Speaker 1: Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio previously on
Speaker 1: Murder in Miami.
Speaker 2: So it's nineteen eighty two and I decided how to
Speaker 2: go back to Washington, DC. Along the way, it had
Speaker 2: occurred to me that the people I considered the real
Speaker 2: criminals were the people who were running things in Washington
Speaker 2: and other places like that.
Speaker 1: The Christic Institute was a nonprofit public interest law firm.
Speaker 1: They sought to wield the law as a weapon of
Speaker 1: progressive change against a number of daunting targets.
Speaker 2: What I told Danny was that Bob Adams had been
Speaker 2: part of a military intelligence unit that provided logistical support
Speaker 2: for assassinations conducted by the United States. And in any case,
Speaker 2: Danny offered me a monthly stipend of twenty five hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a month, and I put everything in the car
Speaker 2: again and went back to Miami.
Speaker 1: Now, you're basically working as a private investigator, investigative journalist,
Speaker 1: investigating intercept a private investigation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose. So the funny part is that when
Speaker 2: I got back, I went out to the office in
Speaker 2: Perne and it was closed. So finally I tracked down Bob,
Speaker 2: and Bob tells me turns out that Lamar has been
Speaker 2: under federal investigation for some time now, something called Operation
Speaker 2: Loan Star, and it's a very big deal. The next
Speaker 2: thing I know, I get this call from Bob saying
Speaker 2: that Lamar wants to meet me at the mutiny. When,
Speaker 2: out of the blue, Lamar says, well, I just want
Speaker 2: you to know that I appreciate what you're doing here,
Speaker 2: but I sure as i'll wish you and your boys
Speaker 2: back in Washington would get a move on it. I
Speaker 2: don't know what to make of it, and he says, oh,
Speaker 2: come on, now, you're with the CIA.
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Wait? He thought you were with the CIA. Why?
Speaker 2: I had no idea at the time.
Speaker 1: So if Bob Adams led Phil to believe Intercept was
Speaker 1: connected with drug smuggling through Lamar Chester, who was Chester's connection,
Speaker 1: the man you're about to meet would definitely know because
Speaker 1: he claims he facilitated one of Chester's notable expansions in
Speaker 1: the drug trade.
Speaker 3: Did you quit loving me?
Speaker 5: Happy Miles here?
Speaker 3: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: That's mister Happy Miles, a man who's led a pretty
Speaker 1: fantastical life when peppered with some very unique professions. He's
Speaker 1: also very active on Facebook.
Speaker 3: Happy here, give me a call.
Speaker 1: On Facebook, his dormant Twitter self describes Happy as a
Speaker 1: lifelong adventurer, pilot, sailor, boat builder, plane builder, and a
Speaker 1: purveyor of the finer things in life.
Speaker 5: Judge spuggling was born than a job. It was an adventure.
Speaker 1: Mister Miles was also a close business associate and friend
Speaker 1: of Intercept's biggest client, Lamar Chester, the man indicted as
Speaker 1: a marijuana smuggler, although Happy himself never bothered much with marijuana.
Speaker 5: I don't like doing around pot because I hate the
Speaker 5: smell of it.
Speaker 4: Cocaine was Happy. He's preferred cargo.
Speaker 5: It is. It is bulky, and it's not as messy.
Speaker 5: Coke is all nice and clean and wrapped up. You
Speaker 5: just put it in Duffel bags.
Speaker 4: What do you miss about those times?
Speaker 3: The money?
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren brad Pacheco, and this is murder in Miami.
Speaker 2: When I started working in an Intercept, I was just
Speaker 2: like mister Magoo, stumbling around there. I didn't know anything,
Speaker 2: and I certainly had no idea that at the time
Speaker 2: they were already under federal investigation.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: All I really knew about Lamar Chester was what Bob
Speaker 2: Adams had told me. And I wouldn't meet Happy Miles
Speaker 2: till years later, when I figured I'd better start looking
Speaker 2: into this thing.
Speaker 1: What was your initial take on Happy Miles.
Speaker 2: He was a very eccentric, interesting guy. He had a
Speaker 2: lot of great stories. He had an island in the
Speaker 2: Bahamas for a while. One story that sticks with me
Speaker 2: is that when he was making a lot of money
Speaker 2: in the drug business, like all of those guys, he
Speaker 2: had a lot of disposable income, he gave a fifteen
Speaker 2: thousand dollars tip to a waitress and a lunch counter
Speaker 2: down in the Keys. It's quite a life he's lived.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's such a character.
Speaker 1: He strikes me as this purely like Dionysian person.
Speaker 2: There's a reason why they called himself Happy Miles.
Speaker 1: And over the course of many months, I've grown used
Speaker 1: to hearing Happy Miles share the stories woven into that life,
Speaker 1: which spans eighty three years.
Speaker 5: When I tell people about my life, they don't believe me.
Speaker 5: Nobody could have done all the things I've done.
Speaker 4: He's not kidding, you know.
Speaker 5: I produced a record you did, what is it? Called
Speaker 5: The Songwriter with Michael dunafon the ex wide receiver for
Speaker 5: the Denver Broncos. He's dead now, But I wrote you
Speaker 5: heard the song Coyote Ugly.
Speaker 4: There's a movie called Coyote Ugly.
Speaker 5: I should see the Bastards because it's a copyrighted name.
Speaker 1: What's the song kyote yug So you order up the
Speaker 1: shot and you order of a here and hopes that
Speaker 1: it'll bring her bit.
Speaker 5: There you're you, yah, the old woman. I went with
Speaker 5: an eight, kind of woke up with three. What dead
Speaker 5: this woman do to deserve me?
