Speaker 1: Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio previously on
Speaker 1: Murder in Miami. So it's the fall of nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four and basically, you agree to go to Georgia to
Speaker 1: help Lamar Chester, who you fully believe is a drug
Speaker 1: smuggler and who fully believes that you were in the CIA,
Speaker 1: create a gray mail defense.
Speaker 2: Pretty much. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Operation Lone Star was a sprawling federal investigation of money laundering.
Speaker 1: Lamar Chester's involvement with a Nasau trust company and ownership
Speaker 1: of islands became the focus.
Speaker 3: There's over ten thousand coal cases in Miami Dade, which
Speaker 3: is a staggering number. The eighties were a very large
Speaker 3: part of the ten thousand cases.
Speaker 2: The star witness, in fact, the whole point of the
Speaker 2: hearings was this tall, slim woman in her thirties, Leslie Bickerton,
Speaker 2: who the newspapers were building as Lamar's bookkeeper and mistress.
Speaker 4: The government had been implying, if not outright stating with
Speaker 4: witnesses fed to alligators, the portrayal that they were doing
Speaker 4: of Lamar Chester.
Speaker 1: Chester had told her that he quote got rid of
Speaker 1: a man and fed him to the alligators. And she
Speaker 1: says that he mentioned the man's name as Ed Clayton. Hey, Lauren, Hey, Phil,
Speaker 1: So I think I actually found Leslie Bickerton. Definitely the
Speaker 1: right one.
Speaker 2: Are you sure you spoke to her?
Speaker 1: Not exactly so I've been texting the correct number, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I connected with her brother that she
Speaker 1: responded to me.
Speaker 2: And what'd you say?
Speaker 1: That's a little complicated. So she's not willing to speak
Speaker 1: with me yet, but she is willing to communicate via
Speaker 1: an encrypted service so nobody can intercept our communication.
Speaker 2: I guess, well, why all the secrecy.
Speaker 1: Because Phil, after all these years, she's still afraid for
Speaker 1: her life. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is murder
Speaker 1: in Miami. When Leslie Bickerton and I first connected in
Speaker 1: April of twenty twenty two, she insisted that going forward,
Speaker 1: we only do so in an absolutely secure way as
Speaker 1: an end to end encryption. Once we settled on a means,
Speaker 1: it still took her over an hour to respond to
Speaker 1: my initial explanation of who I was and why I
Speaker 1: was reaching out. She was extremely guarded and acious as
Speaker 1: to exactly why I was searching for her. After stressing
Speaker 1: she was extremely private and extremely careful as to who
Speaker 1: she let into her life, she offered me this ominous
Speaker 1: warning quote, you have no idea, she typed, what you
Speaker 1: are stepping into. Trust me, she continued, I know this
Speaker 1: as a fact, unquote. The Leslie Bickerton I would grow
Speaker 1: to know bit by bit and over months of encrypted
Speaker 1: texting was a woman who still very much bore the
Speaker 1: scars of the experience of crossing paths with many of
Speaker 1: the names you've now heard, especially Bob Adams and Lamar Chester.
Speaker 1: It became obvious that, unlike Phil who has an interesting
Speaker 1: tendency to look back on even the more troubling aspects
Speaker 1: of his experience with intercept with a bit of a
Speaker 1: bemused chuckle, Leslie finds nothing amusing about having been drawn
Speaker 1: into a federal investigation. In fact, she still lives in
Speaker 1: fear of the individual she became intertwined with, even the
Speaker 1: one she still hasn't identified. Our early communications were halting, sporadic,
Speaker 1: and somewhat cryptic, as I sought to give her a
Speaker 1: level of comfort and trust while dealing with the limitations
Speaker 1: of texting. What became very clear, though, was her significant
Speaker 1: trepidation over revisiting the lone star period of her life
Speaker 1: at all, and her belief that sinister forces beyond her
Speaker 1: control at the time were still at work. Today. Like Phil,
Speaker 1: she seemed to be struggling to put together the pieces
Speaker 1: of that period of her life. But unlike Phil, she
Speaker 1: very much felt to be a target of violent threats. Quote.
Speaker 1: There was a contract out on me, and I know
Speaker 1: much more than I should, she texted, But I was
Speaker 1: too naive and stupid not to realize what I was
Speaker 1: involved with and had to find out a lot more
Speaker 1: after the fact. Unquote. She went on to offer this
Speaker 1: warning if I decided to proceed, quote, be very careful.
