fine,
Speaker 1: just where it is. Heather and Tommy. They'd met backstage
Speaker 1: in an Ario Speedwagon concert. Their relationship would become fodder
Speaker 1: for e Hollywood. The bad boy of rock had found
Speaker 1: his princess. Tommy was now living the life he had famed,
Speaker 1: fortune and love. The happy couple left for a three
Speaker 1: week honeymoon in the Cayman Islands. Tommy was coming to
Speaker 1: visit to spend his honeymoon on the Cayman Islands, seeing
Speaker 1: his good buddy, Lee, the guy with the magic suitcase.
Speaker 1: Listall remembers just how excited Tommy was heaves head over
Speaker 1: heels on this girl. He said, I really want to
Speaker 1: come back here and spend my honey, and I said,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I'll take care of you. You know, Lee
Speaker 1: could have told him, no, the timing's bad, man, My
Speaker 1: drug empire is falling apart. I may soon be imprisoned.
Speaker 1: But that was just not mister Beach Club's style. His
Speaker 1: buddy was coming to town, so his escape plan to
Speaker 1: Portugal would just have to wait. Lee arrange for a
Speaker 1: nice condo on the beach for Tommy and Heather, and
Speaker 1: I got a call the next day after leaving him
Speaker 1: there that night from the manager of the condo asked
Speaker 1: me to remove them from the property, both of them,
Speaker 1: because they were up all night running up and down
Speaker 1: in the parking out high on whatever. Not a huge surprise.
Speaker 1: From the Motley Crewe memoir, you get a sense for
Speaker 1: how Tommy partied. Gimme, gimme, gimme, so Lee, he moves
Speaker 1: the couple to another condo, but the situation doesn't get
Speaker 1: any better. It was one big headache for Lee. So
Speaker 1: they decide, let's go to Jamaica. It'll be better over there.
Speaker 1: Lee books them some villas, makes all the arrangements, and
Speaker 1: he decides that this trip to Jamaica will be the
Speaker 1: perfect excuse to run for it. So he goes to
Speaker 1: the Cayman Police and somehow or another manages to get
Speaker 1: his passport back. Lee says he's just flying with some
Speaker 1: friends to Jamaica for a mini vacation, but his real
Speaker 1: plan is to keep going to London and then onto Portugal.
Speaker 1: So he packs a briefcase with some pocket money thirty
Speaker 1: thousand in cash, and boards a plane with Tommy and
Speaker 1: Heather from Montego Bay, Jamaica. That night, when we flew
Speaker 1: to Mobay. When I come off the airplane, one of
Speaker 1: the girls from the counter, does she call me by
Speaker 1: my name? She goes Lee. I looked at her two
Speaker 1: agents waiting on you inside the customs area. There two
Speaker 1: agents and like that, Lee understood had to be the FEDS.
Speaker 1: Somehow they'd been tipped off. What Lee didn't know at
Speaker 1: the time was that the FBI had a source who
Speaker 1: knew about his trip and ratted him out, and now
Speaker 1: here he was on the ground at the Montego Bay Airport,
Speaker 1: walking right into a trap. Here's Tommy's got up one
Speaker 1: of these boomboxes. Okay, up on his shoulder, and he's
Speaker 1: jagging at around holler and he's dragging this Heather with him. Okay,
Speaker 1: going ahead of me, and so I went behind him,
Speaker 1: went into customs, and sure enough those agents came up
Speaker 1: to me. Tommy made us started confronting him too. You know, hey,
Speaker 1: what he hadn't done anything, you know, and so they've
Speaker 1: threatened to arrest him, and that was the end of that.
Speaker 1: Tommy and Heather went one way, and the two FBI
Speaker 1: agents escorted Lee out of the airport and into a
Speaker 1: car where a Jamaican police officer was waiting for them.
Speaker 1: They then all head to the hotel where the FBI
Speaker 1: agents were staying so they could grab their stuff. We
Speaker 1: go to the hotel and the two agents get out
Speaker 1: of the car and we're sitting in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: I'm in there with this cop and the cop that
Speaker 1: was in the front seat driving us. He was one
Speaker 1: of the cops I used to pay off. And I said, listen,
Speaker 1: you don't you remember who I am? You know who
Speaker 1: I am? So he goes I can't help you, Rich,
Speaker 1: I said, I'll never forget it. So you know, I
Speaker 1: was kind of threatening him, and I said, all I
Speaker 1: gotta do is let me run. He goes, I can't
Speaker 1: do it, so he wouldn't let me out, and that
Speaker 1: was it. The two FBI agents got back in the car.
Speaker 1: They drove to Kingston and caught the next flight back
Speaker 1: to the US with Lee in custody. In Motley Crue's memoir,
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Base takes full responsibility for all of this,
Speaker 1: saying that he and Heather caused the downfall of one
Speaker 1: of the country's biggest drug smugglers, all because they didn't
Speaker 1: want to go to Maka alone. Tommy writes, Heather and
Speaker 1: I felt terrible. We had no one to show us
Speaker 1: around Jamaica. Now that he was in federal custody, Lee
Speaker 1: Rich began to mull over where exactly he'd gone wrong,
Speaker 1: and he recalled something that his business partner, Mike Vogel,
Speaker 1: the grocery guy, had told him. Mike was the distributor
Speaker 1: who ran the enormous drug warehouse back in Detroit, and
Speaker 1: Lie says Mike he had never really liked Tommy and
Speaker 1: Heather thought they were trouble. Lee remembers him saying repeatedly,
Speaker 1: stay away from those people. They're going to be your downfall.
