Chagra, 39, a licensed professional gambler, was accused of paying Charles V. Harrelson $250,000 to kill the judge. It would be lost until the October flood, after which widower Jim McCulloch, after going through belongings hed moved into a storage unit, would place a call beginning, Cathy, youre not going to believe what I found., Going through things hed moved into the unit, McCulloch happened upon a box labeled Chagra.. That was the year Lee and Jo Annie started building their new home on Frontera Road in the Upper Valley. Lee was the first college graduate in his family, and the first professional. While Lee ate, Jo Annie puttered with the Christmas decorations. He was 50. Fayuqueros (smugglers) from Mexico usually make two trips a week across the border, carrying about 250,000 pesos ($10,000) worth of goods each way. The boys had been caught red-handed with 17,000 pounds if marijuana. Dirty Darlings. It must have been nearly three-thirty by then. I colored the Kleenex sheets with green marker and I put it in the tree branches. He loved the streets and the people who plied themwhores, gamblers, smugglers, cops. Again, Lee sounded as though he had something else on his mind. Another indisputable fact. Maybe it will get better, Vivian said. On five minutes notice, Caesars would dispatch a Learjet to fetch one or both of the Chagras. As Boyd must have realized, Kerr and Lee Chagra were natural enemies. Lee wanted to be head of the family, and Jimmy was constantly jealous of Lee because he stole the glory that Jimmy wanted. A grand jury in Nashville had indicted Chagra and forty others on a charge of conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana. He walked upstairs to his own office. Patsy ran out the back entrance and toward the cathedral. 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. In a secret interview with a group of DEA agents and prosecutors, Johnson had implicated at least sixty El Paso citizens as major drug traffickers. His father was a vice president of El Paso Natural Gas. Look at em, he grinned at the pit boss. He said he would meet her at home in a couple of hours. Jimmy was just talking. A short time later there was a knock, and Lee admitted two hookers to the room. Boyds strategy was to indict Jimmy on multiple counts and wait for him to break. Chagra had little use for public servants, especially prosecutors, and Kerr was a classic bureaucrat, squeaking with authority and wedded to the book. With Redd Fox. Hunter Thompson once described how a casino shot a three-hundred pound bear out of a cannon right in the middle of the floor and no one looked up. Despite the differences in background and age (Stricklin was almost ten years younger), Chagra and Stricklin became more than lawyer and client; they became close friends. In secret interviews Wallace as singing like a drunken angel. Chagra's lawyer in the case was Oscar Goodman,[26][3] future Mayor of Las Vegas and prosecutors included Assistant United States Attorney Sidney Powell. There was a ritual that he always observed before going downstairs to the casino. He helped develop Operation Intercept, a massive media event in which millions of U.S. citizens were stopped and searched at the border. Jo Annie was talking about divorce; she and Lee got as far as the courthouse steps before one or both backed out. On June 20 a team of narcotics agents appeared at his law office with a warrant for his arrest and hauled him away in handcuffs. Despite, or perhaps because of, these tactics, agents of the FBI, the IRS, and especially the DEA became convinced that Chagra not only was involved in international drug trafficking but was in fact the mastermind, the kingpin. Everything was on the house. Dirty Darlings Paperback November 6, 2015. Here she is in the Sinatra suite at Caesars, the tacky wallpaper so thickly felted it practically had to be brushed. [7][13] He had dealings with the Patriarca crime family and Joseph Bonanno, the retired head of the Bonanno crime family. In 1979, a federal grand jury in Midland, Texas, indicted Chagra on drug smuggling charges. He once sentenced a dope dealer to 35 years for contempt of court. 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. It is estimated that one out of every five households in these two communities of one million is supported by some type of illegal activity. The tragedy was that it was all unnecessary: before the Fifth Circuit had a chance to rule on the question of jeopardy, Jamie Boyd decided to drop the continuing criminal enterprise charges against Jack Stricklin. Kerr had been involved with pursuing Chagra for his drug dealings. Like Julius Caesar, John H. Wood was several times offered high office, and several times he refused. Goodman There's no way a bullet could have gone through there. Thats the way Lee wanted it. In these pictures shes 9 or thereabouts. Liddy came up with one farfetched idea after another. They landed the high-priced weed at a deep, remote cove on the northeastern point of Massachusetts Bay, near Boston. The indictment was so vague as to make it impossible to respond or even to contemplate a defense. It was an incredible sight. He hardly seemed aware she was in the room. [21], Chagra was released from prison for health reasons in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 9, 2003. Checking himself again in the mirror, he