Speaker 3: And then it goes on to say just how ugly
Speaker 3: was she?
Speaker 4: I'm telling you she could drop them mag it off
Speaker 4: of me wagon.
Speaker 2: Well, this woman is what you call.
Speaker 5: Cow cowd. The ugly is when you roll over in
Speaker 5: the morning, you take a look at her and you
Speaker 5: chew your arm off to keep from waking her up.
Speaker 3: No, that's coyote ugly.
Speaker 5: You wrote that, yeah, Mike, and I did. I owned
Speaker 5: the copy right.
Speaker 1: Well, not exactly a feminist anthem. The song does appear
Speaker 1: on the album Happy Nailed Me, complete with a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one cop be right, and the singer Michael Dunavan
Speaker 1: was indeed on the roster of the Broncos in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six and seventy seven, before becoming mayor of Glendale, Colorado,
Speaker 1: and running for governor in twenty fourteen. The thing about
Speaker 1: Happy his stories check out. Happy's kind of like the
Speaker 1: dose ekis guy of decadence.
Speaker 5: Well, la world knows Vias Happy H Miles.
Speaker 4: What does the H stand for?
Speaker 3: Horny?
Speaker 5: Yep?
Speaker 1: And, as my voicemail can attest, most every Happy Miles
Speaker 1: story leads to another.
Speaker 5: Hey, I saw a real funny story.
Speaker 3: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: If you'd wager a former cocaine smuggler with eighty three
Speaker 1: years under their belt would have some pretty interesting stories
Speaker 1: to share with Happy, you'd hit the jackpot.
Speaker 5: I didn't tell you the red sheetcase story, did I?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: Okay? When I flew for another.
Speaker 5: Guy, he had this Arab that would take samsoried suitcases,
Speaker 5: the lining out and leticulously with bag the cocaine and
Speaker 5: very small bags like a small condom. Kind of okay,
Speaker 5: and he would line the vertical edges of the suitcase
Speaker 5: with it glue in ice cream sticks to hold everything
Speaker 5: in place, and then put the lining back in. NIA
Speaker 5: couldn't tell just by glancing that anything it had done
Speaker 5: to the suitcase unless you picked it up and it
Speaker 5: would be twenty pounds heavier right than it should be.
Speaker 1: Happy's job was to fly into Venezuela and pick up
Speaker 1: the suitcases containing the hidden cocaine. But when the courier
Speaker 1: arrived did his hotel. Happy had immediate issues.
Speaker 5: The suitcases were empty, and I said, hold it, hold it,
Speaker 5: I'm not carrying these seaitcases out past immigration and customs
Speaker 5: to the airplane. I'm not going to do it these
Speaker 5: empty suitcases. This is ridiculous. And what man owns red suitcases?
Speaker 4: They were both red.
Speaker 5: Yeah, brand new sampsodite red suitcases with twenty keys of
Speaker 5: coch in each one, made them by twenty pounds more.
Speaker 5: So I went down to the Habitashery in the hotel,
Speaker 5: very swank Habiitashery, and I bought arrows shirts enough to
Speaker 5: fill up these big suitcases, probably four or five grand
Speaker 5: worth because they were like five dollars apiece.
Speaker 3: They weren't cheap.
Speaker 4: How big were these suitcases?
Speaker 5: They were big suitcases. I filled these up with shirts,
Speaker 5: so now they had all these unwrapped shirts in it.
Speaker 3: Right, So I buy a a flight plan out for.
Speaker 5: The morning at the stun up at dawned because nobody
Speaker 5: will be out there right, and I paid customs off
Speaker 5: ahead of time, so I felt rather secure. But I
Speaker 5: had a hanging bag. I had a duffel bag. I
Speaker 5: had my flight bag and two fucking red suitcases. Well
Speaker 5: that's quite a load.
Speaker 4: For one to carry.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So next morning, I carry the shit downstairs, grab
Speaker 6: a tap to the airport, and I'm walking out to
Speaker 6: the airplane.
Speaker 5: It's about a four hundred foot truck. I get about
Speaker 5: halfway there to the airplane.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly when mister Miles says. A young army
Speaker 1: guard shows up to offer a huffing and puffing happy
Speaker 1: assistance with his heavy load.
Speaker 5: Now, the last thing guy wanted him doing is carrying
Speaker 5: one of these suitcases, right. So he says, kak Enny
Speaker 5: and the suitcase. What do you got in the suitcases?
Speaker 5: So I laid him down and opened them right away,
Speaker 5: and he looks really puzzled. I've got all these brown
Speaker 5: new shirts. And he says to me in Spanish, he says,
Speaker 5: kiddy enters, you stead him contrabandista to come. He says,
Speaker 5: what are you a smuggler of shirts?
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, he caught me. But look, just.
Speaker 5: Take whatever shirt you want and you can have them. Well,
Speaker 5: this kid never saw a thirty dollars shirt and there's light,
Speaker 5: so he took two shirts and told me on Spanish,
Speaker 5: I have to go quick before the sergeant seized me.
Speaker 5: And he takes off of a couple of shirts and
Speaker 5: I take off for the airplane loaded, jump in, light
Speaker 5: it up and go. But he had caught a smuggler
Speaker 5: of shirts.
Speaker 1: Who had a lot of cocaine stuffed underneath the shirts.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Anyway, so that was the story.
Speaker 1: And middle initial aside. There's also a story behind the
Speaker 1: Happy Miles name.
Speaker 5: Well, people started calling me Happy while I was dating
Speaker 5: amm Margaret.
Speaker 4: That makes sense.
