Speaker 1: Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. Let me
Speaker 1: get my head around this. You drop out of journalism
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC, moved to Miami and end up working
Speaker 1: for a detective agency that's a front for a major
Speaker 1: drug operation with CIA connections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how stupid? Can you be? Right?
Speaker 1: Phil? I've known you for a long time and your
Speaker 1: many things, but you're not stupid. You're going to have
Speaker 1: to tell me how you got caught up in all
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's something I've been trying to figure out myself
Speaker 3: for years now.
Speaker 1: And the guy you replaced was murdered.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It started when I took place of the detective the
Speaker 3: guy had been murdered, but that was just for starters.
Speaker 3: It got crazier as time went on. And if I
Speaker 3: do say so, it's a pretty good story.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren breg Pacheco and this is Murder in Miami.
Speaker 1: Journalist Phil Stanford and I first cross paths during my
Speaker 1: first podcast, Happy Face, about Keith Hunter Jesperson, the serial
Speaker 1: killer and rapist in the nineteen nineties. Stanford was the
Speaker 1: newspaper reporter at the Oregonian who had received an anonymous
Speaker 1: letter from Jessperson basically bragging about his kills creepily signed
Speaker 1: with a smiley face. As a result, Stanford coined the
Speaker 1: happy face killer moniker and it stuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I certainly don't take credit for the happy face nickname.
Speaker 2: That was him.
Speaker 3: That was Keith Jefferson. He drew all those little happy faces.
Speaker 3: That's who he wanted to be.
Speaker 1: Stanford ended up connecting with the hulking, nearly six foot
Speaker 1: eight killer in person for a pretty interesting reason.
Speaker 2: He was arrested.
Speaker 3: He wanted credit for a murder that two people were
Speaker 3: already serving time for, and I had written about those
Speaker 3: two people trying to point out that the case against
Speaker 3: them was completely full of it. Jesperson was coming at
Speaker 3: it from a slightly different angle. He wanted credit.
Speaker 1: Stanford's subsequent reporting helped prove Jessperson had indeed killed twenty
Speaker 1: three year old Tanya Bennett and contributed to getting the
Speaker 1: two people already serving time for her murder out of prison.
Speaker 1: But by the time I'd tracked Stamford down, he was
Speaker 1: pretty sick of talking about Keith Hunter. Jesperson.
Speaker 3: Well, he was certainly no Hannibal Lecter. He's just a
Speaker 3: big dummy driven by compulsions he didn't understand himself.
Speaker 1: When we connected. Stamford, who was at one point the
Speaker 1: most successful columnist in Oregon, was so tired of talking
Speaker 1: to people in general. He'd pretty much dropped off the grid,
Speaker 1: living as far west as he could without falling into
Speaker 1: the ocean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of the more remote places in
Speaker 3: the United States. I think Gold Beach, Oregon, which is
Speaker 3: down at the southern tip of Oregon on the coast
Speaker 3: just above the California line.
Speaker 1: After some politely persistent stalking, Stanford begrudgingly agreed to be interviewed.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you finally found me. Yes.
Speaker 1: Well, to get to you, I had to go through
Speaker 1: your publishers, who were quite pragmatic in letting me know
Speaker 1: that they could reach out to you. But the likelihood
Speaker 1: was that you would want nothing to do with me.
Speaker 2: It's oh.
Speaker 1: The Bill Stamford, I'd grow to know was extremely private
Speaker 1: and more than a bit guarded and senecal, understandable given
Speaker 1: the story that motivated his departure from his career as
Speaker 1: a reporter. Due to the politics that surrounded the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine murder of Michael Frankie.
Speaker 3: Ahead of the Oregon's Correction department had discovered a rat's
Speaker 3: nest of corruption in his department and was going to
Speaker 3: expose it clean house, and he was murdered. He was
Speaker 3: assassinated out in front of the building where he worked
Speaker 3: in Salem, Oregon, stabbed to death. That was the night
Speaker 3: before he was supposed to address a Senate committee on
Speaker 3: the subject.
Speaker 1: Using his newspaper column as a platform, Stanford started relentlessly
Speaker 1: questioning Frankie's highly suspicious murder and the guilt of the
Speaker 1: low level drug dealer it was penned on, all while
Speaker 1: calling out the corruption that surrounded the case.
Speaker 3: And it was denied, absolutely denied, that his murder could
Speaker 3: have had anything to do with corruption, because of course
Speaker 3: there was no corruption in Oregon, and I was writing
Speaker 3: a column for The Oregonian at the time. Smelled a rat,
Speaker 3: and I kept raising questions.
Speaker 1: Doing so would ultimately cost Stanford his job take its toll.
Speaker 1: When we first met in person, here's how I described Phil.
Speaker 1: Phil's a fiercely loyal guy with a choppy head of
Speaker 1: silver hair that matches the stubble of his beard, and
Speaker 1: soft brown eyes that seem to have seen a bit
Speaker 1: too much of the corruption. He writes about thirty years
Speaker 1: after Michael Frankie's death, the Murder in Oregon podcast would
Speaker 1: again raise questions about Oregon's Department of Corrections and Corruption.
