Hunting Pablo Escobar – Stephen Murphy DEA Special Agent

this is things police see firstand accounts with your host Steve Gold welcome to the podcast that interviews act and retired police officers about their most intense bizarre and sometimes humorous moments on the job it is I Old Gingerface here with you once again thank you everybody thank you for joining us thank you for checking out the podcast and finding it thank you for the binge listening that happens i really appreciate that thank you for all the reviews that I get that is awesome um don’t forget also Cops in the News is a live show that we do twice a month um you go to the website thanksb.com and and join the mailing list um you can watch them and then the the replays are half one out of the two is on Thank you my sweet love my wife brought me some coffee um and then the second one of the month is Patreon only so all that to say I love you guys and thank you for being here um very exciting episode been waiting a while a while to get this guys on this guy on very busy man has his own things going on has his own podcast has a a massive career he had with the DEA he started um six years in a small town in West Virginia six years as a railroad copper and then did 28 years with the sorry 26 years with the DEA as a special agent and uh was involved in the uh capture of Pablo Escobar with his partner Javar Pñena without further ado let me bring on the great Steve Murphy steve steve thank you very much man i appreciate you all the good comments just tell me where to send the check and I’ll send it all right brother um thank you for coming on i’m finally we glad we finally got it um the date pinned down and we could do it pretty common as you know as uh your podcast uh game of crimes um scheduling people and uh a lot of us have a lot of stuff going on so it’s nice to finally be able to get you here it’s an honor to be here with you it’s uh I was was checking you out here recently and and uh you’ve got a pretty storied career as well your story is probably better than mine no I wouldn’t say that i’m I more had like a midlife uh wanderless crisis and moved to California than moved back and um I don’t regret any of it but um I am happy to be back in mass uh here with fine men and women of law enforcement like you on the on the podcast um you I didn’t know this about you but of course I did a little bit digging when you were going to come on and I saw that you were a a small town cop in West Virginia which I never I don’t know when I hear DEA I always assume especially someone make makes the big cases and stuff i’m like I’ll probably went right in as DEA or did like a short stint and then was like I want to be DEA i got to get out of this cop job but not you you did 12 years um in police work first so West Virginia was it was it a tiny town or Yeah it was the town of Bluefields uh the very southern tip of West Virginia there’s actually a Bluefield Virginia that’s a sister city there um maybe I think back then maybe 20 22,000 people so we had a 35man department u honestly maybe one two murders a year some years no murders you know so uh I think the biggest challenge in that department though was a lot of hillbillies would come out of the mountains on the weekends yeah and everybody’s got a gun yeah a gun and they like to drink and when they’re drinking they like to fight so that was the big thing back then and unfortunately I’m I’ve got a lot of arthritis now and hands and and different parts of my bodies because of all that but you know what when you’re a young guy it was a lot of fun yeah and did you start were you did you like have a onetrack mind for police work when you started like I’m just going to be a cop and and do a career and then kind of got enticed to DA or your interest in it grew how did it work out well since I was a little kid all I ever wanted to do was be a cop you know it’s uh um it’s not like I cop come from a police family my dad was a Southern Baptist minister my mom was a bookkeeper coal miners the men in the family i’m first my cousins and I the male cousins were first generation non-coal miners so um just I got in trouble with the cops when I was about 10 years old down in Tennessee and and uh camping out one night trying to break in the house and got caught and they said “Well Murf you got said “Boys you got a you got a decision to make tonight you can either go with us and spend the rest of your lives in prison or we can take you home to your parents.” And we looked at each other and said “Take us to jail.” Of course they took us home right yeah yeah that’s great and when you um then you transitioned to train cop was that did you just get an interest in that or was it a better pay or what was the deal there you know the my pay almost doubled so as a city cop I was making I started out at $9,600 a year in 1975 uh I was working all the offduty jobs I could get i was working all the overtime I could get i got the local state college i got their sports contract for basketball um worked for one of the firemen as an electrician’s helper even sold Amway wow just trying to make ends meet and here comes the railroad you know and it it doubled my pay i had to move to Norfick Virginia so I actually lived down in Virginia Beach which is always good honestly it was about the money at that okay and and how did the railroad work there was it um was it state regulated or federal or or was it private uh the railroads are federally reg regulated but so I started out with Norfick and Western Railroad and then they were purchased by Southern or they merged now it’s known as Norfick Southern Railroad and my first couple years I was a glorified security guard sitting on the end of a pier down in downtown Norphick where they loaded the coal ships but you had you know billion dollar equipment on there so they wanted a full-time guard down there basically so but oh my gosh check people coming in and out and got paid pretty well for it but I hate I hated it so much oh I bet yeah boring um yeah we just had a um last month or two months ago we had a a train derail in our one of our towns and I was on duty first one there and um honestly don’t know much of anything about trains train police like I’ve been on Amtrak before and Amtrak police and then so in my mind I I’m first of all I’m going there going code and I’m like in my mind you know you’re trying to get things sorted like what are you going to do when you get there and I’m thinking like a train I never thought in my wildest dreams in my career I’d go to a train derailment you know so I’m thinking like who the hell has authority on these tracks and I I know ultimately the federal government does but a lot of these regional train companies have they contract police or they have their own invest they have their own police and Mhm but so I’m I have no idea I get there luckily it was a um a uh cargo train so there was