would fuss with the black cowboy hat that had Lee Chagra and Freedom embossed in gold on the inside until he achieved the proper tilt and slope. The office was a maelstrom of activity, none of it having anything to do with the practice of law. Wood was finally convinced that it was his duty. Goodman managed to get Chagra acquitted. Lee couldnt hold a grudge, but Jimmy was the kind who would get you by the balls and never let go, said Jimmy Salome, a longtime family friend. Boyd, Kerr, and the DEA had worked so hard selling the media on the contention that El Paso was the hub of dope trafficking in the Southwest that everyone took it as gospel. Former mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman is credited with the revitalization of downtown Las Vegas including The Smith Center for the Performing Arts and our very own The Mob Museum. His cowboy hat was pushed forward until the brim almost touched his nose, and shaggy locks of graying hair spilled over his collar. The fifty-page text of the interview was used as supplemental material by a grand jury investigating a tax fraud, but it was never given the slightest weight as courtroom evidence. Whatever Jo Annie was thinking, she wouldnt say anything. And it was killing Lee. (According to The New York Times, Jimmy told brother Joe in a conversation taped by the FBI that he hired Harrelson to do the hit. Clark Hughes went ahead to the casino to lose my piddling three or four hundred. He never knew why Lee liked to bring him along, but he seldom refused. Emily McCullar is a senior editor covering pop culture, news, and Texas history. Their dad just didnt feel safe going to court without his consigliere. Loaves of Syrian bread were baking in the kitchen. Lees finances were in shambles, but he still had plenty of credit in Las Vegas. Lee had always been our strength., Lee couldnt shake the feeling that something or someone was stalking him. The new office was a show of faith, or at least tenacity, and it made Lee feel good to know that someone else appreciated it. It had been months since anyone had seen him so animated. And Jimmy seemed better able to laugh off the competition between them. As far as having Wood killed, no way, he said. Youve got it wrong, Lee replied. It was that strange hour when the golfers are still on their morning rounds and the drunks are still asleep, that time when they clean the sand in the ashtrays and empty the slots and put fresh ice in the urinals. In fact, many aspects of the case were never investigated. 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. And yet by the end of the trial, a majority of the jurors refused to find the defendants guilty. Standing in front of the mirror, he would snap the pearl buttons of his red cowboy shirt, then climb into the black Western-cut leisure suit. This friendship, the fact that the prosecutor and the judge were seen socializing so often, caused some lawyers to question Woods impartiality. Crimes against persons are treated with extreme gravity, but crimes against the economy are treated with a wink and a smile. Texass Most Venomous Caterpillar. Kerr was maneuvering his car around the obstacle when the rear doors of the van opened and two gunmen started firing. He referred to all of his male friends as brother, and yet there was a time when he couldnt keep his hands off his real brothers wives and girlfriends. An electronic current unbolted the door. He could betray a trust as casually as tipping a dealer a chip worth more than the dealer made in a month. Lets go downstairs and give them one they can write home about. Clark said he would dress and meet Lee in the casino. For sheer lan, Hughes recalled, I dont think Id ever seen him any higher.. Lee laughed with pride. One of the soldiers, David Leon Wallace, signed a confession that not only admitted the robbery and murder of Lee Chagra but also substantiated Lees seemingly paranoid belief that he was being stalked. Most afternoons as Donna and Sandy were crossing the parking lot after work, they saw her, and sometimes two or three other strippers from the Lamplighter, hurrying toward Lees office. He and Clark went back to the suite for a while. 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. The card read, I hope your ass feels like what you did to us.. [5][34] Joe Chagra served six and a half years in prison (of his ten-year sentence) and was released. Jimmy and his new business partner, Henry Wallace, were in Florida awaiting their first freighterload of Colombian marijuana, and from what Lee had heard, the operation had all the earmarks of a disaster. In less than fifteen minutes, he won $90,000. This was among over a thousand recorded conversations that the government had collected as evidence. You help us and well help you, the agents told Stricklin. He was later tried and acquitted in the assassination but received an additional sentence for obstruction of justice. Any craps! she shouted, throwing a $5 chip on the table. This would be the last time Lee Chagra and James Kerr faced one another in a courtroom, a sort of last hurrah for both. El Paso and Jurez have always floated on a little healthy corruption. Or for Lee Chagra. Offers may be subject to change without notice. Chagra jumped bail, but was captured six months later in Las Vegas. [25][21][26], Both Harrelson and Chagra's brother Joe were implicated