Speaker 1: When I updated Phil, it was with a much greater
Speaker 1: sense of concern about the story we were tackling.
Speaker 2: So are you still texting?
Speaker 1: Yeah, just texting. But you know, I have to say
Speaker 1: she is extremely concerned about her safety and honestly very
Speaker 1: convinced that I'm putting myself in harm's way by even
Speaker 1: revisiting any of this.
Speaker 2: Oh come on, now, I've been poking around this the
Speaker 2: last ten to fifteen years, and the heat is off.
Speaker 2: I can understand she would have been worried back then,
Speaker 2: for sure, bodies turning up all over the place, but
Speaker 2: it's been forty years now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you weren't even indicted. She was a witness,
Speaker 1: and she believed at the time she was told there
Speaker 1: was a contract out on her life, and she's still afraid.
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason why it was so
Speaker 1: hard to find her was because she went to great
Speaker 1: lengths not to be found.
Speaker 2: It's been hiding for forty years. That's no, it's no
Speaker 2: way to live.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, it's easy for us to say,
Speaker 1: but she was told her life was in danger and
Speaker 1: that people were incentivized to kill her for payment. And
Speaker 1: even if that's no longer the case, it's not like
Speaker 1: she ever got some kind of formal update that her
Speaker 1: nightmare was over.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like they've been playing a capture the Flag game
Speaker 1: and it moved on and ended, but she's still in hiding.
Speaker 1: Nobody told her it was over.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe if she talked to me, I could assure
Speaker 2: of something or other. I mean, I understand that she
Speaker 2: was scared at one time. Once upon a time, there
Speaker 2: was certainly something to be scared of, and I'm still
Speaker 2: trying to figure it out myself. So maybe we have
Speaker 2: that in common.
Speaker 1: Leslie and I would continue communicating via encrypted texts for
Speaker 1: several months, bonding over our shared love for all things canine,
Speaker 1: eventually swapping photos of our dogs and piecing together. Are
Speaker 1: still evolving grasp of what happened during the Low Star investigation.
Speaker 1: She also shared she found Chester's claims to have been
Speaker 1: involved with CIA operations plausible. The CIA, she wrote, has
Speaker 1: a long involvement with a drug trade since Vietnam, Heroin
Speaker 1: and cocaine ongoing in Latin America, the Bahamas, Africa, Middle East,
Speaker 1: especially Afghanistan. It's a Pandora's box unquote for anyone not familiar.
Speaker 1: Pandora's box basically means opening an endless source of troubles.
Speaker 1: It springs from a Greek myth about the world's first woman, Pandora,
Speaker 1: whose curiosity led to the unleashing of evil upon mankind.
Speaker 1: Leslie eventually agreed to speak with me over the phone,
Speaker 1: but it would be another several months before she would
Speaker 1: consent to taping our conversations. By the time I heard
Speaker 1: her voice, I very much felt I knew the woman
Speaker 1: it belonged to.
Speaker 6: Going back forty one years, I never saw it coming,
Speaker 6: had no idea, but then I didn't grow up with
Speaker 6: those kinds of people. I understand it now. I was
Speaker 6: just so trusting and naive, really naive. I've realized this
Speaker 6: over the years. What happened to me from forty one
Speaker 6: years ago has been with me my entire life.
Speaker 7: I mean, it stole my life and I stole my voice.
Speaker 1: And she's internalized that loss for forty years.
Speaker 7: I've never told anybody what I've told you.
Speaker 1: In the course of our extensive exchanges, Bickerton, who had
Speaker 1: been reduced to almost a cliche in the articles I'd
Speaker 1: read covering Chester and Lone Star, would reveal herself to
Speaker 1: be a complicated and fiercely intelligent woman with a wry
Speaker 1: sense of humor and a rather fascinating unorthodox upbringing.
Speaker 6: Part of my life, I grew up in New England,
Speaker 6: camping and hiking and sailing. My father always had us
Speaker 6: out in the middle of nowhere, all of us, and
Speaker 6: I'm the oldest in my family. My mother always said
Speaker 6: she never know if he'd come back from a hurricane.
Speaker 6: My father was like, let's go watch the hurricanes come
Speaker 6: in the tide, the water everything.