the engineers were fine and there was like 10 or 14 tracks so one was blocking the road and it was pretty crazy but then we’re trying to I’m dealing with dispatch trying to be like who is um once the scene’s safe and all that i’m like “Well I need somebody to respond to book book a train accident like to to obviously I’m going to do a report but they got to have an investigator who comes down here and they they finally I get dispatched on the phone and they’re like “Well we don’t this company that took over these rails doesn’t have their own doesn’t contract a police department.” And I’m like “All right.” And there’s no loss of life or limb or even really not much property damage you hit a telephone pole so feds aren’t coming so I go “Well I don’t have a book for for booking train accidents.” I’m like “All right.” So I talked to the state police DOT i think “Okay maybe the DOT they do have certified train cops they’re not going to do it.” So finally what turned what happened was the company themselves the general manager and the assistant general manager showed up and I go “Who is who is documenting who’s booking this train accident they said “We are.” I said “Okay so the company itself is going to book its own train accident.” He’s like “Yeah.” Okay okay go for it man it was so weird their priorities are getting that uh those wrecked cars on back on the rails because it’s blocking the train you know blocking few other trains from coming through so there’s there’s there’s not a lot of concern about law enforcement right to be quite honest with you it’s you’re dealing with corporate America that’s what it is i’m you know I’m not ditching the railroad cops because they do a fantastic job but that’s the truth yeah and they don’t know what’s know what’s crazy i sent a um patrolman out to the engineers to check on them and to uh get their IDs refused to give their um their driver’s licenses really company policy they gave their their railroad licenses but would not give their IDs and I I ended up calling them and asking what’s going on and they said “Well in the past we’ve had derailments like this or accidents.” And when the engineers gave their licenses it impacted their private automobile insurance really because you wrecked a train yep they said they the company’s policy is now engineers do not give their identification for wreck related things to the police wow and I heard that and I didn’t know of any law off at the top of my head that said they had to i never dealt with the train so I’m like “All right give me your name and date of birth i can look your license up.” You know it’s not not a big deal but I thought that was so weird anyways it’s a dumb train story and I got I got a great guest on here i’m blabbing on a stupid train accident um Steve can you take us way back to when you were a young copper just starting out the first time you were called the first like hot call you went to the the first call you had an adrenaline dump on oh you know it wasn’t a call it was I’m riding with a training officer a guy named Tom Mustard who was eventually killed in a car wreck tom’s one of the gruffest guys you’d ever meet former military you know um it was not unusual for him to get out on a call with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and nice uh a tough guy he was a tough guy though he would clean your clock in a heartbeat this is back in the mid70s so it’s a little bit different than it is mustache oh yeah yeah so we all had you always had the porn star i still got the porn star law enforcement partner right there that’s it but uh so we’re on he finally lets me drive one night you know because I’m I’m fresh out of state police academy and all that and and u we’re it’s I don’t know it’s probably 2 o’clock in the morning he and I were working a 7 to three shift so we’re going to get off at 3:00 a.m and we’re going down this residential street and this Cadillac’s coming at us head on and there’s I mean there’s no other cars at like three cars out there and we’re following a car was Cadillac comes over and sideswipes the car in front of us then comes after me and I I run up on the sidewalk and then keeps driving so boy I whip that car around and you know Tom’s like “Turn around and go get that person.” He’s not excited at all and I am you know rookie in charge here you know I’m behind the wheel i you know do the U-turn i’m spinning tires and raising smoke and throwing gravels everywhere and chase this person down finally get him to pull over and it was this older lady driving all dressed up had a fur coat on and jewelry and all that long story short turns out she was the wife of one of the principal members of the leading law firm in our city so they were a lot of civil but also a lot of criminal litigators in there as well and it just so happened her brother-in-law was a district court judge in our county so I bring her in the station tom br Tom Tom’s like “Rookie you got this one.” And it just leaves me so uh she refuses to take a breathalyzer which is automatic revocation of your driver’s license for your West Virginia back that time and uh so we’re processing her and and the next thing I know here comes the police the chief the chief of police at you know 3:00 in the morning uh oh I’m like “Oh what are you doing here?” And he’s like “Mr murphy do you know who you have here?” And I’m like “Yeah I’m not gonna mention her name because I’m not going to embarrass her she’s probably passed away by now anyway but he said “Uh this is who her family is.” Like “Okay then yeah what’s makes them different than me?” Except they got a whole lot more money but uh so then anyway charge her they release her on a on a personal recnissance bond somebody comes up and picks her up takes her home um go to court go to city court on these charges and I’ve charged her with DUI and in the meantime a couple of sergeants came to me and they’re like “Hey her husband’s law firm hires us off duty to serve papers.” Oh boy could you see uh see a way clear to maybe reduce some charges here and you know I’m a rookie i’m still learning that and you know I was very immature at that age i’m 19 years old probably but I had learned to listen to the older guys and I said “Sure guys whatever you need you just you tell me what to do here i’ll do it.” And they’re like “Well drop it to Reckless and drunk in public.” Okay so I go to court go to city court she doesn’t even show up you know and one of one of the law one of the members of the law firm shows up to represent her and our city judge is like “Uh Mr murphy you you going to represent yourself today?” And because the city prosecutor didn’t show up usually the chief sits in and he didn’t show up oh man and I’m thinking just bend over and take it now you know and you ought to dry so he says uh he says “Well what do you want to do here?” And I said “Well your honor before we get started if I could