All shed ever had was a future somewhat less than promising. I blocked the door with my body, Donna recalled, but he opened it enough to see the money.. A man named David Long phoned before you woke up, she told him. Jimmy and the crew of the chartered jet were arrested by Colombian authorities. On October 20, 1977, as Chagra stood before the bench objecting to Judge Woods personal attack, arguing that it was totally without evidence or cause and that the resulting publicity had done great damage not only to Stricklin but to Lee himself, the judge interrupted and dropped his bomb. Jimmys Florida operation, far from being an immediate disaster, disbanded after successfully offloading fifty tons of grass from a Colombian freighter in March. And co-conspirators in others. The judge was a member of every exclusive club in San AntonioSons of the Republic of Texas, Sons of the American Revolution, Texas Cavaliers, Argyle Club, San Antonio Club, Order of the Alamo, San Antonio Gun Club, German Club, American Legion, San Antonio Country Cluband owned property in the segregated Key Allegro resort on the Texas coastthe list went on and on. Sometimes Jimmy pretended he was Lee, signing his name Lee Chagra and repeating Lees stories as though they had happened to him. Curiously, this kind of heavy action seemed to bring out the best in Jimmy and the worst in Lee. At the victory party that followed the declaration of mistrial, one of the jurors told Lee: I know those boys did everything they said they did, but dammit, they didnt prove it!. Then Kerr observed that the request for reportsis an overt act on the part of the defense attorneyto obtain government reports and documents concerning him. That is, concerning Lee Chagra. As the defense had expected, several officers testified that they had arrived at the airstrip in time to witness the off-loading of the DC-4. The other soldier, Don White, pleaded guilty and is now doing sixty years. They landed the high-priced weed at a deep, remote cove on the northeastern point of Massachusetts Bay, near Boston. And hed better. Narcotics and gambling were crimes that grew from a common stem composed of the worst elements in society. You ought to pay me fifteen hundred dollars an hour to entertain customers. His plan was to reindict Stricklin, and maybe Chagra too, under an almost unknown section of the 1970 Drug Control Act that spelled out the crime of continuing criminal enterprise, popularly known as the kingpin act. That was the year Lee and Jo Annie started building their new home on Frontera Road in the Upper Valley. Donna helped Sandy count the $20,000. Out of the corner of his eye Lee could see the reporters scribbling furiously. The weapons existed only in the agents imagination, but at one point the trap got so bizarre that the poor cafe owner believed he was negotiating for a used submarine. Drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, accused of paying a hitman $250,000 to kill a federal judge, retained Las Vegas attorney Oscar Goodman to defend him. Jamiel "Jimmy" Alexander Chagra (December 7, 1944 July 25, 2008) was an American drug trafficker, carpet salesman and professional gambler. The verdict in the Tucson trial had been sublime: in a highly publicized, multicount bank fraud indictment, Lee had walked his man on every count. Sometime in the middle of the night, after everyone else was asleep, Lee changed clothes and drove to his new office. After the phone calls, Lee would take a long timemaybe two hours, maybe moreto bathe, groom, and dress himself in the wardrobe that he reserved for these occasions. Still, everyone loved Jimmy and took care of him. In Judge John Woods courtroom Kerr found the perfect forum for his crusade. And yet federal agents still had no proof: for all the loose talk, there was not a shred of hard evidence that Lee had committed any crime. Much later, Lee Chagra learned that the single piece of evidence against him was a statement made by Tom Pitts, claiming that he and another drug dealer had once used Lees office to cut a deal. Lee referred to it as the mansion that Jack built. It was 6500 square feet, with pool and stables, electronically operated gates, and closed-circuit television monitors. By the time Clark arrived, Lee had already lost another $80,000 and was yelling at the floor manager because he was threatening to cut off his credit. State senator Tati Santiesteban, who had known Lee Chagra most of his life, led the procession of pallbearers. Catherine figures she was 10 when her dad went to prison. An electronic current unbolted the door. Fighting seemingly hopeless causes became his passion. I undermined their entire case of how the bullet got to the judge.. By the late sixties he had put together an organization capable of moving tons of marijuana across the river. As one of the daughters answered the phone, Yoseph saw Lees body. He looked smaller than life as he stood there, facing the