Speaker 1: Her father was the pioneering venture capitalist John Bickerton, as
Speaker 1: legendary in the field of finance for his innovative influence,
Speaker 1: as he was for his eclectic personality, despite his considerable
Speaker 1: career accomplishments and belonging to a rarefied social realm that
Speaker 1: included Rockefellers. According to his obituary quote, he was happiest
Speaker 1: walking along the Marblehead Causeway during the height of a
Speaker 1: hurricane with his eager children in tow, waiting for the
Speaker 1: next rogue wave to hit the causeway wall and drench
Speaker 1: them all. Unquote.
Speaker 6: I grew up that way my whole life. It was
Speaker 6: a sense of adventure. We knew the people who started
Speaker 6: outward bound, where you go on remote islands as kids
Speaker 6: and you learn how to survive on your own. This
Speaker 6: is not one of these all inclusive resort.
Speaker 1: This wasn't club med.
Speaker 6: It was not club med. No, no, no no. And
Speaker 6: I know how to hunt, and I know how to fish.
Speaker 6: And because I grew up part of my life in
Speaker 6: the Hawaiian Islands, I knew how to fish what they
Speaker 6: call a Hawaiian sling. Are you familiar with that?
Speaker 7: Okay? So this is all.
Speaker 6: With indigenous in the Hawaiians. So a Hawaiian sling is
Speaker 6: basically a spear.
Speaker 7: We would take a.
Speaker 6: Piece of wood, hollow it out in the middle and
Speaker 6: take surgical tubing and wrap it so it adhere's to
Speaker 6: that wooden tube. It's like a bow and arrow, okay,
Speaker 6: except that the stainless steel shaft is probably maybe like
Speaker 6: five feet long with a barb on it. So with
Speaker 6: the Hawaiian sling, you hold your breath and you go
Speaker 6: snorkel and you dive underneath the water to catch your food.
Speaker 6: I mean we all free dived. We didn't have tanks.
Speaker 1: And in addition to mastering outdoor survival techniques, sailing was
Speaker 1: also a huge part of a Bickerton upbringing and remains
Speaker 1: a particular passion for Leslie.
Speaker 6: Being a New Englander, we look down on people with
Speaker 6: motor boats, just like, if you're going to be a sailor,
Speaker 6: you better learn how to sail, You better know how
Speaker 6: to read the sky, how to read the water, all
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 1: By the time Leslie Bickerton, who also dabbled in modeling
Speaker 1: while living in Hawaii, crossed paths with Lamar Chester, she
Speaker 1: was barely thirty years old and fully putting her upbringing
Speaker 1: around finance and formal training and taxation and accounting to
Speaker 1: work in an environment she knew very well the Cayman Islands.
Speaker 6: The beginning of nineteen eighty one, I was over in
Speaker 6: the Cayman Islands before I had even heard of Lamar Chester.
Speaker 6: I was working in the Caymans because I have a
Speaker 6: CPA background and an international tax background. In the Caymans,
Speaker 6: a person named Stephen Greenberg.
Speaker 1: Greenburg was the Miami based tax attorney who started working
Speaker 1: with Chester after Lance Eisenberg was indicted.
Speaker 6: Who was there vacationing with his family. I met him
Speaker 6: to the Christian that I was working with working for,
Speaker 6: and Stephen asked, you know if I be interested in
Speaker 6: meeting Lamar Chester over in the state side. This man
Speaker 6: owned some islands in the Bahamas, was looking for somebody
Speaker 6: to do offshore work, and that he might be interested
Speaker 6: in the work that we do with offshore accounts.
Speaker 1: Offshore accounts are utilized for what purpose?
Speaker 6: To utilize for both legitimate and illegitimate people, banks, trust companies,
Speaker 6: people with a tremendous amount of money, So Hollywood people,
Speaker 6: wealthy people in the States, wealthy people from other countries,
Speaker 6: religious organizations such as the Mormon Church.
Speaker 7: We met.