Speaker 4: A new hit podcast called Murder in Oregon is uncovering
Speaker 4: new information about the stabbing death of forty two year
Speaker 4: old Michael Frankie.
Speaker 1: In the process, Phil and I would become pretty good friends,
Speaker 1: speaking regularly and crossing paths in person whenever possible. That's
Speaker 1: how I became familiar with his time spent working as
Speaker 1: a private investigator in Miami.
Speaker 3: It's a story that just gets crazier and crazier as
Speaker 3: we go along.
Speaker 1: And it's one filled with drugs, deception, conspiracies, and more
Speaker 1: than one daly questionable killing. Set in the time and
Speaker 1: place that was equally extreme Miami in the early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Pastels and palms, dancers, and a hint of danger. Together
Speaker 1: they can pride the image of Miami, a city some
Speaker 1: have described as America's Casablanca. By the nineteen seventies, parts
Speaker 1: of Miami, especially Miami Beach, had fallen from the glory
Speaker 1: of its nineteen thirties Art Deco heyday. The glamour that
Speaker 1: carried it through the nineteen fifties and sixties as a
Speaker 1: trendy tropical hotspot for the jet set had dissipated and
Speaker 1: Miami settled into more of a mundane destination for retired
Speaker 1: snowbirds fleeing snowy northern winters. But as the eighties approached,
Speaker 1: the city was about to be revitalized by a different
Speaker 1: sort of white powder.
Speaker 5: Cocaine comes from the leaves of the coquetree, found chiefly
Speaker 5: in Peru and Bolivia, then processed in Colombia.
Speaker 6: About a third of the world's production finds its way
Speaker 6: to the United Slime States.
Speaker 1: And its preferred point of entry, Florida. As nineteen eighty approached,
Speaker 1: Miami was on its way to becoming the skyline. Built
Speaker 1: by cocaine and overrun by drug cartels, crowned the murder
Speaker 1: capital of America, setting the stage for the salacious scene
Speaker 1: that would be dramatized and immortalized when the hit television
Speaker 1: show Miami Vice first aired in nineteen eighty five. Will
Speaker 1: dive more deeply into all of that a bit later,
Speaker 1: But the Miami Stanford ended up moving into was definitely dangerous.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's part of what Pollsville to Miami.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's nineteen eighty. I'm working as a columnist for
Speaker 3: political magazine in Washington, d C. Except I don't like
Speaker 3: politics or government or military affairs. Written about that too,
Speaker 3: and I want to write about crime.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how did you end up chucking it off
Speaker 1: and heading to Miami.
Speaker 3: Well, like I said, I was sick of writing about
Speaker 3: politics and government.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you just stay in Washington then and write
Speaker 1: about what you wanted to Why just walk away from
Speaker 1: everything that you built in terms of your career.
Speaker 2: Well, I suppose that's entirely too sensible.
Speaker 3: But in fact I had tried to get out of
Speaker 3: the political rut I was in. I'd actually gone down
Speaker 3: to Miami for another smaller magazine called Quest and covered
Speaker 3: a big.
Speaker 1: Drug trial, the Black Tuna.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Black Tunic case.
Speaker 4: Drug smuggling was also the topic at federal court today
Speaker 4: with the beginning of testimony in the government's Black Tuna case.
Speaker 1: The Black Tuna gang ran Miami's drug trade in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. The name was coined by the media based
Speaker 1: on the solid gold medallion with a black Tuna emblem
Speaker 1: worn by members to identify themselves at the time, the
Speaker 1: Black Tuna Gang was alleged by the DA to be
Speaker 1: one of the most sophisticated drug smuggling organizations in existence.
Speaker 4: Federal Judge James King listened as one time smuggle turned
Speaker 4: government informant Luke McLeod told of the eight tons of
Speaker 4: marijuana which he claims to have delivered to the key defendants,
Speaker 4: Robert Meinster and Robert Plattshorn in nineteen seventy four nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy five, the.
Speaker 1: Gang was accused of importing around five hundred tons of
Speaker 1: marijuana and to the United States over the course of
Speaker 1: sixteen months, operating at one point from a suite in
Speaker 1: the Fontaine Blue Hotel in Miami Beach. But we'll come
Speaker 1: back to all of that later. Back to Phil in
Speaker 1: his time covering the trial.
Speaker 3: I remember sitting there in this big courtroom with stone floors,
Speaker 3: I think they call it Chattahoochee or something like that.
Speaker 3: And the courtroom was never packed, you know, it was
Speaker 3: always about a third full. Sometimes there were more defendants
Speaker 3: up there behind the railing than spectators and reporters from
Speaker 3: the local papers in Miami, and few others than me.
Speaker 1: Was a big deal of a trial at the time.
Speaker 2: The government was making a big thing of it.
Speaker 3: Now, I was always disposed to excuse marijuana smugglers anyway,
Speaker 3: you know. I thought it was ridiculous that there was
Speaker 3: a law against this, regardless of how much they were
Speaker 3: supposed to have smuggled in. And it turns out the
Speaker 3: government greatly exaggerated the amount they did smuggle. But they
Speaker 3: charged Platschorn under a Kingpin statute that was meant for
Speaker 3: much heavier drug offenses. And what I really remembered about
Speaker 3: that is that he got sixty years for smuggling marijuana
Speaker 3: in the United States.