Speaker 1: You should be a happy man if you're and Margaret yes,
Speaker 1: and Margaret that and Margaret Viva Las Vegas as in
Speaker 1: Elvis and Margaret. But as Happy tells it, this was
Speaker 1: a few years before she found fame.
Speaker 5: In the sixties. I had just gotten out of the
Speaker 5: Marine Corps and then I met Anne Margaret. She went
Speaker 5: to work at the Villa Marina, and I took her
Speaker 5: to breakfast every morning after she got off work at
Speaker 5: midnight or two, because they didn't have any money to eat.
Speaker 1: The They is the band she was singing with at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 5: They didn't even have money to put gas in their
Speaker 5: car to get to the gig. I took her to Catalina,
Speaker 5: earned two of the guys from the subtle tone her band.
Speaker 3: We had a rough ship coming back.
Speaker 5: We had to drift all night because it was so
Speaker 5: rough you couldn't go either way.
Speaker 1: Happy so he offered to keep Ms. Margaret warm under
Speaker 1: a tarp during the night.
Speaker 5: We got in about nine o'clock in the morning and
Speaker 5: the guy said, boy, it looks like you've had a
Speaker 5: lot of Happy Miles and the name just stuck.
Speaker 4: Does your driver's license say Happy Miles.
Speaker 5: My driver's license says it. I have two names on
Speaker 5: my passport and my pilot's licenses in the name of
Speaker 5: Happy Miles. When I crashed on the mountain top in Bolivia,
Speaker 5: they told me that they were going to suspend my
Speaker 5: license because I wasn't Happy Miles. I was John Anthony Mahalo.
Speaker 1: In order to avoid a formal hearing, Happy says he
Speaker 1: was given the option of providing the Bolivian officials with
Speaker 1: character references confirming he was an upstanding citizen known as
Speaker 1: Happy Miles. He figures he collected about three signatures.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I had everybody sign it. I had the Mayor
Speaker 5: of Miami Beach. I had the Mayor of Miami Maurice Foray.
Speaker 5: I had the customs officers where I cleared customs with
Speaker 5: the airplane all the time. I had the Fire Department
Speaker 5: and Coral Gables police Chief. And I had tons of
Speaker 5: members from the Adventures Club.
Speaker 1: Sign It nestled in Coconut Grove in the mid to
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies, the Adventurers Yacht and Sailing Club offered
Speaker 1: participants a clever combination of an exclusive membership with outdoor adventures,
Speaker 1: complete with instruction and rentals for sailing and eventually flying.
Speaker 1: At the time, the Adventurers Club was a fixture on
Speaker 1: the Miami social scene, and so was its flashy founder,
Speaker 1: mister Happy Miles.
Speaker 5: Coca At Grove was a great place to live. And
Speaker 5: you know, having the Adventures Club, I was Miammies fair
Speaker 5: haired boy. I was on a first named basis with
Speaker 5: the Mayor of the city, attorney and manager.
Speaker 1: Happy shared a ton of pictures with me from all
Speaker 1: different stages of his life. Many are set in tropical
Speaker 1: or social situations where he's smiling next to an assortment
Speaker 1: of beautiful women in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 4: Happy stood about six feet.
Speaker 1: Tall, with a wavy head of dark hair and a
Speaker 1: devious smile that competed with the bright blue of his
Speaker 1: eyes for attention, which competed with the sparkle of his
Speaker 1: taste in gold chains, expensive watches, and at one point
Speaker 1: a diamond studded bracelet that spelled out his name.
Speaker 5: It was a nugget bracelet. I'll send you a picture
Speaker 5: of me wearing it, and also wearing a gold Rolettes
Speaker 5: was a nugget band that I paid forty thousand for.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that kind of be a dead giveaway as to
Speaker 1: what you did for a living?
Speaker 5: Well, catch me if you can.
Speaker 4: He sent the picture.
Speaker 1: You can see why in his younger days, Happy was
Speaker 1: often mistaken for Teddy Kennedy. He's seated at a desk,
Speaker 1: arms resting in front of him, golden bling popping out
Speaker 1: from both the dazzled wrist, and a medallion in chain
Speaker 1: resting atop his chest hair. He's wearing a confident grin
Speaker 1: and a sleek white collared shirt generously unbuttoned at the neck.
Speaker 5: I was a pretty good dresser. I mean I had
Speaker 5: a lot of Western seats. I still learned the boots
Speaker 5: from that.
Speaker 1: Era, and those boots seem made for walkin'. Considering the
Speaker 1: number of times Happy he's been married.
Speaker 5: Some people that are in better know than I am
Speaker 5: say it's been a Baker's dozen, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: Thirteen.
Speaker 5: Wow, Well, in my case, there were tons of tons
Speaker 5: of women around as the commodore.
Speaker 1: You know, Happy was known as the commodore of the
Speaker 1: Adventurers Club, which at its height posted more than twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred members, including the then mayor of Miami.
Speaker 4: And international drug smuggler Lamar Chester. That's where their paths
Speaker 4: first crossed.
Speaker 5: Lamar Chester joined my yacht club to sail, and I
Speaker 5: get such a good job of running boats. He thought
Speaker 5: I should be in the airplane business, and he had
Speaker 5: a bunch of airplanes he couldn't pay for, so I
Speaker 5: bought him.
Speaker 3: And that's how I met Lamar.
Speaker 5: He was flying for Eastern Airlines, but he had overextended himself.
Speaker 4: And you guys ended up becoming pretty good friends, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I was the only outsider at his wedding because
Speaker 5: it was only family relatives. I was the only non
Speaker 5: family member there. It was an Indian theme.