Speaker 6: Yes, you'd be very surprised at what people where they
Speaker 6: put their money, and businesses and corporations who have sub corporations,
Speaker 6: insurance companies. Illegitimate people like the mob, you know, mafia, drugs, smuggling, guns, smuggling,
Speaker 6: trying to where they so called wash their money to
Speaker 6: make it look legitimate coming into the Cayman Islands setting
Speaker 6: up a bank. So you could actually set up a bank,
Speaker 6: a legitimate bank, a trust company and put your illegal
Speaker 6: money in there if it's illegitimate money or you don't
Speaker 6: want to pay the taxes to the IRS right instead
Speaker 6: of being paid directly by another company for your work,
Speaker 6: you have that money then deposited directly into what they
Speaker 6: call an offshore account. Thereby it never touches directly the
Speaker 6: state site where the IRS can get a hold of
Speaker 6: it and legitimately say, hey, you know, you owe x
Speaker 6: amount of money based on your earnings that year. And
Speaker 6: then you can use that money then to set up
Speaker 6: another bank. You can get pretty detailed and involved. But
Speaker 6: then you can have a subsidiary in the US. So
Speaker 6: all this money gets washed almost like the tides coming
Speaker 6: in and out, and it's been there for a long time,
Speaker 6: it hasn't changed. So that's what offshore does literally physically,
Speaker 6: you're not having your funds come directly into the United States, So.
Speaker 1: It's a gray area.
Speaker 7: Very great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not necessarily legal, but it's not necessarily illegal exactly,
Speaker 1: which is exactly why the very rich, whether by illicit
Speaker 1: means or not, are very fond of offshore accounts as
Speaker 1: a means of hiding their assets. Those islands have always
Speaker 1: been known as tax havens for the rich and famous.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely, there are a lot of loopholes that these
Speaker 6: big tax lawyers confine that are so buried, very sophisticated
Speaker 6: individual loopholes.
Speaker 1: Apparently Lamar Chester was interested in utilizing some of these
Speaker 1: sophisticated loopholes when he initiated a meeting with Leslie in person,
Speaker 1: which would, as with Phil Stanford, take place at the
Speaker 1: mutiny in Coconut Grove in February of nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 6: I met him for dinner at a hotel that they
Speaker 6: had put me in, so I did not know of
Speaker 6: this hotel ahead of time. I had not a clue
Speaker 6: this hotel apparently was known for all the drugs smugglers.
Speaker 1: Did he make it clear at that dinner meeting why
Speaker 1: he wanted to hire you and what he wanted you
Speaker 1: to do for him.
Speaker 6: He was interested in my background, just my own personal background,
Speaker 6: so the sailing and the growing up on islands, and
Speaker 6: the tax and the CPA, and thought that he could
Speaker 6: utilize my expertise for lack of a work to help
Speaker 6: him with different businesses that he had running in the
Speaker 6: Bahamas and maybe elsewhere, and maybe setting up an account
Speaker 6: in the Caymans.
Speaker 7: It was at that time that he told.
Speaker 6: Me that he on these islands in the Bahamas, and
Speaker 6: if I ever wanted to go there or stay there,
Speaker 6: I'd be welcome to he'd arrange it for me. Back
Speaker 6: in that time, I mean I wasn't married, I didn't
Speaker 6: own a homes, I didn't own a car.
Speaker 7: I had a sailboat.
Speaker 1: So the option of living on the island was something
Speaker 1: that made the job offer appealing to Leslie's sense of adventure,
Speaker 1: even if there seemed to be some strings attached.
Speaker 6: I don't know if at the first meaning he told
Speaker 6: me he was married or not, I'm not sure.
Speaker 7: And he also had.
Speaker 6: A farm or some kind of a farm up in Georgia.
Speaker 6: But again the hook for me was the islands and
Speaker 6: the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: And the hook for Chester was likely in part the
Speaker 1: very unique access the privileged patrician and bohemian somewhat sheltered
Speaker 1: beauty sitting before him could provide, in addition to her
Speaker 1: offshore tax shelter savvy. How much older was Chester than
Speaker 1: you were twenty years something like that. Yes, so you're
Speaker 1: barely in your thirties and he is a much more
Speaker 1: sophisticated worldly man. And it sounds like he is honing
Speaker 1: in on what makes you tick that first night at
Speaker 1: dinner and realizes that the islands that he owns would
Speaker 1: be a huge draw for you.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 1: Do you look back in retrospect and feel like he
Speaker 1: was reading you?
Speaker 7: You know, it's an interesting question, Lauren.
Speaker 6: I've come to recognize far too late in life that
Speaker 6: I don't think that way, and I didn't recognize that
Speaker 6: other people do think that way, that they size you
Speaker 6: up to see what they can get from you. I've
Speaker 6: never been that way. It's a flaw in one sense,
Speaker 6: because it leaves you vulnerable. So yes, he sized me
Speaker 6: up immediately. And it was with the islands. Darby and
Speaker 6: the Bahamas have an opportunity to go there, and I thought, sure, okay,
Speaker 6: why not?