Speaker 1: Mike Vogel was right, in fact, more right than he knew.
Speaker 1: In a way, Tommy and Heather would also be his downfall,
Speaker 1: because at the very moment that Lee was being apprehended
Speaker 1: in Jamaica, there was another operation targeting Mike Vogel back
Speaker 1: in Detroit. When we come back after the break, Ned
Speaker 1: Timmins and the FBI make their move on the grocery guy.
Speaker 1: Back in Michigan, Ned was itching to arrest Mike Vogel.
Speaker 1: The idea was to get both of these guys, Lee
Speaker 1: and then Mike, almost at the exact same time, so
Speaker 1: neither one of them would tip off the other. Everything
Speaker 1: had to be perfectly synchronized this moment, it was the
Speaker 1: culmination of almost three years of work on Ned's part.
Speaker 1: It had been an epic journey, taking him from a
Speaker 1: roadside biker bar in Detroit all the way to the
Speaker 1: glitzie beaches of the Caymans. And during this time Ned's
Speaker 1: case had steadily grown, merging with other investigations in North Carolina, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and Florida. Other agencies had gotten involved too, like the
Speaker 1: d EA, the IRS, the Coastguard, US Customs, and a
Speaker 1: slew of state and county investigators. Together, the authorities had
Speaker 1: built a strong case against the smugglers, and throughout this
Speaker 1: time Ned had kept pretty close tabs on Mike Vogel,
Speaker 1: and apparently Mike had picked up on this. That's what
Speaker 1: he told me. Anyway, Mike boasted to me that he
Speaker 1: had sources within the FBI. He added rather cryptically that
Speaker 1: he knew all about Ned. Did I sit down have
Speaker 1: lunch or dinner with him? Now? Okay, I just I
Speaker 1: was aware of them. I was very aware of them.
Speaker 1: I remembin the day that Ned Timmins he ever got
Speaker 1: involved with me, I wish I had never heard my name.
Speaker 1: So on May twenty third, nineteen eighty six, the same
Speaker 1: day League gets arrested, Ned Timmins is staked out at
Speaker 1: Mike Vogel's house in Milford. We had the whole swat
Speaker 1: team out there laying in Vogle's place all night long
Speaker 1: waiting for word that they had Lee and custody. And
Speaker 1: once we got word that they had Lee in custody,
Speaker 1: then we had Vogle's house, his Ned and his FBI
Speaker 1: team are getting ready, something really weird happens. According to NED,
Speaker 1: a black panther starts stalking the woods. A black panther
Speaker 1: in Michigan. Okay, so there was some sightings of it,
Speaker 1: and we're in the swat team moonlightning. We've been laying
Speaker 1: out there all night, night vision everything, and this panther
Speaker 1: had been released. People had seen it and reported it.
Speaker 1: You know, that there's a black panther run around out
Speaker 1: here and there some cattle had been killed. And so
Speaker 1: we're all laying out there talking on our radios and
Speaker 1: you know, waiting for word to hit the house. And
Speaker 1: this panther was screaming like this in the night, in
Speaker 1: the moonlight, and you know, you know what's out there someplace,
Speaker 1: and you're laying in the grass and it was a
Speaker 1: bit nerve wracking. Okay, So I was skeptical about this story.
Speaker 1: Seemed like another NED tail that would be well impossible
Speaker 1: to fact jack and then I found an article from
Speaker 1: the Time dispatched from the town where Mike Vogel lived,
Speaker 1: confirming that yes, there had been over thirty sightings of
Speaker 1: this large predatory cat. Anyway, NED was focused on getting
Speaker 1: the job done Meanwhile, Mike is in his house asleep
Speaker 1: next to his wife Julie. I had drive away suns,
Speaker 1: you know, put you know if anybody's coming on your property. Okay,
Speaker 1: and I always beep beep, beep, beep beep. Julie looked
Speaker 1: at me and said, what was that? Such of the
Speaker 1: fetche I could tell you know, you don't have twenty
Speaker 1: beeps going off for one car. It was a whole
Speaker 1: group of them that came. They had I RS guys,
Speaker 1: I had FBI guys and a few DA guys and
Speaker 1: Michigan State Police and of course Ned Timmins was there too.
Speaker 1: And in this moment when Ned Timmins g Man shows
Speaker 1: up to arrest Mike Vogel, master criminal, it isn't some
Speaker 1: kind of tense standoff. They don't stare each other down
Speaker 1: or cuss each other out. Mike says that Ned was
Speaker 1: pretty friendly, cordial, that was the word he used, like
Speaker 1: two boxers after a fight. All the swagger gone and
Speaker 1: now just the handshake. He allowed me to go ahead
Speaker 1: and take a shower and say goodbye to my wife
Speaker 1: and kids. Yeah, we're going to prison. Mike Vogel was
Speaker 1: indicted in federal court in Detroit. The indictment alleged that
Speaker 1: he and a fellow smugglers were responsible for importing at
Speaker 1: least five hundred and sixty six thousand pounds of marijuana.