Speaker 1: And by Indian mister miles means Native American.
Speaker 5: I got a picture of it Artists and Lamar, okay,
Speaker 5: let me get up so I can describe it. Artists
Speaker 5: was a she was tall by pianner or something like that.
Speaker 3: She west eighty and others.
Speaker 5: Lamar's kind of been a eisenhowerd tight jacket, but a
Speaker 5: Western like and he stands about three quarters of a head,
Speaker 5: two thirds of the head taller than Artist.
Speaker 4: Why was there a theme to the wedding just for fun?
Speaker 5: No, it was both of their second marriages, and they
Speaker 5: were like that.
Speaker 1: The photo was faded to a soft pastel blow. Lamar
Speaker 1: and Artists are looking at the camera, likely held by
Speaker 1: happy Chester's right arm resting on his bride's lower back.
Speaker 1: Both are wearing wide grins, and Artists is indeed wearing
Speaker 1: what appears to be Native American garb and a band
Speaker 1: across her forehead.
Speaker 4: Chester smile is topped by.
Speaker 1: A thin mustache that gives off an earl Flynn sort
Speaker 1: of vibe. He's wearing his dark hair meticulously slipped back
Speaker 1: and a yellow rose on his left lapel.
Speaker 4: They look like a very happy couple.
Speaker 5: Well, I think they were very much in love with
Speaker 5: each other. I know she was going with some mafia.
Speaker 3: Also when Lamar met her.
Speaker 5: Lamar used to buy roses and fly over there a
Speaker 5: yacht and dump the roses out from his nose at
Speaker 5: the mafia.
Speaker 4: He wasn't afraid.
Speaker 5: Lamar wasn't afraid of anything. He stood about two or
Speaker 5: three inches taller than I, long, lanky, kind of a
Speaker 5: farm boy type, and he wasn't afraid of anybody or anything.
Speaker 1: That fearlessness would be on full display during a double date.
Speaker 1: Happy remembers as memorable on multiple levels.
Speaker 5: One time we went for Paiea in Cuban Town in
Speaker 5: my Cadillac and Lamar and artists were in the back seat,
Speaker 5: and I'd pull up to a stop sign and a
Speaker 5: guy would pull up alongside of us and then want
Speaker 5: a drag racist to the next light. And I didn't
Speaker 5: know Lamar.
Speaker 3: Was giving him the finger of the whole time.
Speaker 5: And when we came to stop, he had a three
Speaker 5: point fifty seven pointed at me.
Speaker 3: And I was in the right lane, so I made
Speaker 3: the right.
Speaker 5: Turn and tried to lose them. And here we were,
Speaker 5: at one hundred miles an hour, going through Cubantown, all
Speaker 5: the residential.
Speaker 3: Roads, and I was open for.
Speaker 5: A cop to see us. We finally locked him and
Speaker 5: we got back to his apartment on Brickell Avenue on
Speaker 5: the water there, and I went up to his apartment
Speaker 5: and he opened a foot locker and got a couple
Speaker 5: machine guns out of it uzzis and said, let's go
Speaker 5: find the bastard. I said, Lamar, you're crazy. We're not
Speaker 5: going looking for any trouble. And he was flying guns
Speaker 5: then to Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: You heard that, right, machine guns that were being flown
Speaker 1: from Miami to Nicaragua in the late nineteen seventies.
Speaker 5: They were military foot lockers in the living room, stacked
Speaker 5: one on top of the other, standard military foot lockers,
Speaker 5: the issue you in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 3: A foot locker is about.
Speaker 5: Two feet high and two feet deep and four feet
Speaker 5: long or something like that.
Speaker 4: And they were just filled with guns.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there were probably at least twenty thirty guns of
Speaker 5: each one.
Speaker 4: And what kind of guns.
Speaker 5: Sixteen's I guess and M one and stuff.
Speaker 4: Like that, so military grade stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all military grade.
Speaker 1: And did he tell you who he was running the
Speaker 1: guns for?
Speaker 5: This IA? I would imagine the CIA was running that.
Speaker 1: Show those guns and Chester's claim of running them for
Speaker 1: the government will play a major role as history in Foles,
Speaker 1: and that remains one of the pieces Bill Stamford is
Speaker 1: still trying to place and one that will eventually play
Speaker 1: out in a court of law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was one of the stories that struck me
Speaker 2: as very important because it was evidence that Chester was
Speaker 2: running guns. I mean, there were crates of guns, and
Speaker 2: is Happy says, no one has that many guns for
Speaker 2: personal use. I mean they were in these crates for shipping.
Speaker 2: And apparently he told Happy that he was flying them
Speaker 2: to Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: Remember that story because it'll come up again. But in
Speaker 1: terms of our timeline, Happy's hold on Miami social scene
Speaker 1: was coming to an end by the time Phil relocated there,
Speaker 1: which is why their paths wouldn't cross until years later.
Speaker 2: When I finally tracked him down. It turned out he
Speaker 2: was living about ninety miles from me in Albany, Oregon,
Speaker 2: in an abandoned aircraft hangar building a plane.
Speaker 4: Very happy asque.
Speaker 2: He has remarkable abilities. I mean he's completely unschooled, but
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of certainly mechanical genius about him.
Speaker 2: He was able to put together huge deals. He was
Speaker 2: able to master several crafts. I think he started out
Speaker 2: as a sail maker, and then that got him into
Speaker 2: the boat rental business, and then he got into the
Speaker 2: aircraft business, and he was modifying planes and god knows,
Speaker 2: flying them too, without a commercial pilot's license.