Speaker 1: It's a hell of a piece of bait to have
Speaker 1: this island paradise that you can offer to people as
Speaker 1: a place to visit, a place to live that seems
Speaker 1: like it's completely protected and utopia. Yes, yes, I was
Speaker 1: struck the Bickerton, like Stanford, was at a point in
Speaker 1: her life where she was drifting a bit, sort of
Speaker 1: following her fate where it led, which made it much
Speaker 1: easier to get sucked into the orbit of someone with
Speaker 1: an agenda. Oddly enough, you were perfectly suited to take
Speaker 1: Chester up on the offer to go live on his island.
Speaker 6: Yes, a place like Darby and some of the out islands.
Speaker 6: It's a test of courage, it's a test of adventure,
Speaker 6: a test of intellect. It's a test of how you
Speaker 6: connect with nature.
Speaker 7: That's me.
Speaker 1: When did you do that? And how long did you
Speaker 1: live there in relative solitude?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 6: I brought my dog with me, my dope, i' mean
Speaker 6: pincher Cavena. So it was Cavena and there was another
Speaker 6: little dog there, a Mutt Island dog.
Speaker 7: And that was it. There was nobody there.
Speaker 6: To serve me or watch over me or any of that.
Speaker 6: But I knew I was capable of being able to
Speaker 6: exist that way, and it was again another adventure for me.
Speaker 1: Remember Leslie had taken her dog to Darby. It will
Speaker 1: play a major role in her testifying for the prosecution.
Speaker 1: In addition to accepting the challenge of living on the
Speaker 1: island and the job with him, Leslie Bickerton would also
Speaker 1: become romantically involved with Chester. All three of those things
Speaker 1: would come back to haunt her.
Speaker 6: I had not a clue of what I was walking into,
Speaker 6: but the draw was the Bahamas and the islands.
Speaker 1: Leslie was not naive and had a pretty immediate inkling
Speaker 1: that marijuana was Chester's likely livelihood.
Speaker 6: I didn't know he was involved with cocaine. If I
Speaker 6: had known that he was involved with cocaine smuggling and
Speaker 6: how extensive his operations were, and his involvement with the
Speaker 6: Colombian cartel and Central America and the FEDS, I wouldn't
Speaker 6: have touched him. I wouldn't have come near her with
Speaker 6: a ten foot pole, no way. He deliberately withheld all
Speaker 6: of that.
Speaker 1: But Leslie, in particular so marijuana smuggling as almost part
Speaker 1: of the adventurous spirit associated with the sailing set in
Speaker 1: the islands.
Speaker 6: The Bahamas has an interesting history. They were known for
Speaker 6: piracy in the Bahamas. These islands, I mean they're really small,
Speaker 6: They're not big like Jamaica or the Hawaiian Islands. So
Speaker 6: once upon a time, this is where the pirates would
Speaker 6: sort of hang out and go back and forth between
Speaker 6: the States and the Bahamas and Jamaica and Europe.
Speaker 1: Because they knew the lay of the land and anybody
Speaker 1: who was pursuing them would probably end up wrecked because
Speaker 1: they didn't understand the proper entry points and exit points exactly.
Speaker 6: And that legacy carried on, and I think it just
Speaker 6: really exploded again when you think about like the Vietnam War,
Speaker 6: the sixties, anti war, anti government, highly educated people dropping out,
Speaker 6: you know, the hippie movement, and there comes the marijuana
Speaker 6: in the seventies. And if you grew up sailing, I
Speaker 6: mean I grew up on the ocean and the other
Speaker 6: people that I know, there was always a sense of adventure.
Speaker 6: When you're sailing, you know what the weather's going to
Speaker 6: present to you. And so during that time period you
Speaker 6: had the marijuana. Okay, you had the hippie movement, this
Speaker 6: is before cocaine. Then you have this enclave of sailors
Speaker 6: people that are highly educated, anti establishment, and there comes
Speaker 6: the Bahamas and it's kind of a perfect storm.
Speaker 5: Every island in the Bahamas has its own unique personality,
Speaker 5: some untouched by civilization until recently, miles of unspoiled natural
Speaker 5: beauty here for you to explore, are thousands of islands
Speaker 5: and keys.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the perfect storm of this rogue frontier,
Speaker 1: which is easy to romanticize with the anti establishment game
Speaker 1: event where suddenly there's this gold rush, but it's marijuana,
Speaker 1: because at that time there were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who believed that it was just a limited window because
Speaker 1: marijuana was going to be legalized sooner rather than later,
Speaker 1: and if you were going to make money, that was
Speaker 1: the time to do it.