I’d like to reduce the charges to reckless driving and and public intoxication.” He’s like “You can’t do that you charged this individual you’ve got to pursue your case you know and like okay I tried.” So I present all my evidence just like I told you and when I finish the judge looks over at the defense attorney and his name his first name was Norris he goes “Well Norris what do you think?” I don’t think there’s enough evidence to to convict anybody here you know and of course the attorney realizes you know he’s kind of embarrassed because of the way the the judge is acting and he says I think we’ll reduce these charges to reckless driving at public intoxication i’m going WTF and there was a detective in there that was sitting there for the chief roger was in there and he’s just shaking his head he’s looking at me and I’ve got this dumbfounded look on my face and he’s just snickering and then the judge is like “Oh well Norris let me introduce you this is Officer Murphy he’s one of our newer guys here got a great future ahead of him i’m here in the police department working for the city of Blueville West Virginia.” And the whole time I’m thinking I can’t even sit down that one hurt when you shoved it up in there you know so that was kind of my introduction to smalltown police work and talk about good old boy Network right there huh oh my goodness you know you always heard about it and and I used to read all kinds of police books Serpico and all those different books you know were out uh uh what was the the choir boys or choir practice whatever it was Jose Wall wrote and then you this happens to you it’s very disillusioning at that point yeah that sucks takes a win out of your sp sales especially when you’re new and I mean and they that stuff still does go on they’re just a lot They’re just a lot better at it now they don’t talk about it in open court really they just Yeah cases disappear or what as long as they’re minor you know um yeah that’s that sucks just leaving you there 19 years old yeah well you know I mean it continued throughout my career so there’s a couple more instances where you you think you’re going to do something and and uh I mean we’ve even had a couple cases where the White House called and said “No you’re not.” Oh wow so that was later in my career with DEA yeah I can see that for sure um I’ve had guys on recently that talked to me after we were done recording and obviously I can’t tell you any details but um real shady stuff having to do with like executive officers of the FBI and kind of putting their neck on people even even threatening cops you know like through back chains like threatening them and their families and pretty pretty uh scary and gross you know gross stuff like that but um yeah yeah that’s kind of I always feel bad for the FBI guys man because there’s so many so many good FBI agents out there and they’ll be the first to tell you that they’ll it’s the Washington part is the poison the Washington offices yep there’s you know as a city cop I’ve uh had three different instances in six years where people filed complaints against me for you know they start a fight with you and then they want to complain because you kicked their butt right and they file civil rights violations against you at the bureau and and I agree with you the bureau we all you know every cop in the United States picks on the bureau it’s just this you know it’s it’s a good nature competition um they’ll pick right back on you they don’t lay down just take it you know but occasionally you run into some jerks but you know DEA every agency I’ve dealt with there’s jerks um but there was one where they wanted to question me and they were going to they had to come out of Charleston down to Bluefield which is you know it’s about 100 miles and I said “Listen I’m going to be in a training class at the Western State Police Academy why don’t you just come over and have lunch and and I’ll treat you guys to lunch and I’ll answer all your questions.” So um they did not show up i’m like “Okay.” They waited until the end of the week and we’re out we’re outside i don’t even remember what this training class was but I with 50 cops from around the state state and local guys and you see these two shoot suits show up in the parking lot everybody goes “Oh there’s the feds.” And they they walk over to the common night’s office next thing you know here comes the common with them walking out to our group and like “Murf come here man guys need to talk to you.” And no you know how we are everybody go “Oh Murf’s going to town they’re going to come.” Everybody loved it and so I walked over and that was the two FBI agents to come to talk to me i’m like “Well I was expecting you guys on Tuesday i was going to treat you to lunch.” They’re like “Well you know we just got we got busy.” I said ‘ So your solution to that was come out here and embarrass me in front of police officers from all over the state of West Virginia rather than coming and meeting me privately so we could discuss this oh you know don’t be like that we have to put you down as uncooperative you put me down any way you want to there Jackass and they like were you going to make a statement i said you got a copy of my report they said oh yeah we got it i said I stand on my report see you yeah smart so but but you know that’s um you tell the story and that’s certainly not an indictment of the entire bureau because I’ve got some fantastic friends on there guys that you know I’d stand toe-to-toe with and go in a door with them so it’s uh just we always run into some jerks don’t we yep it’s true and that’s the smart thing to do too and any police union will tell you that if you’ve done a report and someone else is investigating your incident keep your mouth shut you don’t talk because alls you can do is contradict the report you wrote by mistake you can give some little detail and they’ll go “Well and you know you gave this other statement.” You know what I mean it’s nothing good is it’s not gonna help you it’s just not gonna help you oh well but you know it’s all in the past it’s all in the past yeah yeah yeah um Steve can you describe a strange or uh really bizarre thing you’ve dealt with in your in your career in law enforcement just one oh better grip brother 38 years um well I think this is a little strange because I really didn’t know what DEA was when I joined it but 12 years of law enforcement the most the largest amount of cocaine powder cocaine I’d ever seen in my life was 2 ounces so we’re talking a baggie you know about like that yep my first undercover I get to Miami in 1987 and 1988 go undercover with a couple of DEA guys on a 53 foot Hatter Sport fisherman yacht we go to the Turks and Cikos Islands which quite honestly I’ve never even heard of nice we get down there and we’ve got two pilots that fly in from Cuba that are going and I’m I’m the new guy i’m just I’m the gopher