dresser, looking at the picture of his father and seeing his own reflection. They could have been twins. For some unexplained reason, the three assailants (apparently there was a third behind the wheel) raced from the scene without bothering to walk five or six feet and make sure that Kerr was dead. No force on earth could stop him. [21] His drug case went to trial and Chagra was found guilty in August 1979 and sentenced to 30 years. He ran a floating blackjack game and started peddling dope. (At that point the public had no inkling of the earlier, even bigger Boston haul.) So Jimmys smuggling operation must be thriving as Lees law practice crumbled. Lee wanted to be head of the family, and Jimmy was constantly jealous of Lee because he stole the glory that Jimmy wanted. Liddy came up with one farfetched idea after another. They had to take care of him because he spoiled everything he touched. He was practically chasing ambulances. [1][24], Harrelson was eventually caught and convicted of being the gunman after Chagra discussed the assassination with his brother Joe during Joe's visit to Jimmy in United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, after FBI agents bugged the rooms in which they were speaking. Lee counted out $75,000, slipped it into his coat pocket, and headed for his clandestine appointment. In fact, the only indictments handed down by the racket-busters involved a Bandido who resisted arrest after FBI and DEA agents kicked down his door, a former manager of the Lamplighter Club, a city judge charged with fixing parking tickets, and bail bondsman Vic Apodaca, who was charged with income tax violations. The indictment was so vague as to make it impossible to respond or even to contemplate a defense. I knew as soon as that happened, I didnt have a prayer. But after their father was arrested and his hundred-million dollars had disappeared, they were left penniless, at the mercy of a Texas society that vilified them. What investigation against him? Lee didnt protest as Clark led him out of the casino to the waiting limousine. Lee had always been our strength., Lee couldnt shake the feeling that something or someone was stalking him. Like Julius Caesar, John H. Wood was several times offered high office, and several times he refused. The charges against all the defendants were eventually dropped, but not for two years. Those words, that adamant denial, were lost until this years Halloween floods in Central Texas displaced them from the attic of Jim McCullochs home on Bluff Springs Road in Southeast Austin, where for decades the transcribed words of Chagras ex-wife and the federal prisoner had been stored, then forgotten. There was plenty of cocaine to guarantee a holiday spirit; at least five ounces had been delivered a few days earlier. Kay McCulloch died, and with her death the raw material for the book went to the attic. They were all scammers, everyone he knew or cared about. All rights reserved. Narcotics agents believed that Stricklin and his associates supplied a good part of the South and Southwest with Mexican marijuana. [38] A fictitious name reference to the Judge John Wood assassination also appeared in an The FBI Files episode "Dangerous Company" as the show regularly changed names of real-life people to protect privacy. She had worn a pair of panty hose under the suit and as they were cruising out in the middle of a lake in Joes speedboat, Jimmy called everyones attention to her bizarre outfit and ripped her panty hose in one thigh. If they had, they would have seen the small, trembling figure of the prosecutor crouched in a fetal position below the dashboard, dazed, bleeding from the shards of splintered glass, shaky as a bowl of gelatinbut otherwise unharmed. Because they forgot that the murder took place May 29th, and down there in Texas, the trees were in bloom. Catherine published a book about her life in 2015 titled Chagra: The King of Dope Drugs, Deceit and Dirty Darlings. She will be signing copies after the panel discussion. [21][3] He reportedly did this in order to have his wife, Elizabeth, released early. On the monitor he saw a tall, muscular black man in his early twenties. The family posted a $25,000 reward and announced that the freedom banner would hang until the killers were caught and the case was closed. Christa remembers the family being on food stamps after her dad went to jail. Lee developed a standard ploy he secretly taped the conversation, then gave the agent the phone number of the real Mr. Big. It was the unlisted number of the local DEA chief. Sandy and the others began to realize that this was something truly personal; it was as though Lee were mourning his own impending death. There wasnt any Mr. Big, Johnson acknowledged, but if the narcs preferred to look at it that way, Lee Chagra was a good a name as any. In these pictures shes 9 or thereabouts. In less than fifteen minutes, he won $90,000. Lee had wanted to be a