Speaker 6: And that's actually what drew a lot of the guys
Speaker 6: to Lamar, you know, the sailors, at least with the
Speaker 6: marijuana smuggling, that it was an event.
Speaker 7: Sure, it was like sure, why not?
Speaker 6: And I think they were clueless as to how they
Speaker 6: were being used and how it fit into a master
Speaker 6: plan that Lamar already had that none of us knew about.
Speaker 1: But while she was staying on Little Derby, Leslie became
Speaker 1: aware that Chester's smuggling was much more prolific and diversified
Speaker 1: than she initially thought.
Speaker 6: That was the first time Lamar flying the and into
Speaker 6: NASA to customs, well outside customs, and they all knew
Speaker 6: one another. The local guys knew Lamar quite well. That
Speaker 6: was my first indication that I'm not going through what
Speaker 6: I would call the normal procedures. In the Caymans, you
Speaker 6: went through customs, trick customs, that was a non issue.
Speaker 6: But the Bahamas, we just cleared through everything. I didn't
Speaker 6: have to go in line and show my past. I
Speaker 6: didn't have to show anything. That was my first indication that, well,
Speaker 6: this person that I'm with, Lamar Chester, there's a lot
Speaker 6: more to him than I realized from my first meetings
Speaker 6: with him.
Speaker 1: So you didn't even just get to skip the line.
Speaker 1: You never had to go through the line.
Speaker 7: I never had to go through it.
Speaker 1: And Chester wasn't just securing that preferential treatment with cash.
Speaker 7: He brought chickens.
Speaker 6: Lamar had chickens with him in crates and it was
Speaker 6: a matter of fact one another. We just swept right
Speaker 6: through and he gave the guys the live chickens that
Speaker 6: he brought in and cash.
Speaker 7: No big deal, right, which led me to look at.
Speaker 6: Then, Oh, this is a system that has already been
Speaker 6: in place for a while. And I knew then that, oh,
Speaker 6: this is somebody that's a lot bigger than I realized
Speaker 6: as far as power is concerned and presence in the
Speaker 6: Bahamas at that time. So that was my first clue, big.
Speaker 1: Clue, But more clues would come out her full force.
Speaker 1: In the late summer of nineteen eighty one, Leslie had
Speaker 1: departed the Darby Islands, but would be told her Doberman
Speaker 1: Covina would have to fly out on a later flight.
Speaker 6: There wasn't enough room, that's what was told to me.
Speaker 6: A small plane, and that, okay, small planes. I've been
Speaker 6: in a lot of small planes, so you know, okay, fine.
Speaker 1: And you figured you'd either go back and get the
Speaker 1: dog or they would bring the dog to you.
Speaker 7: Yep, exactly.
Speaker 6: So it's that sort of plans, Leslie.
Speaker 1: One that would become a bargaining chip for Chester when
Speaker 1: his adult son refused to return the dog.
Speaker 6: Not a clue, no hint that something was wrong, that
Speaker 6: this may have been planned in such a way, or
Speaker 6: after the fact, that this is the leverage that they
Speaker 6: had over me.
Speaker 1: It remains an emotional subject for Bickerton to this day.
Speaker 1: It was your kryptonite.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, and they knew that.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, because I upset because I knew that I
Speaker 6: wasn't going to get that dog back.
Speaker 7: He was holding it over me that the dog may
Speaker 7: or may not come.
Speaker 6: That's so awful because he just said, I know how
Speaker 6: much that dog means to you.
Speaker 1: Because she had significant knowledge into his now scrutinized finances,
Speaker 1: Bickerton believes Chester lured her to his Georgia farm with
Speaker 1: the promise the dog would be flown there, and also
Speaker 1: in the meantime she could help set up River Hills
Speaker 1: the college campsite. So all that narrative about out the
Speaker 1: camping site and turning it into a college thing. Looking back,
Speaker 1: do you think that was just some kind of excuse
Speaker 1: to keep you there?
Speaker 7: Yes, definitely. Because I was not on board with it.
Speaker 6: I had to go along with it, but I was uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: When Bickerton became impatient about the time it was taking
Speaker 1: to get her Doberman back, she was given another job
Speaker 1: and power of attorney for Chester and his wife to
Speaker 1: fly to the Grand Caymans.