i’m not a case agent you know this I’m working with a senior agent on all this and they they land in Providence Alice they run come down to the end of the runway they turn around the back door opens we’re over there with some other kind with some under other undercover provo cops and they start throwing these green duffel bags out and when they get it finish they close the door they go up they refuel take off and go back to Cuba so that was 400 kilos of cocaine so I went from 2 ounces to 880 pounds of coke and you know what Steve i was addicted to cocaine at that point just a different way that was the most bizarre i never I couldn’t even fathom that there was that much cocaine in the world at one time i mean this is how naive I was hitting Miami in the late 80s but it was a blast it was that case was my senior partner worked that case to prove that the Castro brothers were allowing Cuba to be used as a trans shipment point for cocaine coming out of Columbia into South Florida they had on our way over we hit an a submerged reef and bent one of the props on the on the boat so we limped into Nassau dea Airwing flew a prop over from Miami they made a phone call and the US Navy sent a subtender to Nassau then sent two divers over and replaced the prop on our boat we had Air Force Awax plane up radar plane tracking that plane coming out of Cuba to Provo and then tracking back into Cuba and here’s this small town country cop and I’ll be the first to tell you I’m a redneck hillbilly i’m fine with it i know what I am right i like it but I’m thinking we can control the Navy and the Air Force and these these sovereign nations to come out and do what we’d asked them to do i couldn’t believe it i mean it was I was I was hooked that’s what it was i was just hooked and I never looked back the next 26 years was just a blast and a blur that’s incredible especially the 80s with all the drugs oh my gosh if you couldn’t make a drug case in South Florida then you need to find a different occupation because it was literally falling out of the skies and washing up on the beach crazy yeah that I mean I’d feel the same way i mean I I’ve only ever seen street level amounts of of drugs you know if I saw a pallet full of cocaine I would be like blown away this is insane i I was I mean so I got a there was a a story that precedes that where I was going with my senior partner his name was Gene Frankart called Gino so Gene and I are going Gino and I are going to meet these two informants and I’m thinking and I’m I haven’t been on the job now but maybe two months out of the academy and you know he says “All right come on we’re going to go meet these guys.” So we called him Chich and Chong it was an old white guy and an old Asian guy and so I’m going out to Jean’s car and I think man we’re gonna He’s got wonder what kind of fancy sports car he’s got we get this old ass old mobile it’s broken down i mean he had to move clothes out of the front seat so I could have a police sit and I’m thinking well I guess okay you know I guess we got to blend in so are we going to the Intercontinental Hotel or where are we meeting these guys we’re going to Denny’s on 36th Street over there next to the airport brother okay so now I’ve never met these two informants we’re sitting there and waiting and waiting and waiting and you know typical informants are always late and finally these two got two old guys come walking up and I just kind of eye them and I just kind I’m watching them in my peripheral vision because I don’t know who they are and they’re going to sit down i’m like “What the hell you doing here?” You know you’re looking at them and that was Chich and Chum and I’m like okay you got to be kidding me now these two old farts are are high-speed low drag cocaine informance for the DEA and so initially they were talking about 500 kilos we co we Gino and I get in the car to leave and we’re on the way back to the office and he says “Murf what do you think?” And I started laughing i said “Man those guys are full of crap aren’t they Gino?” He said “Why do you say that?” I said “They’re talking about 500 kilos there’s not that much cocaine in the world is there and he hits some brakes looks over at me he’s like “Where are you from?” So it was uh extremely naive going into that situation but just fell in love with it and had a blast i’m not kidding just had a blast in my whole career proforce Law Enforcement the best damn cop shop in the nation whether you are purchasing for entire agency or an individual officer looking to buy firearms or duty gear these guys are the best in the biz with law enforcement exclusive pricing ProForce Law Enforcement is a place you want to be buying your guns and duty gear they carry all the top industry brands and the guys and gals that work there understand exactly what law enfor law enforcement officers need as a listener of this show you get access to exclusive pricing on the gear you depend on every day visit tps.proforceline.com for special deals on optics duty gear and tactical accessories that aren’t available anywhere else um really really good deals on this the link for that will be in the show notes you can also visit their showroom in Prescott Arizona or store in Brea California to get hands-on with the gear or shop nationwide at proforceonline.com their dedicated law enforcement support team is always ready at 1 800 36758-55 thank you Proforce that’s awesome man when you got in when you transition from being a cop to DEA what made you bite on it well as a railroad cop there was a a new cop came in new railroad cop Pete Ramy one of my dearest friends and still is big man big mountain of a man it was a Virginia state trooper had worked on a DEA task force out of Ron Oak Virginia and he would he would every once in a while at least once a week he and I would get together and just ride around he he might stay over late after his shift when I was leaving him and and we’d ride around for a few hours and just talk and uh during that time I’m back in Bluefield and this is where I’d been a cop so I still know all the cops there you know we’re all close friends and we’re going and getting coffee in the middle of the night and things like that and I hear I’m out at the main building there in blue for the railroad and I hear gunshots just a couple blocks away and you know being the nosy people we are I had to go investigate and there’s a police officer on the street exchanging gunshots with a guy in the third floor building so that guy’s got the high ground on him shooting down on the cop and there’s a guy laying on the sidewalk that’s already been shot so I I make my way over to the cop and you know hey man what’s going on and he’s like “Well that guy up there shot that guy down there.” And when I’m trying to get him to surrender because he keeps trying to kill that guy because he’s laying on the sidewalk but he’s still alive he said “Every time he comes to the window I shoot at him he shoots back at me.” And I said “Okay you got help on the way.” And he’s like “Oh shit.” He hadn’t even called for backup yet oh yeah tunnled so I’m like “All right you know get help on the way i’m going to go drag that guy in a recess doorway.” So I ran over and cuz this guy was he was shooting a 44 Magnum down and what happened Oh my gosh is this guy up here in the apartment came home and caught this guy in bed with his wife i This guy’s running out this guy shoots him in the butt so you know the 44 packaged them all jeez you know you can’t make this stuff up right so uh anyway we Yeah we exchanged gunshots and all that and finally the guy surrenders no nobody got hit other than the guy that was in bed with the wife so killed that building dead in hell but you know we didn’t hit any bodies and so I the next morning I help him process the crime scene and witness statements and all that stuff and and the next morning Sunday morning I called my chief about 6:30 and reported I was in a shooting and he’s like he just comes unglued he’s like “How did you got involved in a shooting what happened?” And and I said “Well you know the police got in shooting.” I went and backed him up boy he got ticked he’s like “You stay right there i’m on my way.” And I’m like you were a railroad cop at the time yeah okay but I’ve got statewide jurisdiction in West Virginia and Virginia is the way it worked so he comes in and he is just matter matter than a wet hint man he is chewing me out and I’m looking at him i’m like I what are you talking about a police officer needed help and I went to help him his dad had nothing to do with railroad business you opened us up to liability and all this other stuff and gross really ticked me off and he’s like give me your weapon so I at that time I had a little snub-nose Smith and Wesson Model 15 revolver so I pulled my weapon out and unloaded it and handed it to him he’s like “I can’t believe you unloaded the weapon.” I’m like “Chief you never hadn’t loaded weapon to anybody you that’s basic firearms 101 you know.” He’s like “Well how many rounds did you shoot how am I going to know?” And I said “Do you think I shot rounds and then didn’t then didn’t reload i’m walking around with an empty gun.” So he said “Where’s those rounds at?” And I said “They’re in my pocket.” You know so I pulled the casings out and gave them to him and it went on for about an hour and finally he said “Listen,” he said “I’m going to get your job over this you your business going up there i said “Chief I’m the only railroad cop on duty for 26 counties when I need help who do I call?” Yeah guys so he’s like “Get out of here.” And I said “Hey before I go just so you know given the same set of circumstances I will respond the same way see you good for you.” So he tried to get me fired luckily the higher-ups in the railroad police had been police officers because our chief had never been a real cop uh city gave me accommodation big deal on the news the TV station and the local newspaper and all that so uh but I thought you know if they’re not going to do anything and that’s his reaction I can’t work for somebody like this so um that’s when Pete started telling me about DEA and I just got I’ve always been interested in narcotics cases so um I decided well you know what if they’re not going to do anything to him I’m not going to stay with this job so I finished my college degree took me 11 years to get that four-year piece of paper you know I’m a little slow learner but uh got my degree and applied for DEA and um never looked back good for you man wow that I mean talk about having a whole career before your DEA career yeah it was this you know the sad thing is those 12 years none of that applied towards retirement oh that sucks yeah the feds retire earlier though right you can get more money sooner or well if if you you can retire after 25 years at any age in federal law enforcement or you can retire at 20 years how’d that go 20 years at age 50 what’s the percentage they give you at 25 it was let’s say you get 2% per year of your base pay for the first 20 years and then 1% for any years over 20 and then if you’ve got medical time left uh you know medical leave they’ll buy that back from you also and it applied so I got an extra 1% out of that so what’s that 20 it’s 40 46 47% of my base pay oh wow that uh I thought it would be better than that well it’s a three-prong thing because you have to pay into the uh thrift savings plan which is like a government 401k and then you also qualify for social security because you pay you have to pay in social security oh you do so when Yeah so when I take my retirement check and my social security check those two together are Oh wow that’s plenty of money for my wife and I to live on and then you know your 401k um just I’ve got it in investments we try to never touch that wow i didn’t know that’s really really interesting i didn’t know that yeah because for all of us law enforcement on the state and and county and local level it’s we don’t pay into social security but I guess federal employees they make you yeah yeah that that changes the whole retirement uh idea then it does and that’s why you know when when when Washington starts talking about doing something with social security you start getting antsy yeah yeah i don’t blame you geez yeah i think we get after 32 years we get 80% but you know you really got to be because they don’t count overtime or detail like side jobs so you either need to work at a place that pays really well or be like a lieutenant or chief or you know something something up high up there to get uh like a livable salary or be diligent and have your house paid off and all that but who wants to do that that’s no fun yeah money i got to spend money other places podcast equipment um there you go Steve so fascinating early career um you switch over to DEA and of course um the whole Pablo Escobar Midian case is is incredible i’ll be honest with you um I don’t I know cur my my knowledge of it is cursiary it’s what everybody else knows i haven’t I’m not I haven’t gone deep on it i know a lot of people have a lot of like intimate knowledge about it i think it would be good for this interview not to over investigate it because a lot of people it is famous but a lot of people that are going to listen to this only know what I know so can you just tell us a little bit about Pablo Escobar and what he was doing in about the man himself cuz like we were talking beforehand you know I’ve read about just the Wikipedia stuff about him and I’ve seen the you know the um Narcos and Netflix and your project there and and um even like in the the Entourage at HBO series they had um he was the main star of that was playing Pablo Escobar in Medie and a movie they were making so it’s it’s in the culture people know about it right but to me you see Pablo