A big blob of fat came pouring out, she remembered. His grandfather had been an ironfisted sheriff of Bexar County when lawmen still fought off Apaches. Rumors persisted that while Stricklin was doing time at La Tuna, Lee arranged to destroy records that would have established Lees complicity in a number of smuggling operations. It took three days for an ingenious pulley apparatus to hoist the 100-pound bales to the top of the cliffs. But as usual, Jimmys success only threw Lee into a funk. The bonds that he set in marijuana cases averaged $200,000. Whether or not he knew the details, Lee surely sensed the magnitude of the disaster that was bearing down on him. 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. They had a surprise for Leea new Lincoln limousine with a portable bar, a TV, a stereo, and even a secret compartment to conceal his guns and playing cards. Lee was lying face up on the floor, blood trickling from his mouth. On May 29, 1979, the day that Jimmy was originally supposed to go on trial in Judge Woods court, John Wood was assassinated in the driveway outside his apartment. By the late sixties he had put together an organization capable of moving tons of marijuana across the river. The Photo the Dallas Cowboys Never Wanted the Public to See, Welcome to Palo Pinto, Texass Next State Park, The Top 50 Texas BBQ Joints: 2021 Edition, Please Do Not Touch the Toxic Toupee, a.k.a. This friendship, the fact that the prosecutor and the judge were seen socializing so often, caused some lawyers to question Woods impartiality. Dirty Darlings Paperback November 6, 2015. Jo Annie telephoned one final time, from her mothers house on Rim Road. The casino was almost deserted. Thats the way Lee wanted it. Two of their five children were with her. The Most Reverend Sidney Metzger, bishop emeritus of El Paso, came out of retirement to say mass. (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. Joe was quieter and more introspective than his brothers. Lee joked as he gave the Indian the $75,000, and the Indian mumbled and studied his boots. WebOn 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. Hardly a day passed that the flamboyant attorney didnt make the news. 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. Kay McCulloch died, and with her death the raw material for the book went to the attic. Vivian remembered the previous Saturday at his office; shes heard murmurs from the staff as she followed him upstairs. El Paso and Jurez have always floated on a little healthy corruption. Later he built a reputation as a hard-driving prosecutor in charge of the docket in Del Rio, where he and Judge John Wood became fast friends. [9] The story surrounding the assassination of Judge Wood was profiled in an episode of City Confidential. He once sentenced a dope dealer to 35 years for contempt of court. It was an incredible sight. He had known about Lees cocaine habit, but since Clark had been appointed a judge, Lee hadnt flaunted it. However, his sister Patsy stated that he was not in the witness protection program at the time of his death. Joseph Chagra, a Texas lawyer who admitted his complicity in the first assassination of a Federal judge in more than a century, died last Sunday in Thomason Hospital in El Paso. When Joe and Lee had drawn up their partnership, the arrangement was that they would share all revenues and losses, but Joe hadnt counted on sharing Lees gambling losses. For pure gambling, Jimmy may have been the strongest anyone in Vegas ever saw. Things really fell apart when Jimmy was arrested on trafficking charges. This wasnt an unusual request: just a week before, Lee had given Sandy $50,000 to carry around in her tote bag, ostensibly for safekeeping. 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. Texass Most Venomous Caterpillar. It was four years before we lost a case.. Donna had never seen him before, but Lee said that he was expecting the man and pressed the electronic button to admit him. WebDrug kingpin who was charged with the murder of the US district court judge who would have presided at his drug trial. Every morning when I drive down to the office, I get sick at my stomach, Joe told Patty. It became his trademark. Lee Chagra grossed more than $250,000 in 1972. Technically Lee had won the battle, but there was little doubt that Wood had landed a crippling, perhaps fatal blow to the attorneys already battered reputation. Sib remembered: Candidly, we were very, very successful. He was a mamas boy, always pouting and complaining. [14], Prior to his arrest, he accumulated approximately $100 million in various bank accounts, today amounting to about $500 million. He bragged that he never once granted probation in a heroin case. Clark assumed that he would go straight back to Caesars and claim some of his markers, but that wasnt Lees plan. It wasnt just in hard-drug cases; Wood appeared to make no distinctions. Kerr had the advantage of interviews with a number of dealers who had been arrested since 1973one informant claimed he had personally paid Stricklin $500,000. Another suggestion was to disrupt the drug market by passing out poisoned drugs. Another indisputable fact. But Vegas had never seen anything that surpassed the performance of Lee and Jimmy Chagra. Lee read the card and laughed. As one of the daughters answered the phone, Yoseph saw Lees body. shaggy shag,' and he would gamble up to a million dollars," said What no one knew at this point was that the feds had already busted Wallace. He would lend a stranger his last $100, knowing he was kissing it good-bye. These people used to steal, a Mexican policeman told the Associated Press recently, but there is more money in contraband. They were married in Las Vegas. The madness seemed to peak in November, when two men in a van sprayed Kerrs car with buckshot and .30-caliber bullets. The next morning FBI agents called on Lee Chagra, confiscated his gun collection, and asked him to take a lie detector