Speaker 6: Both artists and Lamar signed a document and I've got
Speaker 6: the original document.
Speaker 7: It gave me the authority.
Speaker 6: To access their account down in the Cayman Islands and
Speaker 6: the bearer certificates to bring back to them.
Speaker 1: Which was tied with a real estate shell company, the
Speaker 1: Knee in Georgia.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, and I think a little bit more than that,
Speaker 6: knowing what the Cayman Islands was involved with. And we're
Speaker 6: not talking a little bank account. I mean we're talking
Speaker 6: the Cayman Islands and Smythe And that's what Euston was after,
Speaker 6: was Smythe.
Speaker 1: Smyth was the name on the Cayman Islands account and
Speaker 1: a bearer certificate. It's sort of like currency. If you
Speaker 1: hold it, it's yours, kind of like finding a coin
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk. It doesn't have to be validated to
Speaker 1: prove ownership. So by even acting as a courier, particularly
Speaker 1: an international one, Leslie Bickerton had become very much complicit
Speaker 1: in Chester's operations. Did you have any clue at that
Speaker 1: point when you went to get the barriers certificates and
Speaker 1: you returned that Lamar was actually under federal investigation.
Speaker 6: Not a clue, nothing, not even a hint. I had
Speaker 6: no idea that he was under investigation and I had
Speaker 6: no idea how big an operation he had, much less
Speaker 6: no idea that he was involved with the Colombian cartel
Speaker 6: with cocaine and then with Nick or Auguro and guns,
Speaker 6: all of it. I had not a clue. And so
Speaker 6: when he had a conversation with me, it was right
Speaker 6: around that time, during the summertime.
Speaker 7: I'm nineteen eighty one. I didn't see it coming.
Speaker 1: I just didn't that conversation would include the mention of
Speaker 1: a man named Clayton. To the best of your memory,
Speaker 1: can you take me to that conversation where you were,
Speaker 1: who was there, what he said, and how it impacted you.
Speaker 6: I remember it was either sitting in the truck of
Speaker 6: his car, but it was on the farm and was
Speaker 6: on the farm road. The conversation he had with me
Speaker 6: was that he was in trouble and that it involved
Speaker 6: some big people. I remember it being very short and
Speaker 6: very block and I didn't know these people either, And
Speaker 6: I think that's another reason why it took me by surprise,
Speaker 6: because I had never heard of these people. He had
Speaker 6: never talked about these people at all. So within this
Speaker 6: condensed conversation, he began telling me about a woman named Sibley,
Speaker 6: something to do with her selling boats to him, and
Speaker 6: that she was murdered and stucked in a chunk of
Speaker 6: her Mercedes. Just that alone, you're just like what if
Speaker 6: I entered into Like what the heck is what's going
Speaker 6: on here?
Speaker 7: It's just was surreal.
Speaker 6: I mean, can you imagine, just like he's just taking
Speaker 6: a walk down a road with somebody and you think
Speaker 6: that they're okay, you know, all right, and then hit
Speaker 6: you with something like that.
Speaker 7: I mean, it came out of nowhere. I just must
Speaker 7: have just like maybe five minutes.
Speaker 1: As difficult as it is, I want to go back
Speaker 1: to the Sibley Riggs and just try to recall as
Speaker 1: much of the specifics as he said about Sibley. But
Speaker 1: also of great interest to me is the snitch who
Speaker 1: he had murdered? Correct? Why how did he word that?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 6: I mean, obviously you know it was a long time ago.
Speaker 6: I mean, the first thing was about Sibley Riggs and
Speaker 6: that she was a threat and was found beaten and.
Speaker 7: Stuffed in the trunk of her Mercedes.
Speaker 6: And I thought, my god, I mean I had not
Speaker 6: a clue and I didn't even know who this person
Speaker 6: was except she was a woman. And then right after
Speaker 6: that was about this person, this man who was going
Speaker 6: to turn on him and had to get.
Speaker 5: Rid of him.
Speaker 1: So when you were in the pre trial hearing, you
Speaker 1: referred to that man you believed his name was Clayton,
Speaker 1: Ed Clayton, correct, Yes, And that would be the same
Speaker 1: man that Lamar implied had turned on him or was
Speaker 1: going to snitch on him and had to be gotten
Speaker 1: rid of.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 6: And I don't know who Ed Clayton is, you know,
Speaker 6: I had no interaction.
Speaker 7: I don't know what he did for Lamar, whether Lamar
Speaker 7: did it directly or indirectly.