Escobar and you just think automatically has to be a maniacal bad guy because these drug lords are psychotic but then he did other stuff like he built schools and donated money and like was that you know was that just was that just him um being smart because just because you’re psychotic doesn’t mean you’re stupid he wants local support because that will protect him and it did protect him when they went to come get him he built his own prison and lived it and escaped it and all that so uh all that to say can you just give us like an overview of Pablo Escobar what he was doing and how he got involved so this guy started out excuse me started out as stealing hubcaps and gravestones out of cemeteries and then they’d sand blast the names off and resell them so he’s he’s a he’s a petty criminal he’s uh he eventually gets involved in a drug deal where a guy just needs help a guy named Estreo and I think it was 17 kilos or something this is back in the 80s he goes and helps him and realizes how much money he can make off of this so he goes and kills Restreo well Pablo has no remorse no guilt feelings you know he doesn’t have a conscience yeah so he he really got into the cocaine business smuggling um cocoa paste or cocoa leaves coming in from Bolivia and Peru into Colombia and he was doing black market things as well he you know he’s making a buck anywhere he could once he realized how much money he could potentially make out of that and he realized that hey the gringoes up in the United States will pay big bucks for this this is where he he really started to grow and the reason that people would not mess with him is because he would kill him you know that kind of sends a message that’s a different business profile right kind of like Whitey Bulier this extreme violence exactly so what that led to is Pablo became the world’s first naroterrorist and a naroterrorist basically is just a a a nar narcotics trafficker who employs terroristic activities in his illegal business so he became the world’s most wanted fugitive he built his business up that he was responsible for as much as 80% of the world’s cocaine damn i mean think think about that Steve i mean you and I both had side hustles as cops wouldn’t you like to have 80% of whatever your side hustle is yeah absolutely you would have stopped then would you no you must have been one of the richest men in the world at that time he is still the richest uh drug trafficker that’s ever been with the estimated wealth as high as $30 billion and in comparison uh Wen El Chapo Guzman the Mexican his his estimated wealth was 4 billion and Tablo’s 30 billion so it’s a huge difference there um so he always represented himself to be a man of the people they wanted to represent the poor people because he did grow up very poor his dad was a dirt farmer his mom was a school teacher and as he gained this wealth he needed an army to protect him because the Cali cartel was ticked off at him everybody’s ticked off at Pablo because he was getting too big and the government was mad at him so he hired as many as 500 Sakarios to protect him so he’s got his own little army there right what’s a Sakario it’s an ass it’s just a Spanish word for assassin or murderer so that’s his that’s his protectors and they let me tell you he’ll sacrifice them in a heartbeat to save himself and so as these sakarios are dying off he would go into these poor communities and he would build uh communas he would build uh housing apartments for and let people live in them for free had electricity had running water had a lock on the door these are people who were living on the edge of a trash dump so you know what their opinion of it is going to be this this is our savior right yeah they love him and he he built medical clinics he built soccer fields he would give money away he’d give food away all good things but when he needed replacements for the sakarios that had died for him where do you think he went right back in those poor communities and here’s the sad part of that whole thing is he might go in and I mean they would he’d put the word out all these these young people would show up and he would hug them and kiss them and you know and and he’s he’s got a sakario’s giving money out and all that stuff and um he’d say you know my people Pablo needs a hundred people who are willing to come and kill for Pablo who are willing to die for Pablo and the sad thing is you might have 400 these young people we’re talking 13 to maybe 21 years old wow so he at least he wasn’t wasn’t mincing words he wasn’t doing the old switcheroo he was telling him straight up I need you to kill some people yep and so um instead of being you know a lot of people say like say he’s a Robin Hood type personality yeah I read that yeah he’s a master manipulator because he went and manipulated all those people you know there was there were there was one guy that Javier helped the Columbia National Police arrest this kid was 15 years old he was on a dance floor there they went in and got him had to fight him had a gun in his waistband got him back to the police station they’re talking to him and he opens up and he said uh he said “Yeah.” He said “I work for Pablo.” He said “I’m my life is dedicated to killing for Pablo and dying for Pablo.” He said “I I won’t live to be past I’ll be I’m 15 i’ll be lucky if I make it to 20 21 years old.” And he said “Right now Pablo’s offering $100 for every police officer we killed.” He said “I’ve already killed I’ve already killed 10 cops myself 15 years old.” Wow and and how we were asking him said ‘Well what do you do how do you do that he said ‘You just find a uniform cop out on the street you wait till he’s got his back turned i walk up and right in the back of the head he said ‘I killed as many as three in one day there’s an address we go to i get 300 bucks i get $100 so Javier asked he said “What do you do with the money?” And he said “Uh most of it goes to my mom because she’s living in one of Pablo’s apartments.” He said “I want enough money for beer and new tennis shoes and other than that.” He said “That’s my life.” Damn just so he manipulated these young people into they have no future they know they’re going to die damn reminds you reminds me of the kids in Africa you see like shooting the AK-47s they’re like seven years old that type of thing yeah boo Haram and all those terroristic groups over there unbelievable that is scary man yeah so I mean he’s um smart what he was doing he was building that buffer around him and I mean the government had to be afraid of him he’s if he had that much wielding that much power and influence they were he I mean he was threatening everybody he would he would offer payoffs to start with and if that didn’t work then I mean there’s a documented instance where uh in Colombia a magistrate is the head of a criminal investigation okay so they’re investigating Pablo for whatever crime it is