test. It took Lee less that half a day to discover that the search warrant used to bust the Tennessee smugglers was faulty. His sister, Patsy, recalled, It scared me to hear Lee talk like that. Youre going to get five years each. Two of Chagras daughters, Christa and Catherine, now live in Smithville. He imported more high-grade ganja than anyone, tons at a time, planeload after planeload. I think Jerry Johnson told us whatever he thought we wanted to hear, DEA agent J.T. He was convicted of obstructing the investigation of the On August 31, 1977, Lee Chagra appeared in Judge Woods court to file a motion of discovery, asking that the judge turn over DEA reports, customs reports, grand jury probes, any material that would reveal when Stricklin was supposed to have engaged in continuing criminal activity. Would you ask Kerr to take a lie detector test if someone tried to kill me? he demanded. He asked Bobby Yoseph, a young lawyer who had recently joined his staff, what he would do if he came in and found the office had been robbed? Jimmy was born the middle son of a Lebanese rug merchant family. [15] The FBI conducted more than 30,000 interviews related to the case and in total collected more than 500,000 pieces of information. Jimmy was just talking. Which for Jimmy was almost the same as being broke, Patty said. The family had a late dinner. She remembers being elated when he got out, and the heartbreak that he was largely unchanged, as was her love for him: He was always looking for the next million and used a credit card a friend had given him strictly for essentials to rack up tens of thousands of dollars in gambling debts. That was the year Lee and Jo Annie started building their new home on Frontera Road in the Upper Valley. He was the black sheep, the all-star goof-up. If the feds could compromise even a single member of the conspiracy, the whole organization might crumbleand Lee with it. Jo Annie went on to the Sun Bowl and telephoned her husband at halftime. He knew how to quit while he was winning. From time to time agents provocateurs posing as clients came to his office to discuss a phony case, then ended up trying to score some drugs from him. He decided on James Kerr, one of the assistant U.S. attorneys he had inherited from the Republican regime. Lee speculated that the attempt was an inside job. 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. Lee had always lived his life on the edge of respectability, goading the El Paso establishment by defending hardened criminals, consorting with known drug smugglers, and cultivating his image as the Black Striker. 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. The boys had been caught red-handed with 17,000 pounds if marijuana. Just barely making it. Kerr preferred playing Bach fugues in the dim light of the First Presbyterian Church and going to the symphony. Lee had seated himself at a table and ordered $5000 in chips, but the dealer refused. But Kerr wasnt satisfied. I undermined their entire case of how the bullet got to the judge.. He swore he did not put out a hit on Maximum John H. Wood Jr., the federal judge in San Antonio presiding over a case that could have sent Jamiel Jimmy Chagra to prison for life. The case had been dead for two years, but Kerr had a plan. If youre not careful, your friends become crooks, too. Lee first had the dangers of his association with criminals brought home to him in 1973. He marched straight to a crap table on one side of the casino and told the pit boss to clear the table. He helped develop Operation Intercept, a massive media event in which millions of U.S. citizens were stopped and searched at the border. He unlocked the door to his private bath. Lee was the first college graduate in his family, and the first professional. After two days the jury reported itself hopelessly deadlocked, eight to four for acquittal. [5][3], Texas Drug, Gambling Figure Missing; High Bond Forfeited, Jimmy Chagra; Smuggler Linked to Judge's Death. Since he was not technically involved in the murder, Esper escaped with a relatively light sentence of fifteen years. They implicated Lou Esper as the man who had planned the heist and supplied the weapons. People in the Chagras party didnt bother to register: they just walked up to the desk and someone handed them a key to a six-room suite. He was not very good at suffering alone, and friends and family visited him almost constantly. Then he expanded the pointer, an inch at a time. I knew that Vivian had been working on a book about the Chagra saga, McCulloch said. The Indian wasnt a man most folks would care to meet in the darkthere was a .22 pistol under his stained leather jacket, and his face looked like forty miles of bad highway. The hitman, Charles Harrelson, was the father of actor Woody Harrelson. Patsy ran out the back entrance and toward the cathedral. [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. First, he made at least a dozen telephone calls. He always got excited the moment he felt the clamor and hysteria of Caesars but this time he was practically dancing on the walls. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he had refused to let go of the notion that El Paso was being overrun by the Mafia. He spent more than 35 years defending some of the most notorious alleged Mob figures, including Meyer Lansky, Frank Rosenthal, Anthony Spilotro and Jimmy Chagra. A case in point was that of an unsuspecting El Paso cafe owner who was conned by two agents into conspiring to buy stolen government weapons. They volunteered for every hard-core criminal case that came along: murder, rape, robbery, burglary. All the drawers were open and papers were scattered on the floor. During his tenure as magistrate, Boyd and Lee Chagra became friends, and when there was an opening for the job of U.S. attorney after Jimmy Carters election in 1976, Lee, Sib Abraham, and others supported Boyds appointment.

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