Speaker 1: Remember the length of that sentence. Sixty years will come
Speaker 1: back to it. Because it wasn't entirely motivated by drugs.
Speaker 3: I certainly didn't understand things as well as I might
Speaker 3: have when they were happening. I think I probably got
Speaker 3: taken in an awful lot by the government. I was
Speaker 3: fascinated by the agents too. They were living in a
Speaker 3: very exciting life and got to know a couple of them.
Speaker 2: It was way better than Washington, d C. That's for sure.
Speaker 1: While Stanford definitely found the trials top bit more compelling
Speaker 1: than Washington based politics, he was equally attracted to its setting.
Speaker 3: I was fascinated by Miami. I was fascinated by the
Speaker 3: whole vibe.
Speaker 2: Back then.
Speaker 1: It was wild, and the Miami assignment was a welcomed
Speaker 1: break from his usual beat.
Speaker 3: But other than that, I wasn't having any luck getting
Speaker 3: any assignments. I remember sitting in the office at Harper's
Speaker 3: Magazine in New York talking to the editor. I totally
Speaker 3: wanted to do stuff on crime, and he wanted me
Speaker 3: to do some government procedural peace and I said, oh
Speaker 3: my god. And it was about that time I decided
Speaker 3: to chuck it all and go to Miami.
Speaker 1: Well, in a way that kind of makes sense, because Miami,
Speaker 1: particularly at that time, was swimming in crime, just in
Speaker 1: terms of the drug trade and everything, and it must have,
Speaker 1: on top of being romantic, it must have felt like
Speaker 1: an outlaw town.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean there was a vibe there, really was, and
Speaker 3: people were different down there. I mean, DC is really
Speaker 3: a very boring place.
Speaker 1: And Stamford was basically bored of his life and the
Speaker 1: way he was making a living.
Speaker 3: I was stuck professionally. That's what I meant by wanting
Speaker 3: to write about crime. But in a way that's sort
Speaker 3: of a mental dodge. I suppose the way we give
Speaker 3: ourselves more palatable excuses for what's really going on underneath.
Speaker 3: And it was personal as well.
Speaker 1: How old were you at the time.
Speaker 3: I was thirty eight, And of course there was the
Speaker 3: divorce certainly had something to do with it.
Speaker 2: I was missing my boys.
Speaker 1: Phil had two sons with his first wife. After the divorce,
Speaker 1: she relocated with him to Oregon, leaving Stamford feeling unsettled
Speaker 1: and a bit adrift.
Speaker 3: And I was having these dreams every two weeks regularly.
Speaker 2: I was in a.
Speaker 3: Desert somewhere there's nighttime, just moonlight or starlight, looking out
Speaker 3: across the desert at a walled city after midnight, you know,
Speaker 3: still a few lights shining through windows, maybe a caravan
Speaker 3: leaving what I remember hearing the camel bills in the dream,
Speaker 3: and concealing myself behind some sort of sand dune. This
Speaker 3: walled city is maybe a quarter mile a half mile away,
Speaker 3: and knowing that I have to get into the city
Speaker 3: without being noticed and come back with something I don't
Speaker 3: know what it is. And so I'm there waiting, waiting
Speaker 3: to go, but not really daring to go. And it
Speaker 3: starts to get lighter, and lighter. Here a rooster crow,
Speaker 3: and that's it. I have this dream once a week
Speaker 3: or so, and even I can see is some connection
Speaker 3: with Miami. I'd already been down to Miami for the
Speaker 3: Black Tuna trial.
Speaker 1: So the dream is about an opportunity that you're going
Speaker 1: to miss if you don't make a.
Speaker 3: Move, or something is telling me that there's something I
Speaker 3: have to find out.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you left Washington in a bit of a rush.
Speaker 3: Nine or two before I left, there was a party
Speaker 3: at the place where I was living. There wasn't a
Speaker 3: going away party, it was just a party telling everyone
Speaker 3: talking about going to Miami. And someone says, do you
Speaker 3: have a job yet? I know this person is much
Speaker 3: more practical than I am. I guess said, well, I
Speaker 3: know the publisher of a newspaper down there. I'll give
Speaker 3: him a call and he'll be expecting to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Maybe you can work out something there. So I quit
Speaker 3: my job on very short notice. I'm ashamed to say,
Speaker 3: load everything into my old beat up Capri and head
Speaker 3: to Miami. Attribute its exit and driving down that It
Speaker 3: was a huge change from Washington, d C. It was
Speaker 3: during the winter months and DC everything is drab, and
Speaker 3: you've got the dirty ice and overcast sky and the
Speaker 3: farther south. I'd get the writer. I'd finally in Miami,
Speaker 3: the sun just burst upon you and primary colors.
Speaker 2: Miami just it was.
Speaker 3: Another world, bright blue, dark green vegetation, the sea, blue
Speaker 3: green sea, lit with the sun, and it was a
Speaker 3: glorious place, it seemed to me.
Speaker 2: I parked in front.