Speaker 1: Now, no, he's dyslexi, so he can't get his instrumental
Speaker 1: flight certificate.
Speaker 4: He gets mixed up. That's why he said that it
Speaker 4: was scary.
Speaker 5: I didn't like it. Oh, I mean, you're coming back
Speaker 5: at night time. Sometimes it was just scary as shit
Speaker 5: being dyslexic. I'd almost killed myself a couple times. The
Speaker 5: airplay lost it in the clouds and it went out
Speaker 5: of control, and just a good Lord to save my ass,
Speaker 5: I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good, that's happy.
Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you that he ended up going
Speaker 1: into the movie business as well, both as a producer
Speaker 1: and in Caddyshack, there is that scene where Ted Knight
Speaker 1: is on the boat and Rodney Dangerfield is trying to
Speaker 1: rev up his boat and come see him, and all
Speaker 1: of this chaos ensues and somebody throws a fishing rod
Speaker 1: and he gets hot to the boat and he goes
Speaker 1: flying through the air, and at that moment a plane
Speaker 1: comes and swoops down, almost brushing Ted Knight on the
Speaker 1: top of the head.
Speaker 4: And guess who's flying that plane.
Speaker 2: That's happy? Yeah, sure, that's happy.
Speaker 1: Miles and flirting with risky flying seems to be a
Speaker 1: running theme with the Coconut Grove guys. Here's happy.
Speaker 5: In fact, Lamar at one time let me land a
Speaker 5: seventy seven at National Airport.
Speaker 4: No way, not with people on the flight. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: how did that come about?
Speaker 5: That?
Speaker 4: Lamar? Let you fly a passenger plane.
Speaker 3: I was on a trip with Lamar.
Speaker 5: Back in those days, they could take somebody up into
Speaker 5: the cockpit, even take him on the airplane without.
Speaker 3: Paying for him.
Speaker 5: And when the chief plot Freester said what do you doing?
Speaker 5: He said, I didn't think he could fly? Do you
Speaker 5: think I'd let him fly my airplanes? And I have
Speaker 5: had eleven thousand hours probably at that point in my life.
Speaker 5: And we took off from Miami and the co pilot
Speaker 5: got out of the seat and I got in and
Speaker 5: then flew the airplane. I flew the approach and then
Speaker 5: what we got, I don't know, down five hundred feet
Speaker 5: or something.
Speaker 3: He said, my airplane and he landed it.
Speaker 4: Oh so he landed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I could have landed.
Speaker 4: It back to Phil.
Speaker 1: Did he also tell you a story about an air
Speaker 1: drop in the Everglades where Lamar talked his way out
Speaker 1: of an arrest.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a great story. One morning they're doing another
Speaker 2: drop and Happy's up doing the lookout, and here come
Speaker 2: two planes headed from Jamaica or wherever they were coming from.
Speaker 2: They flew together because they'd create one radar signature, and
Speaker 2: the idea was that the plane carrying the dope would
Speaker 2: drop down and the other one would take off, so
Speaker 2: that people watching radar would think that just one plane
Speaker 2: had passed over the Everglades and would be landing at
Speaker 2: the whatever airport sometime later. So here comes the plane
Speaker 2: landing on the road and Lamar is driving a.
Speaker 1: Truck, but there's a police presence nearby, and so the
Speaker 1: gang had to get a message to Chester in code,
Speaker 1: I'll let happ you pick it up from here.
Speaker 5: They didn't use aircraft radios to talk to back and forth.
Speaker 5: They used marine boat radios, and they would talk about fishing.
Speaker 5: You know, I hope you got your license with you today,
Speaker 5: because the game warden's checking licenses. It looks to be
Speaker 5: about five minutes away or something like that anyway. So
Speaker 5: Lamar landing was offloading the load. He had a truck.
Speaker 4: And not just any truck, this one was cussed demized.
Speaker 5: It was painted green, and it had a Florida state
Speaker 5: seal on the door that said Florida hyacin Control. Nothing
Speaker 5: suspicious about that, except there's no Florida hyacin control.
Speaker 4: They had the logo and everything just made up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And they had this truck jacked up way
Speaker 5: off the ground so you couldn't see in the bed
Speaker 5: of it. So they landed, unloaded the load, threw a
Speaker 5: tarp over it, and Lamar said, you fly the airplane
Speaker 5: to his son and I'll drive the truck because a
Speaker 5: sheriff was coming. So five minutes later they meet going
Speaker 5: the opposite direction and Lamar waves him down.
Speaker 1: That's when Chester informs the sheriff about suspicious activity he'd
Speaker 1: passed a while back, and graciously offers to phone it
Speaker 1: into the state and.
Speaker 5: The sheriff said, would you be so kind? He said, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'll do that for you.
Speaker 2: Back to phil and Lamar drives off, and of course,
Speaker 2: Happy learns about it later when they all stop for drinks,
Speaker 2: probably outside Opa Loca air Airport and They all have
Speaker 2: a good laugh about that one.
Speaker 4: So there was no hyacinthe patrol.
Speaker 2: No, no, I mean, these guys have a lot of
Speaker 2: time to sit around scheming. And Lamar was and Happy.
Speaker 2: They were both schemers.
Speaker 1: That's kind of brilliant because they weren't impersonating an actual
Speaker 1: arm of law enforcement.
Speaker 4: They created their own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, it was a good dope smuggler story.
Speaker 1: Lamar Chester would also introduce Happy Miles to a legendary
Speaker 1: marijuana smuggler, Ron Elliott.