and he has a couple of his sakario go in and meet the judge and they just kind of forced their way in the office and judge is trying to get the hell out of my office you know and they say sir let us talk to you first we represent Pablo Escobar paulo Escobar is asking that you dismiss the charges on him and in exchange here’s $50,000 cash US cash you know the judge is like “Get the hell out of my office.” You know this it’s outrageous that you would consider this and all this stuff and well they’re just before we go can we show you some pictures and they pull out a big manila envelope and they pull out a picture of the judge’s wife and children coming out of their house a picture of their of his mother and father coming out of their house or coming out of church or wherever maybe a picture of their kids at school it’s like you know this could be bad for you you please accept the money the judge kicked them out did the right thing in our opinion you know that would be the right thing for us to do the next day they killed the the guy’s whole family killed his parents and killed his dog and then killed him oh yeah what do you do with that moral dilemma you know exactly exactly and and so it’s easy you know to sit back and judge people for the decisions they make but when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes and that’s your family what would you do yeah yeah you gota I don’t even know if you could make it out of town because they’re probably watching you probably probably yeah once that type of stuff start is allowed to happen then um the gloves are off and there’s no there’s no legal system left to punish him i mean that’s he was so we had this thing called the the search block and this is uh there was one before he surrendered to his customuilt prison and then after he escaped the search block version two came out and the head was a Colombian police officer Colonel Ugo Martinez who is a true Colombian hero i mean this was our boss in Medí when we Javier and I lived up there for 18 months i’m just the utmost respect for this man pablo and he and he and the colonel hated each other and I mean Pablo knew we were listening to his phones he’d pick up the phone and we’d record it we’d be in the Columbia National Police because we didn’t have any jurisdiction down there we’re just supporting everything but he’s on there Carl Martinez I’m going to come and kill you i’m going to blow up the the apartment building where your family lives your whole family is going to be wiped out there’ll be no history of the Martinez family i mean just unbelievable threats and then the apartment complex where the colonel and his wife lived in in Bogota all the other apartment people put a petition together and asked Martinez to move because they were afraid that Pablo would blow up their building so during the second manhunt he actually had to move his family into the police base where we were living up in Medí to protect them yeah that’s where I’d want him i mean geez how could you even how could you even work knowing that your you know your family’s home could be blown up that guy’s got balls of steel he’s uh well he’s he’s passed on now he he made it up to General and Columbia National Police that’s you know one thing I I that Javier and I we always try to point out in every presentation we do every podcast interview whatever it is is true who the true heroes are of that entire investigation and it’s not us we just got a lot of credit for things some of the things we didn’t do a lot of it’s just made up Hollywood stuff but the true heroes are the Colombian National Police because they took their country back from that piece of crap down there yeah they have to live there they have skin in the game their families there that’s I mean I mean how the hell are you allowed to build your own prison that that is sounds that sounds so unreal that like if you wrote that in a in a like in a story it would be too unreal to put in like no one will ever believe that they let a criminal build his own prison i mean that’s it sounds stupid you know how did that happen well the the attorney general so in Colombia you know here in the United States the president is elected then he appoints his own attorney general in Colombia the attorney general is elected by the public so he’s autonomous from the president i mean you hope they get along you know and and and have continuity there but the attorney general at that time was Gustavo de Grief and the grief came up with this idea for a self-surrender plan and the way that would work is you come in and plead guilty to any felony that you choose uh we’re going to put you in you know plead guilty you’re going to go to prison for a few years and then you’ll be absolved of every other crime that you’ve ever committed in your life including murders so Pablo sends a couple of his henchmen in they test it you know cuz he’s not going to go in and test it and it works so he calls de grief one day and says “Hey uh Mr attorney General I want to take advantage of the self-surrender program.” And and Gustav was “Oh thank you Mr escobar thank you so much this is going to be so good for our country.” And blah blah blah and Paul says “Well wait a minute i got some stipulations to go along with this first I’m going to build my own prison but you know what i’m going to pay for it because I don’t want the the citizens of Colombia to have to bear that tax burden.” They said “Okay what a guy.” He said “Well you know the guards that are going to be at that prison I’m going to hire them because I need people that are loyal to me because the police and the military and those greenos they’re they’re going to try and come and get me so but I’m going to pay their salaries too so again you don’t have to worry about the tax burden.” They say “Okay.” He says “Well listen i’m going to handpick my my fellow prisoners cuz there’s got to be people loyal to me and there’s only going to be 14 of us counting me including my brother who’s an idiot and Gustavo says “Okay.” He said “Well listen u you know the good guys we were just talking about they are not allowed to come within two miles of the perimeter of the prison because I know they’re going to try and come and kidnap me.” And believe me we would really like to have done that and Gustavo says “Okay.” And he says “Uh oh listen i’m only going to do five years okay said “Okay.” And my assets you don’t get those i get to keep them what do you think Gustavo said okay oh my gosh it’s the worst plea deal in the history of law enforcement you know but here’s the thing Steve when Pablo went to prison for that one year that he was in there before he escaped the car bombs did stop the violence did dissipate throughout Colombia so I mean you know if you’re the president of Colombia and you ran on a platform that we’re going to stop the narcotics traffickers in the violence what do you do what