Speaker 3: Of the Miami News building, which was on the right,
Speaker 3: on the edge of the Bay. I persuade the managing
Speaker 3: editor of the Miami News, a very nice lady named
Speaker 3: Gloria Anderson, to give me a job writing what I
Speaker 3: referred to as detective stories.
Speaker 1: So you start doing investigating crime stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I liked what I was doing, long stories
Speaker 3: divided by chapters, and I think readers liked them too.
Speaker 3: Miami was full of great stories back then. And I
Speaker 3: did several unsolved murderers, Jewelry heis pirates off the shore
Speaker 3: of Andros Island.
Speaker 1: And then you decided to take on one of Miami's
Speaker 1: biggest unsolved mysteries.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I started working on a story about a pretty young
Speaker 3: seventeen year old girl, Amy Billig, who about what five
Speaker 3: or six years before, had been walking down the street
Speaker 3: near her home in Coconut Grove on the way to
Speaker 3: the store or something like that, and she just disappeared,
Speaker 3: as far as anyone who vanished into thin air. No
Speaker 3: one saw her again, ever, and the mother, to her credit,
Speaker 3: never let it go. She kept demanding answers. And so
Speaker 3: I got in touch with the mother and she had
Speaker 3: a new lead. Someone had called her three o'clock in
Speaker 3: the morning, called or collect and told her daughter was alive.
Speaker 3: And well, so you know, this was well before the
Speaker 3: cell phones.
Speaker 2: Or call her id. She had to go down to
Speaker 2: the phone company to.
Speaker 3: Get the address of the of the person who called,
Speaker 3: which she had because she'd had accepted the call. Someone
Speaker 3: had called her turns out from a little town in Oklahoma, Ceman, Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: So I was going to go out there, Toman, Oklahoma
Speaker 3: and solve this case and probably make a name for myself.
Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking at the time.
Speaker 1: And how would you do.
Speaker 3: Well at that point, the story was taking too long anyway.
Speaker 3: After several weeks, Gloria calls me into her office and says,
Speaker 3: the publisher is getting a little bit restive about our
Speaker 3: little experiment with detective stories. This one is taking too long.
Speaker 3: He doesn't think it's good use of the time. And
Speaker 3: if I don't come up with something pretty quick on
Speaker 3: the Amy Billy case, we would have to reassess our arrangement.
Speaker 2: And I say, Gloria, but I have a new lead.
Speaker 3: And I tell her about that phone call and how
Speaker 3: I want to go out to Seaman, Oklahoma, and all
Speaker 3: I need is an airline ticket and money for a
Speaker 3: rental car. Come on if it works out as Pulletzer
Speaker 3: prize material. And she says, okay, but I'm telling you.
Speaker 3: So I get my ticket and I get all packed
Speaker 3: and ready to go, and the night before I'm with
Speaker 3: my girlfriend Ruth in the Prying Pub.
Speaker 2: That's where we hung out.
Speaker 1: Who was Ruth? Did you meet her in Miami?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: She was Gloria's secretary and we sort of took up
Speaker 3: together after I started working at the News. It's a
Speaker 3: very talkative, cute redhead who'd spend some time hanging around
Speaker 3: with country bands in Nashville.
Speaker 1: So she had no problem attracting mail attention, none at all.
Speaker 1: And Stanford's not exaggerating. I tracked down a candid photo
Speaker 1: of the couple at the time, and it actually looks
Speaker 1: like a paparazzi shot. It's in black and white, and
Speaker 1: the two appear to be arriving at some sort of event.
Speaker 1: Phil's glancing back towards Ruth. He's wearing a blazer and
Speaker 1: a collared shirt unbuttoned far enough to reveal a disco
Speaker 1: era amount of tanned chest, and Ruth is smiling broadly
Speaker 1: at the camera from underneath thick bangs, her face framed
Speaker 1: in a wavy mane that just falls past her shoulders.
Speaker 1: Her vibe is as cool and confident as the silky
Speaker 1: top that accentuates her slim, yet pronounced curves. They made
Speaker 1: a stunning couple. Here's Ruth, that former girlfriend recollecting Phil Well.
Speaker 7: I met him in the newsroom Miami News. My first
Speaker 7: impression was he was basically kind of an explosing personality.
Speaker 7: Most of our reporters and all were kind of laid
Speaker 7: back and all that, but Phil was always on charge,
Speaker 7: very verbal and outspoken. Dolly's traveling at one hundred miles
Speaker 7: an hour, there was no down mellow time would fail that.
Speaker 7: He was so smart and interesting. Our conversations were just
Speaker 7: so different than you have with most guys. You know,
Speaker 7: and Bill was very good looking. Oh yeah, and he
Speaker 7: had a great body.
Speaker 1: Okay, back to Phil and Ruth. In that bar in Parime, we.
Speaker 3: Were sitting in the bar there, the big horseshoe shaped bar,
Speaker 3: and she's telling the bartender about how I'm going out
Speaker 3: to Oklahoma and I was going to solve the Amy
Speaker 3: Billy kicks. And one of the things she's saying to
Speaker 3: the bartender is that the theory at that time was
Speaker 3: that Amy Billy had been snatched off the street by
Speaker 3: some bikers who were coming through tent and down at
Speaker 3: the end of the bar a few places away, there's
Speaker 3: this guy, long hair, sort of good looking guy who says, say,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be talking to some bikers here over
Speaker 3: the weekend.