in the assassination. Every time the local papers wrote anything about Lee, the story started with Indicted drug trafficker Lee Chagra. The sisters today say that if Lee Chagra had not been killed, Wood would not have been, either. He cried when he thought of Jimmy. If you scratched Stricklin deep enough, Kerr reasoned, you would find Chagra. I have not seen anything that would actually disqualify me from trying this case. Eventually Wood agreed to give Lee a copy of the Johnson interview but refusing to remove himself from the Stricklin case as Chagra requested. They were scheduled to fly back to El Paso Monday morning. Jimmy was born four years later, and they soon nicknamed him Little Mischief. [15], Chagra's drug dealings came under close scrutiny by law enforcement and the judicial system. Chagra and his wife, Liz, and young daughter relocated to Las Vegas in 1978 and moved into a house across the street from attorney Oscar Goodman. 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. Sib Abraham and some other old friends and members of the family were there. This year, 1978, had been a year of galloping paranoia. And, of course, Jimmy Chagra. By early afternoon the party was over, and staff and hangers-on had gone. [21] His drug case went to trial and Chagra was found guilty in August 1979 and sentenced to 30 years. Lee gave Jack Stricklin, now out of prison, $1000 and passed out lesser amounts to other old friends. For years there had been a rivalry between the two brothers, a fierce and unyielding competition that only the two of them completely understood. 2023 www.statesman.com. Family problems were accumulating faster than Lee could catalog them. By law, the interview was to remain a secret, known only to a handful of agents and prosecutors who read the transcript as part of their official duties. Over the next year Lee had only a handful of cases. The 38-year-old prosecutor had given up his apartment in El Paso and moved back to San Antonio, where he felt more comfortable. [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. 3.9 on Goodreads. The family name was originally Bushaada, but Lees grandfather mexicanized it during the revolution. Hed never cried about it before. The best guess is that they divided at least $5 million. It took three days for an ingenious pulley apparatus to hoist the 100-pound bales to the top of the cliffs. As in: Heres a picture of Jimmy in Vegas with Muhammad Ali, both in black tie. He just picked up the money and tossed it in a drawer. It took almost a year for all the money to work its way back to Jimmy and his partners. He wanted everything his brother had, but he just didnt want to work for it. The Indian worked as a collector for several Las Vegas casinos. He was widely believed to have been placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program. It was as if their friendship had come to a fork in the road, and Lee had wandered off in another direction. In fact, the charges were dismissed because there was no evidence to bring charges in the first place. Lees younger brother Jimmy, who grew up hustling and hanging out with some of Lees more prosperous clients, wanted nothing more than to be recognized as Mr. Big. Ive been a fool.. About four oclock Bobby Yoseph returned to the office from a shopping trip in Jurez. Please feel free to use any other table in the casino. Like so many sheep, the nickel-and-dime players started backing away. The model just had the bare branches., Catherine Chagra's 2015 book. Its better to bust your ass trying and get kicked all over tomorrow than live all your life like those little gray bastards out there., A few weeks after the Vegas trip, Lee was hospitalized for a long overdue hemorrhoidectomy. 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. Part of it was his steadily increasing need for money. Chagras idea of a good time was slapping a Willie Nelson album on the stereo, snorting cocaine, and getting naked in a pile of aromatic bodies. Boyd had never been regarded as a crusader, but one exception was his views on gamblinghe hated gamblers. Theres a client buzzing at the door. Jo Annie tried to picture the man who had called that morning waiting outside. He crossed the living room and closed the apartment door behind him. What she didnt know was that he was in his private apartment, watching the game on TV with his friend Sailor Roberts, a bookie who had recently been busted in James Kerrs organized-crime probe. Goodman is one of the nations best criminal defense attorneys and was named one of the 15 Best Trial Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal. He died from injuries resulting from an automobile accident that occurred on December 6, 1996. He inherited the whole El Paso docket in 1974 when Judge Ernest Guinn died suddenly of a heart attack. And even if it was true, for Wood to reveal it in open court was outrageous. Lee flew to Florida and set up a dummy corporation for Jimmy. The following afternoon at the Aladdin, Lee took the worst beating Clark had ever seen him take. A sample: Q.What about Lee Chagra? As he pulled off the exit ramp above a truck stop on IH 10, Lee could see the Indians car parked in the shadows behind some eighteen-wheelers that idled in the predawn chill. His older brother Lee was a very prominent defense attorney Jimmy was the middle son, and the younger son, Joe, was also an attorney.. 