Speaker 5: Well On and Lamar both slew through Eastern Airlines, were
Speaker 5: both captains and they both joined my club. Ron is
Speaker 5: one of these guys that overthinks everything and makes it
Speaker 5: too complicated. He was an astronaut, you know, wow, But
Speaker 5: when they shut down the Skylab program, we went to
Speaker 5: work flying for Eastern and he and his wife had
Speaker 5: had a baby that had some weird disease where the
Speaker 5: baby never got out of diapers. He wasn't supposed to
Speaker 5: live for a year or two, and he lived to
Speaker 5: be seven, and she was a nurse and both of
Speaker 5: them were just frazzled by the time the kid died.
Speaker 3: And Ron Elliott said, fuck, I was so teed up.
Speaker 5: I'd have robbed a bank, but he decided he'd find
Speaker 5: a buy in Jamay and he did so.
Speaker 1: That pretty much explains how Lamar, Chester, Happy Miles, and
Speaker 1: Ron Elliott knew each other and why they were eventually
Speaker 1: known by their swagger sounding nicknames.
Speaker 2: Back to Phil there was Captain America of course, as
Speaker 2: Lamar the commodore, Happy because he had this boat rental business,
Speaker 2: and Ron Elliott his nickname was the Astronaut because at
Speaker 2: one time he'd actually been part of the US government
Speaker 2: astronaut program. He's a very vivid character. I hadn't met
Speaker 2: him yet either. He was like Happy. I didn't meet
Speaker 2: him till later. He had grown up in northern Florida,
Speaker 2: like Lamar and Daredevil. Like Lamar, he'd been flying crop
Speaker 2: dusting jobs while he was still in high school, and
Speaker 2: about the time he graduated from high school went into
Speaker 2: the Service and ended up flying special operations missions in
Speaker 2: Vietnam and laws and besides that, he was flying in
Speaker 2: the Mid East for intelligence off the book stuff, but
Speaker 2: he was a pilot for Eastern just like Lamar, And
Speaker 2: that's actually how they met.
Speaker 1: Elliott told Stamford about the meeting, which he remembers occurring
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: He had a layover in Boston for about four hours,
Speaker 2: and I was in the pilot's lounge and who should
Speaker 2: come in but Lamar. Lamar wasn't flying that day, so
Speaker 2: he'd come up just to see Ron. And they started
Speaker 2: talking and at a certain point, Laura said, how'd you
Speaker 2: like to do some hanky panky flying? And Ron says
Speaker 2: he played dumb at first, didn't know what he was
Speaker 2: talking about. And Lamar smiled at him and put his
Speaker 2: government records folder with its government records on the table
Speaker 2: in front of them, and Ron looked at it, and
Speaker 2: so he knew that Lamar was already familiar with all
Speaker 2: the off the books flying he was already doing. He
Speaker 2: agreed to hook up with Lamar and for the next
Speaker 2: several days, he said they were down in the Bahamas,
Speaker 2: and Lamar showed him where the safe houses were where
Speaker 2: he could get gas and that sort of thing, and
Speaker 2: they turned out to be best friends. He was Lamar's
Speaker 2: best buddy.
Speaker 4: How did Lamar get Elliott's records?
Speaker 2: He would have had some sort of connection. It's pretty clear.
Speaker 1: Did Elliott's name come up? If I'm not mistaken, in
Speaker 1: the Black Tuna trial too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he was actually among the indictees in the
Speaker 2: Black Tuna trial, but eventually dropped. And I don't know
Speaker 2: whether it's because he had the government connections or because
Speaker 2: he wasn't really part of the Black Tuna organization. He wasn't.
Speaker 2: He was brought in at the very end by Bobby Plattshorn,
Speaker 2: who'd filled a duty to rescue a couple of pilots
Speaker 2: who'd gone down in Central America. And so he got
Speaker 2: Ron Elliott and another guy who turned out to be
Speaker 2: ad informant to fly down and get the two down pilots.
Speaker 2: And when they landed, they were arrested, and Ron Elliott
Speaker 2: was charged and initially on the Blacktooning indictment, but.
Speaker 4: Then the charges were dropped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as I say, it's not clear whether it
Speaker 2: was because he had the government connections, which is quite possible,
Speaker 2: or because he wasn't really part of the Blacktoona gang.
Speaker 1: So Elliot the charges or drops and platt Shorn gets
Speaker 1: sixty years under the kingpin. Yeah yeah, Captain America, the
Speaker 1: Commodore and the Astronaut, along with another smuggler named Jack Devo,
Speaker 1: would very much rule the Miami Skies of nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: drug smuggling.
Speaker 5: Here's happy Jack was Captain Jack from Dick Tracy. He
Speaker 5: came in to join the club and very impressionable guy.
Speaker 5: He came and talked to me about joining the club.
Speaker 5: I told him it was one hundred and fifty six
Speaker 5: dollars up front for his first year dues and I
Speaker 5: would waive the initiation fee and of four hundred and
Speaker 5: he went and he got a check for one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty six dollars signed by his mother. He was
Speaker 5: a great pilot, good IFR pilot.
Speaker 4: What is an IFR pilot?
Speaker 5: Instrument flight rules? Where you go into the clouds and
Speaker 5: you can't see anything and you have to drive the
Speaker 5: airplane on instruments only.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: So what happened was Jack joined my club and then
Speaker 5: he borrowed my Lake Amphibian and wrecked it.
Speaker 3: Did so much damage to it that I don't know
Speaker 3: how he got it home.
Speaker 5: And then the government came and said, do you know
Speaker 5: that he's using your airplanes?
Speaker 1: Because he was using the planes from the Adventurers Club
Speaker 1: to run trips where.