Speaker 6: I mean, Lamar is connected with the Colombian cartel. Anyone
Speaker 6: who would be a threat to the Colombian cartel would be.
Speaker 7: Gotten rid of. And that's how you got rid of people.
Speaker 6: You dumped them in the everglades, you know, with the alligators,
Speaker 6: or with the crocodiles along the mangroves, and or you
Speaker 6: shoved them off a plane, you know, in the deep
Speaker 6: of the ocean. You never see them again. Real easy
Speaker 6: way to get rid of evidence. I mean my head
Speaker 6: was spinning, just spinning. I mean I didn't know what
Speaker 6: to do. I didn't know where to turn, just trying
Speaker 6: to process this information at the same time trying to
Speaker 6: figure out immediately without saying a word, right how I
Speaker 6: was going to get off that farm number one without
Speaker 6: disappearing there because he had his own bodyguard there who
Speaker 6: you wouldn't want to mess with. Believe me, this is
Speaker 6: like good old boy right out of Appalachia. There's some
Speaker 6: people that you can meet along the way in your
Speaker 6: life that you just know. It's just like the hair
Speaker 6: stands up in the back of your head and you
Speaker 6: just know that this is a very dangerous person.
Speaker 7: And that's the kind of person that Lamar had on
Speaker 7: the farm. At all times.
Speaker 6: I was scared for my life and I had to
Speaker 6: figure out how I was going to get out from
Speaker 6: underneath it.
Speaker 1: I filled Lesliean on the timeline of Clayton Williams and
Speaker 1: my theory that the person she recollected as Ed Clayton
Speaker 1: could be the same man. Clay Williams would have gone
Speaker 1: missing in September of nineteen eighty one and his body
Speaker 1: was found in October.
Speaker 6: So it was all happening this en period of time,
Speaker 6: this perfect storm in a horrific way. That summer and
Speaker 6: fall of nineteen eighty one, when everything started to fall apart.
Speaker 1: What do you think was his purpose in telling you
Speaker 1: about Sibley and Clay? Was it to control you, to
Speaker 1: intimidate you.
Speaker 6: I'd say more intimidation. It wasn't like he said to me,
Speaker 6: while I'm concerned about your welfare. It was more of
Speaker 6: an intimidation because of the way that it was said.
Speaker 6: It was implied to me that I was in danger.
Speaker 6: Not only I was in danger, but that I was
Speaker 6: a threat to other people.
Speaker 1: Wow. And until that point, Leslie Bickerton is adamant that
Speaker 1: she had no idea Chester was under indictment or that
Speaker 1: by serving as his courier with power of attorney, she
Speaker 1: just implicated her and a federal investigation.
Speaker 7: Just boom boom boom.
Speaker 6: And then about somebody that had been killed off, found
Speaker 6: him in the Everglades, dumped off in the Everglades with
Speaker 6: the alligators, and then about Pablo Escobar and about the
Speaker 6: CIA and the Feds. I mean, it was just like
Speaker 6: wham bang bang bam, and there were contracts out on
Speaker 6: his life and contracts that I was also in danger,
Speaker 6: and then just sort of left me there.
Speaker 1: And at that moment Leslie Bickerton's life forever.
Speaker 6: Changed and That's where I talk about like walking into
Speaker 6: the Devil's den, my god.
Speaker 1: On the next murder in Miami, a substantial break in
Speaker 1: the Clay Williams murder case could confirm Leslie's worst fears.
Speaker 6: I had no idea what I was walking into that courtroom, or.
Speaker 1: It could all just be part of a bigger plane.
Speaker 4: Termed to me, looked right at me and said, let's
Speaker 4: go feed somebody to the gators.
Speaker 1: And another prolific smuggler shares his story of being set up.
Speaker 4: It was a show trial. He mean to end half
Speaker 4: the things that happened, or was said that the trial
Speaker 4: just were made up out of thin air.
Speaker 1: Murder Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Lauren Bright Pacheco, Taylor Chacoine, and Phil Stamford. Written by
Speaker 1: Phil Stamford and Lauren Bright Pacheco, Audio editing and sound
Speaker 1: design by Nicholas Harder, Evan Tyer, and Taylor Chacoine, featuring
Speaker 1: music by Evan Tyre, Phil Mayer, John Murchison, and Taylor Chacoine.
Speaker 1: Archival elements provided by Film Archives Incorporated. For more podcasts
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