Speaker 2: Maybe I can help.
Speaker 3: And it turns out he's a private investigator, hands me
Speaker 3: his card, says Clay Williams Intercept Detective Agency.
Speaker 7: I remember a guy doing that, but he didn't register
Speaker 7: with me that much, you know, because people, when they
Speaker 7: knew you were reporters, are always giving you their cards.
Speaker 1: While the offering of the card wasn't noteworthy, Ruth recalls
Speaker 1: the guy offering it was.
Speaker 7: I remember he was kind of unusual for that bar.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying. The way he looked and
Speaker 7: dressed and everything.
Speaker 1: Do you remember him?
Speaker 8: What way?
Speaker 7: Well, he was just a little more high rent than
Speaker 7: most of the customers there, well dressed and all that which.
Speaker 7: The Parime Pub was the kind of bar you go
Speaker 7: in and your pajamas if you wanted to. There's nothing
Speaker 7: about it sophisticated or chic.
Speaker 1: And it was very small.
Speaker 7: It wasn't a big bar at all.
Speaker 1: That card and the man it belonged to, Clay Williams,
Speaker 1: would end up having an enormous impact on Stanford.
Speaker 3: And this story, okay, Well, to make a short story short,
Speaker 3: I'd fly out to Seam in Oklahoma, get a rental car,
Speaker 3: go to this little town, just two thousand population, find
Speaker 3: the address, knock on the door, and the woman there,
Speaker 3: of course doesn't look anything like Amy Belling. Her husband's there.
Speaker 3: And the story is they have parties all the time,
Speaker 3: people coming in and out of the house, and on
Speaker 3: this particular night when a mother got the call, they
Speaker 3: were having one of those big parties. They have no
Speaker 3: idea who is there. In other words, it was a
Speaker 3: complete flop. I go back to the airport, get on
Speaker 3: the plane, go back to Miami, and I know I'm
Speaker 3: in trouble.
Speaker 1: Stanford figured he was likely to lose his job at
Speaker 1: the paper. Then he remembered that stranger from the bar,
Speaker 1: Clay Williams, the private investigator who'd offered to ask the
Speaker 1: bikers about Amy Billig.
Speaker 3: So I get out the card for Clay Williams, which
Speaker 3: I thought I'd never have to use because I was
Speaker 3: so sure that this was going to be it, and
Speaker 3: I called the number on it. Intercept secretary answers. I
Speaker 3: asked for Clay Williams and she says, I'm sorry, we
Speaker 3: don't have a Clay Williams here.
Speaker 2: And I said what she said? No.
Speaker 1: At this point, Stanford's not only desperate, he's confused and annoyed.
Speaker 2: So I jump in my car drive out there.
Speaker 3: They're actually in Perne too. They have nice offices in
Speaker 3: the Bank of Parne, third floor. And barge into the
Speaker 3: office and I'm waiving this card and the secretary and
Speaker 3: I said, look, I have his card.
Speaker 2: It says he works here.
Speaker 3: And this big burly guy comes out of the office,
Speaker 3: introduces himself Bob Adams. He's an inventor scept going in
Speaker 3: and let's talk and so we go into his office.
Speaker 2: The first thing we noticed there's.
Speaker 3: This big poster of Casablanca behind his desk. Turns out
Speaker 3: he's something of a romantic. So we talk and he says,
Speaker 3: sorry about the confusion, but we didn't know who you
Speaker 3: were when you called. You know, we get all sorts
Speaker 3: of calls from all sorts of people, but yeah, Clay
Speaker 3: Williams did some work for us, and we haven't been
Speaker 3: able to get in touch with him for two or
Speaker 3: three days. I guess it was. And we're worried about
Speaker 3: him too. And I say, I'm worried about him because
Speaker 3: I think I may be responsible.
Speaker 1: Worried Williams wound up in trouble after asking bikers about
Speaker 1: Amy Billig. Stanford fears it's his fault. The guy's gone missing.
Speaker 1: When he conveyed that to Bob Adams, Adams offered to
Speaker 1: assist Stanford in his search for Clay Williams.
Speaker 3: The next few days, they sort of squire me around
Speaker 3: as a dog and pony show. We're looking for Clay Williams,
Speaker 3: and of course we don't find him.
Speaker 1: Did he ever turn up?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: About two weeks later, got a call from Bob. He
Speaker 3: said they found Clay.
Speaker 2: He's dead. They found his body in the Everglades.
Speaker 1: Suddenly Stamford is really regretting that exchange in the bar.
Speaker 3: Now I am quite convinced I'm responsible for Clay Williams's death.
Speaker 3: I told Bob too that I was worried that I'd
Speaker 3: caused Clay's death because he was doing research for me.
Speaker 3: And he says, well, look, you're still working for the newspaper,
Speaker 3: right And I said yeah, And he said, well, why
Speaker 3: don't you go down to the Sheriff's office talk to
Speaker 3: the detectives working on this case and see what they know.