Speaker 5: Well I think he he originally was, I'm not sure,
Speaker 5: probably flying out at Jamaica, but Denny went to Columbia.
Speaker 1: Then the DA comes to you, right and starts asking
Speaker 1: questions about Jack's travel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, the task Force. He got on the task
Speaker 5: forces radar.
Speaker 1: And that's when Happy says, the task Force leaned on
Speaker 1: him to keep tabs on devo. But when Happy realized
Speaker 1: they were taping his office at the Adventurers Club, mister
Speaker 1: Miles returned to the favor.
Speaker 5: I recorded the guys at Johnson Aviation, which was the
Speaker 5: DEA in their office next to my office.
Speaker 3: They were trying to get evidence on mate.
Speaker 4: So while they're recording you, you're recording them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Except I did a better job than they did, and
Speaker 5: I never talked.
Speaker 3: In my office again.
Speaker 5: Instead, I taped everything that went on in their office.
Speaker 4: And what were they up to?
Speaker 3: Anything but the right thing?
Speaker 5: I mean I had cakes of them marketing product over
Speaker 5: the telephone and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and by marketing products, mister Miles means making drug deals.
Speaker 1: So again, they're actually committing the crimes they're trying to enforce. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Happy he kept those tapes as insurance,
Speaker 1: which could explain the unique immunity deal he wound up getting.
Speaker 1: We'll dive more deeply into Jack Develle in future episodes,
Speaker 1: and how he eventually ended up testifying against Manuel Noriega,
Speaker 1: the former CIA spy turned drug running dictator.
Speaker 5: Yep testified before Congress with all his face wow, with
Speaker 5: the black hood over his head.
Speaker 1: We'll circle back to all of that a bit later,
Speaker 1: but back to our story. Armed with an innate sense
Speaker 1: of both engineering and ingenuity, mister Happy Miles would take
Speaker 1: credit for a hack that was an absolute game changer
Speaker 1: for this high flying drug smuggling set.
Speaker 5: You know, everybody credits Later with stop in the Islands
Speaker 5: and figuring out how to get cocaine from Colombia to
Speaker 5: the US, But it was me far ahead of them.
Speaker 1: Carlos Later was a German Colombian drug trafficker and one
Speaker 1: of the founding members of the.
Speaker 4: Made Aene cartel.
Speaker 1: He's considered to be one of the most important Colombian
Speaker 1: drug kingpins to have ever been successfully prosecuted in the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 5: I'm the guy that built the airplanes with four thousand
Speaker 5: mile range. It wasn't for me building to came Clippers,
Speaker 5: so airplane that'll fly forever, reliable twin engine Hypercomanche.
Speaker 3: Usually, although I built.
Speaker 5: Other ones Skymasters with two hundred gallons of fuel on them,
Speaker 5: well over that two hundred and fifty gallons.
Speaker 3: Of fuel on them.
Speaker 1: Inspired by a book about a legendary long distance pilot
Speaker 1: who'd broken records by retrofitting planes with additional fuel capacity,
Speaker 1: Happy employed the innovation to smuggling by artfully disguising the
Speaker 1: additional tanks to avoid detection.
Speaker 5: They carried so much fuel, but nobody knew it. I mean,
Speaker 5: I just had a few more filler caps up the
Speaker 5: airplane the average comanche, but instead of carrying ninety gallons
Speaker 5: I carried three hundred plus.
Speaker 4: And more fuel.
Speaker 1: Means less stops on the way back from Columbia or
Speaker 1: Jamaica for planes filled with drugs, which meant less risk
Speaker 1: of customs discovering those drugs and less money spent on
Speaker 1: bribing those customs agents. Fewer stops, lowered risk, and increased profits.
Speaker 1: So happ these huge, yet hidden tanks were a huge
Speaker 1: hit with the Coconut Grove smuggling set and a time
Speaker 1: when smuggling was a bit simpler and safer.
Speaker 5: We're just a bunch of good old boys, Jack devoed
Speaker 5: Lamar and Ron Elliott myself. None of us were bang bangs,
Speaker 5: sheet them up. The only one I had ever seen
Speaker 5: with a gun was Ron Elliott. When he pulled it
Speaker 5: on me, threatened to blow my brains out. Said I
Speaker 5: owed him money, but I didn't, but I.
Speaker 3: Paid him anyway.
Speaker 5: And I never made enemies or had vendettis against anybody
Speaker 5: because life was too short and you never know when
Speaker 5: you might need them.
Speaker 1: But that happened a bit later, back to more innocent times.
Speaker 5: It was three cocaine cowboy Era and Grisel de Blanca.
Speaker 1: Grisel de Blanco was a notorious Colombian cocaine trafficker known
Speaker 1: as La Madrina, the Godmother of Cocaine, and the Black
Speaker 1: Widow because she murdered all three of her husbands.
Speaker 5: There wasn't a lot of bang bangs, shoot them up,
Speaker 5: if any. The head of the DEA, Jean Frankr, used
Speaker 5: to call me the last of the oldie goldies. And
Speaker 5: DEA was underfunded. They had no money, so they were
Speaker 5: pretty hamstrong of what they could do, and surveillance wasn't
Speaker 5: what it is now.
Speaker 1: So in a way, it was a simpler, more safe
Speaker 1: time to get involved in that business.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, the chances of you getting caught if
Speaker 5: you knew what you were doing were pretty slim.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that the rewards were pretty high.
Speaker 5: Well yeah, I mean you're getting basically ten percent.
Speaker 3: Value of the load.
Speaker 5: Whoever your Columbian connection is, you're splitting six thousand dollars
Speaker 5: of kilo basically, So I was getting three thousand and
Speaker 5: five hundred.