lawyer, and so, after some convincing, had the youngest of the boys, Joe. The hitman, Charles Harrelson, was the father of actor Woody Harrelson. [1][2][3] He was implicated in the May 1979 assassination of United States District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, Texas. Donna had never seen him before, but Lee said that he was expecting the man and pressed the electronic button to admit him. Catherine remembers the prison visits as the best times she ever had with her father. The old man, who was a dead ringer for Pancho Villa, was imprisoned and almost shot before he and his family could escape across the border into El Paso. Finally, he would pose with the ebony cane with the gold satyrs-head handle, squinting and turning until he was satisfied. By early autumn 1976 Lee was back in El Paso, pumping money. He got 30 years. On the trials 40th anniversary, Goodman and Chagras eldest daughter, Catherine, will look back at the case and what it meant for Goodman and the Chagra family.A book signing of Catherine Chagras Chagra: The King of Dope Drugs, Deceit and Dirty Darlings will follow this program.Member and Donor Exclusive: Enjoy a meet-and-greet with Oscar Goodman and Catherine Chagra at 6 p.m. prior to the program. But Lee trusted him. The real show was on the casino floor in special sections roped off for the Chagras. The case had been dead for two years, but Kerr had a plan. Lee was Clarks friend, maybe the best friend hed ever had, but in some strange, almost unthinkable way he felt the friendship slipping away. By mid-November the feds had just about made their case against Jimmy Chagra, and rumors of his imminent indictment were rampant. Jimmy Chagras first big score came in the summer of 75, when he orchestrated a shipment of more than 50,000 pounds of pot on a tramp steamer from Colombia to the Massachusetts coast, according to Dirty Dealing, a book about the Chagras published in 1984 by Austin author and journalist Gary Cartwright. Lees success in trying drug cases soon led him to meet Jack Stricklin, who had sent the Pitts case his way. About four oclock Bobby Yoseph returned to the office from a shopping trip in Jurez. Lee was lying face up on the floor, blood trickling from his mouth. His grandfather was imprisoned before Jimmy was born, and the family immigrated to El Paso from Mexico. Dad had been gone for eight years. That was it, the last of the half-million the Black Striker had blown in Vegas the year before. Here she is with Paul Anka. He had no information incriminating Lee, except that he confirmed that Lee had set up some dummy corporations to launder money, but he was willing to finger Jimmy as the kingpin. October 2022 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? Sib Abraham and some other old friends and members of the family were there. Gambling and women, said Lees old friend and fellow lawyer Clark Hughes. This friendship, the fact that the prosecutor and the judge were seen socializing so often, caused some lawyers to question Woods impartiality. Lee had showered and was standing in front of the bathroom mirror in his shorts when his brother Jimmys ex-wife, Vivian, arrived. A block from the cathedral, on North Mesa at the edge of the downtown business district, Lee Chagras new office building was closed for good. Stricklin started peddling lids when they were still lidsan ounce of grass in a Prince Albert tin. But the mere act of talking on the telephone seemed to boost his confidence. Although Wood had devoted his career to civil law, there was no more ardent law-and-order advocate anywhere. With the gambling and the ostentatious living, the money never lasted long. Further complicating the relationship between the two brothers was that Lee, who was married, had an affair with a woman who worked the switchboard at the Sheraton Hotel in El Paso and, after cutting off the relationship, or at least attempting to, introduced her to Jimmy in order to keep her close. Its riddled with ethnic stereotyping of Lebanese men as reckless womanizers and Lebanese women as subservient slaves to their men. With the help of their principled mother before her tragic death, and haunted by the shadow of their father, Dirty Darlings is a portrait of courage as three women attempt to re-assemble the shattered pieces of their lives. [11][24][9], Jimmy Chagra died of cancer on July 25, 2008. When the items are small, such as bottles of American perfume or jewelry, the fayuqueros hire old women called chiveras (shepherds), who actually carry the merchandise across the bridge and as far as Chihuahua City, 236 miles into the interior. He would attach his belt to the giant solid-gold buckle with the thick crust of diamonds, and draw on his black alligator cowboy boots. Joe Chagra testified against the other defendants in exchange for pleading guilty to murder-conspiracy with a maximum sentence of ten years in a plea-bargain deal, and with an agreement