Speaker 3: And so I go down Miami Dade Sheriff's Office tell
Speaker 3: the person at the entrance that I'd like to talk
Speaker 3: to the detectives from the Miami News and I might
Speaker 3: have some information that's useful on Clay Williams. One of
Speaker 3: the detectives comes out, tall, lanky guy, sort of detective
Speaker 3: issue suit, and leads me back to the room where
Speaker 3: his partner is and I sit in front of their
Speaker 3: desk and I tell them about the Amy Billy case.
Speaker 3: I think I might be responsible for this death, and
Speaker 3: they say right away, no, this has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with the missing girl. They think it's drugs, and I
Speaker 3: said no, no, no, no. So we go back and forth,
Speaker 3: and at a certain point they start pulling out pictures
Speaker 3: of Clay Williams's body, polaroids taken out in the Everglades,
Speaker 3: and he's just this is after two weeks now. He's
Speaker 3: a skeleton with long hair down to his shoulders. Most
Speaker 3: of the flesh has gone from his face, and the
Speaker 3: alligators have taken off an arm and part of a leg.
Speaker 3: And they show me more photos of the body and
Speaker 3: they say, you better watch what you're getting into. I
Speaker 3: said no, no, I'm fine, and so they just sort
Speaker 3: of throw up their hands escort me to the.
Speaker 1: Door, but not without offering Phil a final warning.
Speaker 3: They said, look, you're involved with some dangerous people here.
Speaker 2: And I report back to Bob. I call and tell
Speaker 2: them what I found out.
Speaker 3: They said, good work, good work, And so that was
Speaker 3: sort of my first job for.
Speaker 1: Intercept as a private detective.
Speaker 3: As a newspaper reporter slash private detective.
Speaker 1: Yes, as gruesome as Clay Williams's death may sound, apparently
Speaker 1: it didn't even make news. I couldn't find any information
Speaker 1: about it online or in any of the newspaper archives,
Speaker 1: but that could be because it was just one of
Speaker 1: an avalanche of murders in that year. In nineteen eighty alone,
Speaker 1: Miami had a record five hundred and seventy three murders.
Speaker 1: The Miami Dade Morgue was so overwhelmed with corpses that
Speaker 1: the Medical Examiner's office had to lease a refrigerated truck
Speaker 1: to keep the cascades of bodies on ice, and Miami
Speaker 1: earned the dubious distinction of being the nation's murder capital,
Speaker 1: largely as a result of shootouts among cocaine cowboys and
Speaker 1: violent crimes committed by Mariolito's crime games of mostly male
Speaker 1: Cubans who'd poured into Miami at the time straight from
Speaker 1: the prisons in Cuba. It was a recipe for violence
Speaker 1: and volatility. Here's how Ruth Phil's then girlfriend, who also
Speaker 1: worked at the Miami News at the time, remembers it.
Speaker 7: During those years in Miami, there were so many people
Speaker 7: that turned up dead because anybody crossed the cartails and
Speaker 7: any white. They just killed everybody that was home. One
Speaker 7: of the people that got arrested even said that we
Speaker 7: just killed everybody that was at home, And there were
Speaker 7: so many murders that were just inexplicable. Back then, it
Speaker 7: was a crazy time in.
Speaker 1: Miami and a time when drug money fueled the mayhem, as.
Speaker 7: We say in the South, money tops and bullshit walks,
Speaker 7: because I had millions of millions of dollars that I
Speaker 7: were making from.
Speaker 1: That money made on supply and demand during the eighties.
Speaker 5: The number of Americans abusing cocaine has skyrocketed. In the
Speaker 5: early part of the decade, this white powder was considered
Speaker 5: a white collar drug. Coke was it. Coke was chic,
Speaker 5: and at one hundred dollars a gram, it had the
Speaker 5: high price tag to match cocaine his big business. Americans
Speaker 5: are spending over thirty billion dollars a year on it.
Speaker 5: Both suppliers and users are a formidable adversary in the
Speaker 5: war on drugs.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen eighty Miami was the undisputed ground zero
Speaker 1: in that battle.
Speaker 9: I tell people that that was our capolan era because
Speaker 9: it was just crazy with all the achilles.
Speaker 1: That's Israel reeis a former Circuit court judge of the
Speaker 1: eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida. Today, he runs his own
Speaker 1: law firm. After nearly thirty years of public service as
Speaker 1: a judge and assistant State's Attorney. I sought him out
Speaker 1: because from nineteen eighty until nineteen ninety five he was
Speaker 1: also a police officer detective with the Miami Dade Police Department,
Speaker 1: where at various times he worked in the Homicide Bureau,
Speaker 1: Media Relations Section, and Special Investigations divisions Criminal Conspiracy and
Speaker 1: Racketeering squads. So he was no stranger to drug related violence.
Speaker 9: My first exposure to that was when I was still
Speaker 9: a patrol officer in nineteen eighty or eighty one, when
Speaker 9: I was dispatched to a shooting in the New part
Speaker 9: of Miami Les, Florida. I mean Lakes is now an
Speaker 9: incorporated town, but back then it was just an unincorporated
Speaker 9: area of Day County.
Speaker 10: As I arrived on the scene, I was the first
Speaker 10: officer on the scene.