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. Eventually, Jimmys limit was $10,000 a hand and his credit almost unlimited. Shortly after noon the next day, Lee telephoned and said: Ninety thousand is nothing for a stepper. All things considered, 1978 has probably been the worst year of Lee Chagras life. The months of suspicion and hostile publicity almost wrecked Lees law career. In fact, it was a condition of him taking the case. Lees success in trying drug cases soon led him to meet Jack Stricklin, who had sent the Pitts case his way. These people used to steal, a Mexican policeman told the Associated Press recently, but there is more money in contraband. They say there was nothing Jimmy really wanted to be, but that wasnt entirely true. That was when Jo Annie remembered the telephone call. Here he is with Joe Namath. Jimmy had given her a couple of kids and a lasting pain in the ass. Someone was supposed to open the door from the inside. Another suggestion was to disrupt the drug market by passing out poisoned drugs. After Jimmy and Vivian divorced, in late 1973 or 1974, before the first big score, Vivian would beg her ex-lover and former brother-in-law for money that Jimmy couldnt or wouldnt fork over. "He was great friends with Of course, not all the authorities are so blas. 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. All rights reserved. But the real bite of the law, the element that made it harsher than any other federal law on the booksharsher even than penalties for rape, murder, or kidnappingwas its inordinate range of sentences. He thought nobody would love him without money. Lees vial of cocaine was open on the corner of his desk. The feds reasoned that Lee was the mastermind because Lee was so smart, and they became so preoccupied with this scenario that they failed to see the obvious irony: Lee was too smart to play that role. Narcotics agents believed that Stricklin and his associates supplied a good part of the South and Southwest with Mexican marijuana. Stricklin looked at the copy of the law for a few seconds, then returned it to the agents. Later, a superseding indictment added the charge of continuing criminal enterprise. "[35] It was otherwise described as "one of the most intense investigations in the annals of the FBI". Marriage license #D875871, Marriage License Records, Las Vegas. As his friend Clark Hughes warned him, One of the problems with being a criminal attorney is that all your clients are crooks. He wanted to indict De La Torre on five counts of perjury in an attempt to add another 25 years to the sentencein effect, requiring him to defend his story to a second jury. It was hard to imagine two men more different. He earned a lot of money and became a high roller in Las Vegas, known for his very generous tipping. The sisters made mistakes, too, some by failing, in their youth, to realize that a substantial portion of their larger-than-life family history was a cautionary tale, an admonition that for some, life is best lived smaller and more quietly, away from big money and bright lights and celebrities with teeth so white and so impossibly perfect. He was convicted of obstructing the investigation of the The agents thought so little of the information gleaned in the interview with Johnson that they didnt even bother to place him under oath. The Florida operation had the potential to make millions, but it could also spell disaster for Lee. 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. The family was breaking apart. They implicated Lou Esper as the man who had planned the heist and supplied the weapons. Chagra attempted to bribe Judge Wood for "$5 million or 10million". Jimmy and the crew of the chartered jet were arrested by Colombian authorities. There have been people who gambled higher in one sitting, but week after week, month after month, nobody kept coming, kept flat firing at em, like Jimmy Chagra.. Vivian did her best to smile. [39], Chagra married his third wife, Lynda Ray, while living under the name James Madrid on November 22, 2005. Push a button and curtains would reveal a huge projector TV. And Im going to charge you ten thousand dollars.. 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. He began taping most of his telephone conversations and collecting every scrap of evidence that even hinted of government malfeasance. While federal agents snapped photographs from the parking lot across the street, hundreds of mourners jammed St. Patricks. He worked his way through the University of Texas law school, graduating fourth in his class in 1962. First he saw Lees boots standing in one corner by the door to the balcony, then he saw the blotch of blood on the wall. Lee speculated that the attempt was an inside job. His office and home telephone records as far back as 1970 had been subpoenaed, and so had his income tax records. Oh, yes. The other lawyer couldnt appreciate the irony, but until that moment, Lee had always envied him. I feel that it has all been terribly twisted. The district attorney, several district judges, and a former mayor stood elbow to elbow with Sailor Roberts, gambler Amarillo Slim, and at least a dozen convicted dope dealers. But let me add, he had a lot of enemies.. The door was partially open, but the office appeared empty. 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