that he would not testify against his brother Jimmy in a separate trial. Family problems were accumulating faster than Lee could catalog them. That old watch-me-carry-the-world smile was back on his face. It looked as though Lee had struck gold, but quicksand might have been closer to the truth. It was only in 1970, after Senator John Tower and other ranking members of the Republican Party in Texas made personal pleas, that the staunch Republican lawyer agreed to accept a federal judgeship for the Western District of Texas. No Mafia figures were ever indicted. In his time, Lee had invested in a racehorse that ended up as dog meat, a pro golfer who never made the cut, a combination lock that served to secure nothing more than a long, bitter lawsuit, and a caper to corner the Colombian coffee bean market. Is there any secret about that?. Drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, accused of paying a hitman $250,000 to kill a federal judge, retained Las Vegas attorney Oscar Goodman to defend him. An inextricable connection, whether emotional or physical or both, would continue between Lee and Vivian long after Vivian and Jimmy were married, Catherine would later learn. They volunteered for every hard-core criminal case that came along: murder, rape, robbery, burglary. And, of course, Jimmy Chagra. Chagra's third wife, Elizabeth, was found guilty of delivering $250,000 to Charles Harrelson to kill Wood. Goodman insisted that Chagra not testify. Lee despised Kerr, and Kerr had every reason to despise Lee. It was the first time anyone from El Paso had thought of using a tramp steamer. That was a fact. James Kerr was devoting almost all of his time to his organized-crime investigation. He was not very good at suffering alone, and friends and family visited him almost constantly. [14], Prior to his arrest, he accumulated approximately $100 million in various bank accounts, today amounting to about $500 million. If you fill out the first name, last name, or agree to terms fields, you will NOT be added to the newsletter list. He discussed with the CIA the possibility of liquidating all major drug traffickers in the Middle East; it was estimated that 150 key assassinations would do the job. He went to the big guys at Caesars and told them that, by God, the next time his brother walked in that joint he wanted him treated like a goddam celebrity! The news that a task force of federal and state agents had seized a DC-4 with 17,000 pounds of top-grade Colombian marijuana in Ardmore, Oklahoma, on December 30 hit El Paso like a sonic boom. [27] Joe Chagra's defense reportedly attempted to plead guilty to a lesser offense of conspiring to obstruct justice instead. Would you ask Kerr to take a lie detector test if someone tried to kill me? he demanded. But, speaking to his ex-wife, Vivian, in a federal prison more than 30 years ago, he said he was not a killer. Oscar Goodman and Joe Chagra were Jimmys attorneys. And Jimmy seemed better able to laugh off the competition between them. And when it came to squandering the profits, Lee was at the head of the line. Gentlemen, he told the other players, this table is now reserved for a private game. But let me add, he had a lot of enemies.. Two of Chagras daughters, Christa and Catherine, now live in Smithville. In the summer of 1977, sensing the heat but also attracted by the opportunities being suggested by his new partner, a wily, borderwise ex-con named Henry Wallace, Jimmy told Lee he was moving his base of operations to Florida. Lee always suffered shamelessly when he was down and Jimmy was up, but this was different. He had started using cocaine some months earlier, and now he was using it daily. A sample: Q.What about Lee Chagra? What was happening here? I imagine everyone in this area knows that youve been the subject of a grand jury investigation ever since the Tennessee indictment, Wood announced. Jimmy had given her a couple of kids and a lasting pain in the ass. On five minutes notice, Caesars would dispatch a Learjet to fetch one or both of the Chagras. Each time he caught a narc in a lie, Lee made eye contact with various jurors, the corners of his mouth twitching with mirth as though he expected tiny okra plants to sprout from the witnesss nose at any moment. He was also used in FBI: The Untold Stories. Id grown up in El Paso, Stricklin recalled. In Western Texas, Powell was a prosecutor in the trial of American drug trafficker Jimmy Chagra for criminal enterprise violations. When Clark arrived downstairs with his luggage, he saw Lee at one of the blackjack tables, arguing with a Teamster guy who was apparently in charge of credit for the casino. He let himself in with a specially made key and walked upstairs. And it was killing Lee. The complex included not only a maze of well-appointed offices but also a fully equipped kitchen, a law library, and completely furnished two-bedroom suite. Youll do at least eighteen months. Lee was