Speaker 3: A kilo in the end.
Speaker 5: That's not what I got in the beginning, but that's
Speaker 5: what I got after i'd worked for.
Speaker 3: In a while.
Speaker 1: How much at your peak would you say you were
Speaker 1: bringing in a month.
Speaker 5: I was making it at least three hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: thousand a month.
Speaker 3: I'd go one time, So.
Speaker 4: You were making three hundred fifty dollars a trip a trip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's over four million a year in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: and that's what basically put the Coconut Grove guys on
Speaker 1: the radar of law enforcement money.
Speaker 2: Apparently, after Lamar made the hookup with the cartel people
Speaker 2: and got into cocaine, which was really big money. It
Speaker 2: was Ron Elliott who walked Duffel bags of money through
Speaker 2: customs in Panama to launder it in the banks down there,
Speaker 2: and he was the one who was chosen to do
Speaker 2: that because he wore a suit better than any of
Speaker 2: the others. He could look like a real businessman. That
Speaker 2: was his job, besides regular smuggling flying duties is taking
Speaker 2: the money into Panama to be laundered.
Speaker 1: According to Happy, fuel takes weren't the only influence he
Speaker 1: wielded over Chester. He claims to have given the former
Speaker 1: dope smuggler his cocaine connection.
Speaker 5: And when I fixed him up with that load of cocaine,
Speaker 5: he made more money off of me that load than
Speaker 5: the entire time he had been running marijuana.
Speaker 1: That's another story and a significant turning point in ours.
Speaker 1: Back to Happy and his impact on the coconut grove
Speaker 1: smuggling set.
Speaker 5: Believe it or not, I was the tremsetter. None of
Speaker 5: them had airplanes as sophisticated as my cocaine clippers were
Speaker 5: mich Coman cheese. I mean they followed me all the time.
Speaker 5: I had the Adventures Club and then the Flying Club,
Speaker 5: and then Jack started a flying operation out at Opalaca
Speaker 5: after me.
Speaker 1: Opa Laca is a city of Miami Dade with an
Speaker 1: airport the coconut grove smugglers favored.
Speaker 5: I was living at the Miami Lakes Country Club and
Speaker 5: I moved to Ocean Reef, and then Lamar moved to
Speaker 5: Ocean Reef. Then Jack moved to Ocean Reef.
Speaker 1: Yes happy, he's referring to the exclusive Ocean Reef club
Speaker 1: in North Key Largo.
Speaker 5: I had two hangars at Ocean Reef. Lamar had one
Speaker 5: hanger at Ocean Reef. I guess after I left, Jack
Speaker 5: took over one of my hangers.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: He's also implying the group smuggled drugs there via private hangars.
Speaker 5: You got to remember I started in what seventy four
Speaker 5: or five. The first load I ever made, I carried
Speaker 5: five kilos from Bolivia of cocaine. So off and on
Speaker 5: one form or another. I had functioned in the industry
Speaker 5: for over five years. That's a long time to get
Speaker 5: away with doing what we were doing.
Speaker 1: But as this shifted into the eighties, the good old
Speaker 1: boys dynamic was shifting too. Like Icarus, all these guys,
Speaker 1: the Commodore, Captain America, the astronaut, and Captain Jack would
Speaker 1: eventually fly a bit too close to the sun and
Speaker 1: one would actually crash and burn, but only after all
Speaker 1: had had some very real run ins with the law.
Speaker 2: They all got burned except Happy, Except Happy. Yeah. When
Speaker 2: I was talking to Happy, it was pretty clear that
Speaker 2: he was very clever. He was always a jump ahead
Speaker 2: of the law. He was as much involved as any
Speaker 2: of the others, maybe even more.
Speaker 1: So, and that level of involvement would ultimately let Happy
Speaker 1: play both sides. What's the biggest misconception people have about
Speaker 1: the war on drugs?
Speaker 5: Oh, that the government wants to do something about it.
Speaker 3: They don't.
Speaker 5: Everybody that works in the industry wants to keep it
Speaker 5: going and make it bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3: The more money they pump at it.
Speaker 5: The niser choice that the guys have to play with.
Speaker 3: In the cars that they seize, they get the drive.
Speaker 1: So you think there was never any real intention to
Speaker 1: win the war on drugs.
Speaker 4: Once they realized how lucratific could be to fight.
Speaker 5: It, well, it was all for show.
Speaker 1: On the next murder in Miami, the long standing history
Speaker 1: of prohibition pushing illicit profits.
Speaker 5: When later moved into the Bahamas, he paid a lot
Speaker 5: of money to be able to operate out in normal steal.
Speaker 1: While the War on drugs makes for some very bizarre
Speaker 1: bed partners.
Speaker 5: He told me that the CIA had been attempted to
Speaker 5: observe the government in the.
Speaker 1: Bahamas and how the coconut grove smuggling set wound up
Speaker 1: in such hot water.
Speaker 5: The color dry from their faces as there was a
Speaker 5: photograph of Lamar on there and it said master criminal
Speaker 5: or secret agent.
Speaker 1: Murder of Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Lauren Brett Pacheco, Taylor Chackoine, and Phil Stamford.
Speaker 4: Written by Phil Stamford and.
Speaker 1: Lauren Brett Pacheco, Audio editing and sound design by Nicholas Harder,
Speaker 1: Evan Tyer, and Taylor Chacoine, featuring music by Evan Tyre,
Speaker 1: Phil Meyer, John Murchison and Taylor Chacoine. For more podcasts
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Speaker 1: you get the stories that matter to you.