Speaker 1: Investing its estimated that over the years they smuggled as
Speaker 1: much as one billion dollars worth of drugs into the US.
Speaker 1: Vogel played guilty That same year, he was stripped of
Speaker 1: his wealth forfeiting, among other things, a boat, five cars,
Speaker 1: and four homes in Michigan. He was sentenced to twenty
Speaker 1: five years in prison. Lee was arrested that Vogel was arrested,
Speaker 1: and it became was all on the paper and the
Speaker 1: whole lay of everything, and the story made big headlines actually,
Speaker 1: and for a moment Ned was kind of famous. An
Speaker 1: article in the Detroit Free Press chronicled Ned's adventures. An
Speaker 1: anonymous source told the paper that Ned quote made the
Speaker 1: case end quote. The source went on to say, I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of undercover agents, but this guy special.
Speaker 1: He's got ice in his veins, and he's a tough cookie,
Speaker 1: one of the new breed. He's a high caliber agent
Speaker 1: who has that unique ability to be able to understand
Speaker 1: and worked with the people. He's been sent undercover to investigate.
Speaker 1: For Ned, it was vindication. He had spent the better
Speaker 1: part of three years playing the role of his alter ego.
Speaker 1: In a way, he'd built Ed Thomas from the ground up.
Speaker 1: His backstory, his demeanor, his friendships, his hard drinking, hardy
Speaker 1: riding lifestyle, and Ed Thomas had served his purpose. It
Speaker 1: was as if all the risks that Ned had taken,
Speaker 1: all the close calls, all the paranoia, all the boundaries
Speaker 1: he'd pushed somehow or another, it had all worked out.
Speaker 1: So maybe it was finally time to be done with
Speaker 1: undercover work. After all, Ned had a big win under
Speaker 1: his belt. Plus, at almost the exact same time of
Speaker 1: these events, in May of nineteen eighty six, there was
Speaker 1: other big news. Ned's son was born, and Ned the
Speaker 1: action craving, sometimes reckless, hardy riding undercover guy. He of
Speaker 1: his son, Cathy says that the baby was attached to
Speaker 1: him at the hip. Oh yeah, no, they were like
Speaker 1: freaking frac I mean, as soon as he came in
Speaker 1: the door, he'd picked him up. I don't think he
Speaker 1: would put him down. Just about every picture I have
Speaker 1: he had this shark that he caught while we were
Speaker 1: on our honeymoon down in the Keys, and here's this
Speaker 1: hammerhead shark and he he has it installed in the
Speaker 1: den of our home. And so he'd put the baby
Speaker 1: up there, up on top of the shark, like as
Speaker 1: if he's riding the shark, and take a picture, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, he just couldn't get enough of our oldest son,
Speaker 1: you know, even if his parents would volunteer to you know, Oh,
Speaker 1: leave the baby here and we'll take care of him
Speaker 1: now now he's gone with us. Wow. Yeah, did that
Speaker 1: make you feel hopeful about Yes? I feel and so yes,
Speaker 1: I felt very very hopeful and good, good about things.
Speaker 1: And I felt that, you know, whatever work he was
Speaker 1: going to wrap up then on Matt and then that
Speaker 1: would be the end of that case and he'd move
Speaker 1: on to the next set of cases. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank god, back to normal life. But it did never
Speaker 1: go back to normal life. As it turns out Ned's case,
Speaker 1: it wasn't over, not really. Mister beach Club and the
Speaker 1: gentleman smuggler would have their day in court, so there'd
Speaker 1: be a trial, but that wasn't all far to the south,
Speaker 1: down in Central America, the silent partner, the General Manuel Noriega.
Speaker 1: He was still at large, operating with impunity, but that
Speaker 1: was about to change. Word was getting out about what
Speaker 1: the General had been up to, and in Washington, DC,
Speaker 1: a political shit storm was brewing. Next time on deep Cover,
Speaker 1: I just knew that the information that I could divulge
Speaker 1: about Noriega and his activities were a bombshell. There's no
Speaker 1: doubt in my mind that there's ramifications that go all
Speaker 1: the way to the top. But I mean literally from
Speaker 1: Reagan on down. Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith
Speaker 1: and edited by Karen Shakerjee. Our story edit is Jack
Speaker 1: hit original music, and our theme was composed by Luis
Speaker 1: Gara and Flawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Amy Gaines. Mia Lobell is Pushkin's executive producer, and Ned's
Speaker 1: novel is read by Walton Goggins. Special thanks to Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Heather Fain, Carl mcgliori, Lee, Tom Mullad Maya Kanig, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Aggie Taylor, Kadija Holland, Zoe Gwenn, and Jacob Weisberg at
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Special thanks also to Jeff Singer at Stowaway Entertainment.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Albern