a baffling tangle of contradictions. Joe and his wife, Patty, who had been married for about eighteen months, sold some of their furniture and gave Jimmy some money and their Blazer. Jo Annie, Lees boyhood sweetheart and the wife who had seen him through law school and nineteen years of an emotionally charged marriage, met him at the airport. Kerrs long association with FBI, IRS, and DEA agentsclients, he called themhad convinced him of the same sort of monolithic conspiracy that Boyd himself leaned toward. Lee drew a crowd simply by walking through the front door at Caesars Palace, passing out money, and asking how much they loved him. But Vegas had never seen anything that surpassed the performance of Lee and Jimmy Chagra. With Redd Fox. [25][21][26], Both Harrelson and Chagra's brother Joe were implicated in the assassination. He hustled personal injury cases, divorces, wills. He was widely believed to have been placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program. On the morning of the day Lee was murdered, his bookkeeper, Donna Johnson, arrived at the office about ten oclock. He told Jimmy Salome that he was taking out a new insurance policy. Chagra was also a heavy gambler in Las Vegas, Nevada, and attracted attention with his flamboyant ways. Youve got everything I always dreamed of having, the lawyer said. Though the prosecution recognized there was hardly any chance that Rick would turn on his family, James Kerr did everything in his power to put him away for 40 years. Woods blunder was the last straw. "He was great friends with [6], Chagra was accused of (and was acquitted of, although he later confessed to conspiracy in a deal to help his wife) hiring hitman Charles Harrelson (actor Woody Harrelson's father) to kill Wood for $250,000; on May 29, 1979, Judge Wood was murdered outside his home by a shot in the back. At the end of his life, Jimmy Chagra knew he was dying, and unlike his ex-wife, whod fought the cancer for herself and her daughters, he gave up quickly. [40][3], He had seven children, including a daughter named Catherine, who wrote a memoir about the family. What no one knew at this point was that the feds had already busted Wallace. One day while Vivian was there, they delivered a dozen red roses to the room. She still has paintings he made while locked up, a hobby he never resumed after getting a medical parole in December 2003. Eventually, Jimmys limit was $10,000 a hand and his credit almost unlimited. But more than anything, it was his clothes; Jimmy showed up at the funeral wearing an outfit exactly like Lees Black Striker costume. The soldiers implicated Esper in planning the heist, but he received a considerably lighter sentence than they due to not being technically involved with the murder itself. The position of federal authorities was that even though Joe Chagra was a lawyer, he was also suspected in conspiracy to conceal the crime; therefore, their conversations were not covered by attorney-client privilege. From a radio in another part of the house, Sinatra was singing about doing it his way. For all the smoke generated by James Kerrs highly publicized grand jury probe of organized crime, there was hardly any fire. A major law firm that always invited the top six UT law graduates to a spring gala invited only five in 1962. His dream was to stash away $20 million, all taxes paid. Forrest Wilder writes about politics and the outdoors. He died from injuries resulting from an automobile accident that occurred on December 6, 1996. His idea of a good time was going home to his wife and newborn son, Joseph, maybe tinkering with his stereo or waxing his speedboat, swimming or lifting weights. Hadnt I already proven that wrong?. Offers may be subject to change without notice. As Boyd must have realized, Kerr and Lee Chagra were natural enemies. A judge cant associate socially with a prosecutor the way Wood did with Kerr and still call em correctly, John Pinckney, the first U.S. attorney, had said. Theres a client buzzing at the door. Jo Annie tried to picture the man who had called that morning waiting outside. Dirty Darlings. [9][13] Reportedly, he used gambling as a method of laundering money he received through trafficking drugs. Clark excused himself and went to his own room, alone. Lee held the picture so it caught the light. Or for Lee Chagra. To mark the 40th anniversary of the trial of drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, who was accused of paying a hitman $250,000 to kill a federal judge John Wood, Oscar Goodman, former mayor and at the time Chagra's defense attorney, will join the late mobster's daughter, Catherine, to revisit the event. Some people though Lee Chagra didnt know how to quit, but that wasnt quite true. Everyone had assumed theyd made loveLee made a point of keeping her in his office long enough, then he flushed the toilet and gave her the money.

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