do you say to that yeah and by escape you mean just walked out the front door and got in a car and left well it was a back door but yeah pretty much the guard was one of his henchmen opened the door see you later well they were in a gun battle with the Colombian military so that gave him an opportunity he actually did him and some I think four or five guys walked out the back of the prison and we just got pictures here in the last few months from a photographer who at that time instead of going to the gate you know the front of the prison went around back and he encountered Pablo and them and we we now have those photographs in our presentations that we do around the world and it’s Pablo actually escaped from the prison wow that’s incredible so from there he So obviously he had already made up his mind he was going to do as little time as possible and then leave probably we’re thinking he got sentenced to five years this is a guy who we attributed 15,000 murders to one of his henchmen one of his fellow inmates a guy who’s dead now John Hyro Vasquez Velasquez everybody knows him as Papey he had a YouTube channel he had a book i mean he had a Netflix show i think he was doing better on the speaking circuit than we were doing um he says you know those gringoes say 15,000 he said the number is more like 50,000 people that Pablo’s responsible for murdering wow and he was absolved of all those murders so if he’d have done his five years and he comes out and he’s got $30 billion there’s a dedicated family man that’s another myth that’s out there because we all know that’s not why he didn’t choose his family yeah i mean you always think in like when I see these situations like if that had been me like all right you get this like wild deal to reset your life why not just leave and like retire be like all right let you know give the blessing to some other one of your top henchmen be like leave me out of it i’m going I’m going here to retire leave me alone you know couldn’t couldn’t do it even his prism was a joke it he had a two- room suite he had his own private bathroom all the prisoners had private bathrooms he had walk-in closets he had a safe and hidden safe inside of his closet had a fireplace all the accutrants you know a sidebyside refrigerator freezer fulls size microwave oven um it it was just amazing the stuff that he had in there then they had a bar an actual nightclub built in the prison for Pablo and his invited guests oh you could bring people in of course oh yeah in the back of the prison there’s just this big gaping hole it’s not even a fence it’s just a big gaping hole and so if Pablo you know wanted to go to a new restaurant that had opened up or wanted to go watch a soccer game or wanted to go shopping or wanted to go spend a long weekend with his family down at the Monaco building where they lived he just came and went as he pleased nobody’s going to stop him they would go into restaurants i mean and you talk of fivestar restaurants Columbia has some fantastic food down there yeah they would go in with his sakarios and the first thing they do is lock the door and go around and collect everybody’s cell phone in there so they so nobody could call and say “Hey Pablo Escobar is in here.” Then he would address everybody ladies and gentlemen I’m Pablo Escobar please enjoy your evening dinner drinks everything’s on me tonight you just can’t leave once I’m gone then you can leave and you’ll get your phones back so what are you going to do oh my gosh hopefully he’s just starting your meal yeah you’re going to be there for a while right damn that’s unreal the things that he was doing was just outrageous that’s unreal how do you So when he escapes what what was um Were you guys there at the time already or did you get called back well we were we were back in in Bogota and we we would go to Medí and meet with the cops but they were usually day trips you know so we’d go up in the morning then fly back in the afternoon that night the day that Pablo escaped that night the head of the Columbia National Police called our boss and called the ambassador and said “Hey we’re we’re reconvening the search block and this is a 600man force whose sole responsibility is track down Pablo Escobar and capture and kill him and we would like for you guys to send Pinion Murphy up here with us.” And so you know the next morning Javier and I show up at the embassy and our boss calls us in and says “But go get your bag you’re going to Medí.” And we did we were excited that he had escaped because it meant we got another shot to to get him so you know go we run back home get our bags packed come back we get on the DEA airplane fly out to Medí and for the next 18 months we lived in Medí with the Columbia National Police going out on operations talking to informants uh making payoffs you know informant payments we had set up a 1-800 tip line in which the state department was offering a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture death of Pablo Escobar um as exciting as life was in Miami as a DE agent it grew exponentially living on that base for 18 months you’re going out every day on Huey gunships not every day but regularly running raids you might come in with five hilos six hilos you might have a a a Blackhawk helicopter with a miniguns flying cover top cover for you while you’re hitting the ground wow you’re Sometimes they take you and drop you off on these mountain tops and you might have a 60-man patrol and you spend all day humping the mountains looking for anything related to Pablo hideouts cocaine labs whatever you might find um damn it just you know as an old man I’m thinking what the hell was I thinking back then but as a young man I couldn’t there were nights that you’d be back at the base and you’d been you know you come back your dog tired you’ve been on out in the mountains for eight or 10 hours and you have dinner which was always um you had potatoes and rice and every once in a while you got a little piece of chicken to go with it that was your meal three times a day at the base and so but they did have some good cold beer so you know we’re out in the back field and and you’re just you’re looking across the valley because Medí is built in this valley like a bowl almost and across the way is Bario Pablo Escobar and at night time with the white lights tinkling you know twinkling it was one of the It’s just a beautiful sight to look at and you’re you know having a little cold drink there and looking across the way there and and there you know as a crow flies it’s two or three miles but to drive there is going to take you an hour oh wow think you’re thinking man there’s nobody else in DEA doing what we’re doing it’s incredible and you know every other agent DEA would would I mean just in a in a heartbeat would change places with you to be there doing that yeah what kind of beer you remember is uh Aguila Videolytics Tools C