Speaker 9: That was the victim was lying in his driveway and
Speaker 9: he had been peppered with either a Mac ten or
Speaker 9: a Mac eleven, which is a small panheld submachine gun
Speaker 9: that was used a lot by the Colombian pitman.
Speaker 6: I remember he was lying in his driveway there and
Speaker 6: the garage store was behind him in the five story
Speaker 6: was just littered with holes because they just kept shooting
Speaker 6: at this guy with this automatic submachine gun.
Speaker 1: In that era, most if not all, of Miami's violent
Speaker 1: crimes were meant to serve as messages or warnings to
Speaker 1: those who'd crossed the drug cartels or even considered it.
Speaker 10: We would just hear about these different cases people just
Speaker 10: being killed. I think there was like eight or nine
Speaker 10: people killed inside a housing Kendall, which was, you know,
Speaker 10: the South Date area, a nice middle class area. Eight
Speaker 10: or nine people killed there. There were a lot of
Speaker 10: kidnappings for ransom.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was just.
Speaker 7: Day in and day out.
Speaker 1: Former detective Jeff Lewis, who is now a private investigator,
Speaker 1: started out as a uniformed officer in the Liberty City
Speaker 1: area of Miami in nineteen eighty before going on to
Speaker 1: become an undercover detective, robber detective, and homicide detective in
Speaker 1: Miami Dade. He also gave me his take on the times.
Speaker 11: I would categorize it as the wild will left. Every
Speaker 11: day somebody was getting shot, murdered, robbed, victimized. The crime
Speaker 11: was definitely out of control in that particular time.
Speaker 1: Buyed by the influx of drug related conflicts, the crime
Speaker 1: wave hit with a gruesome severity not before seen in
Speaker 1: the US, and.
Speaker 11: Then started in Miami because that's what the money was
Speaker 11: and that's what the people that wanted to make money came.
Speaker 11: The term home invasion robbery was coined in Miami. You
Speaker 11: didn't have all invasion robberies in la or Chicago or
Speaker 11: New York like we did in Miami. That's where it started,
Speaker 11: because that's where a drug trade really started and blew up.
Speaker 11: One of our sergeants coined the term home nation robbery.
Speaker 1: Wow. And so that was a direct result of the
Speaker 1: influence of the violence that the cartels brought with the business.
Speaker 11: Absolutely. I mean, you know, between the Columbians and Mary
Speaker 11: Elitos and a lot of those Cubans that came over.
Speaker 2: Everybody saw the movie Star Base.
Speaker 11: I mean, that's what would happened if you were a
Speaker 11: criminal and you came to Miami from Maryelle. If you
Speaker 11: didn't become a drug dealer, you became a drug robin,
Speaker 11: and then you would recruit those to work for you,
Speaker 11: and usually those were the people you were in prison
Speaker 11: with inquboat. So it was a big vicious cycle and it.
Speaker 2: Was a business.
Speaker 10: You had two businesses with that.
Speaker 11: You had the drug dealers and then you had the
Speaker 11: people that were robbing a drug dealer. So our hands
Speaker 11: were full because we had to deal with both both groups,
Speaker 11: and they were vicious and they were nasty. I mean,
Speaker 11: these guys were ruthless. Victims were hurt so bad they
Speaker 11: had to call the police or an ambulance or go
Speaker 11: to the hospital, and otherwise they probably wouldn't even call
Speaker 11: the police. We would have on cooperative viness and that
Speaker 11: was a problem as a robbin detective was very prevalent.
Speaker 1: And so it was also pretty prevalent that many of
Speaker 1: these crimes went unsolved, especially ones involving discarded bodies like
Speaker 1: the body of Clay Williams.
Speaker 11: During that specific time, and they had what they would
Speaker 11: call body dumps out in the redlands or out in
Speaker 11: the swamp areas or anywhere outside of the cities. Sometimes
Speaker 11: they would get the individual identified, sometimes they wouldn't. But
Speaker 11: a lot of those cases turn out to be drug related,
Speaker 11: and they didn't get the assistance from the Vickers family
Speaker 11: because they were either too afraid or they were also
Speaker 11: involved in the drug trade. So a lot of those
Speaker 11: cases went unsolved. But it was basically drug dealers killing
Speaker 11: other drug dealers.
Speaker 1: And if the rise in drug dealing was linked to
Speaker 1: the rise in body counts. So was the violence those
Speaker 1: bodies endured before being found.
Speaker 11: And you just don't kill a lot of times. Either
Speaker 11: that person stole from you, lie to you, it's something
Speaker 11: to your family in regards to drugs, or they knew
Speaker 11: where big stash was or whatever. So they're going to
Speaker 11: torture you. They're going to kill you. Now they've got
Speaker 11: to get rid of the body out there in the Everglades.
Speaker 11: You go out there where nobody goes, and middle of
Speaker 11: the night, dump the body and leave no id. Sometimes
Speaker 11: you might pull the teeth, cut the fingers off, maybe
Speaker 11: the head. You know, you don't want the body to
Speaker 11: get identified, or you put it in there and hope
Speaker 11: the gators will get it. That's not a myth. I mean,
Speaker 11: there's been plenty of bones found in the Everglades even today.
Speaker 11: I'm sure there's bones still out there. I'd say that's
Speaker 11: part of the deal. Cost of doing business in the
Speaker 11: drug trade and crossing somebody.
Speaker 1: Phil Miami and the situation you were walking into sounded
Speaker 1: outright dangerous. Didn't you realize any of this?
Speaker 2: Well, sure I did.
Speaker 3: When I was at the News, I had written a
Speaker 3: front page story about how Miami had become the murder
Speaker 3: capital of the United States. I just looked at the
Speaker 3: FBI crime statistics and did the necessary arithmetic, and it
Speaker 3: had the highest per capita rate of murders in the
Speaker 3: United States clips Houston, New York City was murder City USA.
Speaker 3: Kind of interesting that after it appeared on the front page.
Speaker 3: I mean it was a banner headline across the front page.
Speaker 3: The delegation from the Chamber of Commerce came in and
Speaker 3: there were hush meetings with the editors back behind those
Speaker 3: little glass cubicles, and they were upset that newspaper would
Speaker 3: be pointing this out.
Speaker 1: When Bob Adams made Phil Stanford and offered a work
Speaker 1: at Intercept Agency, basically replacing Clay Williams, Phil didn't suspect
Speaker 1: Intercept and its activities may actually have been responsible for
Speaker 1: Clay Williams being murdered and left to the alligators in
Speaker 1: the Everglades.
Speaker 3: At this point, I don't know exactly what it was
Speaker 3: that got him killed.
Speaker 1: So after his gruesome death, being warned by police detectives
Speaker 1: that you're getting involved with dangerous people, taking the job
Speaker 1: of a man who was just murdered dumped in the
Speaker 1: Everglades and half eaten by alligators.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose you could look at it that way.
Speaker 1: And you realize that the murder of Clay Williams has
Speaker 1: never been solved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently that's the case.
Speaker 1: So after you gave me his name, I put in
Speaker 1: a formal request for information on the case months ago
Speaker 1: in January with the Miami Dade Sheriff's Office, and to
Speaker 1: date they can't seem to find the file. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're still looking for it, but they believe it may
Speaker 1: have been misfiled or even lost.
Speaker 3: Now that's ridiculous. A cold case murder, and they think
Speaker 3: maybe they lost the file.
Speaker 1: But you must have realized even at the time that
Speaker 1: something wasn't right.
Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking about that.
Speaker 3: I was at a point in my life where I
Speaker 3: was just sort of throwing my fate to the wind.
Speaker 3: It's one of those times when all your plans are
Speaker 3: coming to nothing, when nothing's working.
Speaker 2: Maybe the best player of all is no plan at all.
Speaker 2: And I ended up working for Intercend What could go.
Speaker 1: Wrong more, it turns out than Phil could have ever imagined.
Speaker 1: Because Intercept, that private investigation firm. Phil now worked for
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly what it seemed, But of course.
Speaker 3: I had no way of knowing the detective Agency would
Speaker 3: turn out to be a front for a major drug
Speaker 3: operation that was about to be indicted in federal court.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And when the indictment came down, the guy they were
Speaker 3: working for, this dashing drug pilot by the name of
Speaker 3: Lamar Chester, would claim he did it all.
Speaker 2: For this CIA. Did he have proof, he said, if they.
Speaker 3: Put him on trial, he was going to spill the
Speaker 3: beams on the CIA and it would shake the foundations
Speaker 3: of the government to its core.
Speaker 1: Did he give you any idea of what kind of
Speaker 1: secrets he had?
Speaker 3: Well, that's where things start to get interesting and maybe
Speaker 3: a little bit dangerous too.
Speaker 1: So Clay wasn't the only person who oh no on
Speaker 1: the next murder in Miami. Months of researching the mysterious
Speaker 1: death of Clay Williams raises more questions than answers.
Speaker 2: It was a strange funeral anyway.
Speaker 3: Standing in the back end of the trailer were about
Speaker 3: four or five very big guys, obviously detectives. They were
Speaker 3: there to send a message.
Speaker 1: Stanford was all too willing to dive into the new
Speaker 1: role of private investigator.
Speaker 3: I'm just there to handle the stuff that comes in
Speaker 3: from the Yellow Pages.
Speaker 2: So the rest of the.
Speaker 3: Guys contend to the real business, which was the drug business.
Speaker 3: Of course, this is Miami, and there was no big
Speaker 3: secret at all that their biggest client at the time
Speaker 3: was this dashing dope pilot by the name of Lamar Chester.
Speaker 8: He introduced me to Bob Adams and another fellow there,
Speaker 8: and I had understood from that these were former intelligence
Speaker 8: people from the federal government, whether it's CIA, Army intelligence,
Speaker 8: they were all associated. I think that's how Clay got
Speaker 8: to know these people.
Speaker 1: Murder Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Lauren Brei Pacheco, Taylor Chackoine, and Phil Stamford. Written by
Speaker 1: Bill Stamford and Lauren bred Pacheco, Audio editing and sound
Speaker 1: design by Nicholas Harder, Evan Tyer, and Taylor Chackoine, featuring
Speaker 1: music by Evan Tyre, Phil Mayer, John Murchison and Taylor Chackoine.
Speaker 1: Archival elements provided by Lennon Lewis Wolfson, the Second Florida
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