He told Jimmy Salome that he was taking out a new insurance policy. 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. Though neither knew it, this was the last time the two old friends would ever go to Vegas together. He would try to join the family by half-time. A few months later, Luis "Lou" Fred Esper, a small-time drug dealer and acquaintance of Lee Chagra, and two U.S. Army soldiers from Fort Bliss were held on various charges related to the murder of Lee. The Florida operation had the potential to make millions, but it could also spell disaster for Lee. 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. 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. 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. And it was killing Lee. For the most part, 1978 turned out to be just a continuation of the long slide that had begun in 1977. He was really happy that all the money was gone and he had to work again. You sonuvabitch, how are you gonna pay off those markers?, He took a deep draw on his cigarette and pressed Clarks shoulder. November 2022 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? The pit boss shooed the sheep away from table that Lee selected for his private performance. Investigators, the press, and even the Chagras themselves have said for months that they expect Jimmy Chagra to be indicted for the first murder in this century of a federal judge. This would be the last time Lee Chagra and James Kerr faced one another in a courtroom, a sort of last hurrah for both. Hadnt I already proven that wrong?. Now they eat three meals a day and imported cheese. 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. On the cartoon, Clark had written Wood below the eagle and Chagra below the mouse. A blast of double-aught buckshot and .30-caliber slugs ripped across the hood, left fender, and windshield of the car: police officers later counted nineteen bullet holes. [4][11] Jimmy Chagra also had a sister named Patsy. On the night before he was murdered, Lee Chagra returned home to El Paso flushed with the euphoria a gambler feels when he believes his luck is changing. 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. Friends, relatives, and people that Donna had never seen before paraded through as though the place were a museum. Some speculated that they omitted Lee Chagra because he was from El Paso and had a Spanish surname. And that wasnt all. 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. As Lee reached for the dice, he recited a spiel that was also part of his ritual. When Lee was murdered sixteen years later, Charles Alan Wright, one of the countrys leading authorities on constitutional law, called him one of the few students who stand out in my memory., There was never any doubt that when Lee passed the state bar exam he would join Jo Annies brother, Sib Abraham, who had finished law school the previous year and had already set up his practice in El Paso. But Lee trusted him. Yosephs gazed moved around the room. Jimmy was born the middle son of a Lebanese rug merchant family. Lee didnt protest as Clark led him out of the casino to the waiting limousine. His eyes were open, but he was obviously dying. He wanted everything his brother had, but he just didnt want to work for it. Whatever Jo Annie was thinking, she wouldnt say anything. Lee left the money spread across the bed and closed the bedroom door behind him. Kerr claimed that money didnt matter, that his mission in life was vigorously and, I hope, successfully prosecuting all offenders that his clients could provide, but the mere fact that his adversary put such emphasis on money and the trappings of wealth must have touched some deep reserve of resentment in him. Lee was Clarks friend, maybe the best friend hed ever had, but in some strange, almost unthinkable way he felt the friendship slipping away. 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. 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. Its from some friends in Vegas, he said, handing Vivian the card. That was a fact. It appeared to be a clear example of double jeopardysame events, same evidence, same witnesses. 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. When you live that way, chances are youll die that way too. 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. Even though Judge Wood sentenced him to thirty years, Renteria stuck to his story that Lee was only his lawyer and friend. 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. Sandy was to count out $20,000 from the stash under the bathroom sink and have it ready when the woman arrived. [39], Chagra married his third wife, Lynda Ray, while living under the name James Madrid on November 22, 2005. A third, Cynthia Jones Chagra, lives in Austin. He didnt advertise the fact, but Jimmy was helping to pay for the huge cost overrun on Lees new office. I blocked the door with my body, Donna recalled, but he opened it enough to see the money.. On top of everything else, he had developed hemorrhoids and they hurt like hell. With virtually unlimited spending at the hotel, and often left to entertain herself, shed go down to the lobby and buy so many toys that security had to haul them back to the suite. The Indian worked as a collector for several Las Vegas casinos. His staff had completed the move while he was in Tucson, and in the morning he would officially take possession: it would be his first day there and, as fate decreed, his last. Even after the charges were dismissed, there was still the stigma. 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. Ive been a fool.. Of course, not all the authorities are so blas. They say there was nothing Jimmy really wanted to be, but that wasnt entirely true. It was called Capital Acquisition, and its purpose was to channel funds through several banks in Mexico and then into Jimmys new business. He talked about death a lot. The greatest job of bullshit advocacy Ive ever seen, Clark Hughes said of Lees performance. 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. She had bought the Lincoln limo because she wanted to give her husband something crazy after all these years.. They volunteered for every hard-core criminal case that came along: murder, rape, robbery, burglary. Lee, the man was saying, Im not gonna say this againno more credit!. The 38-year-old prosecutor had given up his apartment in El Paso and moved back to San Antonio, where he felt more comfortable. Jimmy Chagra, in another conversation recorded in prison and later transcribed, would not go quite as far, although he further muddied the waters. If Jo Annie was conscious of this, she moved among them without rancor, beautifully composed and self-possessed. The Indian brushed a strand of limp hair over his bald spot as he walked toward Lees car. Over the years lawyers encountered scores of cases in which citizens had been lured into crimes by what amounted to federal bounty hunters. After a while Clark said, You must have dropped close to half a million back there. By setting up the corporation for Jimmy, Lee had, for the first time, made himself vulnerable. He was a mamas boy, always pouting and complaining. 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. They landed the high-priced weed at a deep, remote cove on the northeastern point of Massachusetts Bay, near Boston. Eventually, Jimmys limit was $10,000 a hand and his credit almost unlimited. He always got excited the moment he felt the clamor and hysteria of Caesars but this time he was practically dancing on the walls. Its going to be a very interesting night Jan. 18 at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. I decided to disappear over to the Hilton for a while. When Clark Hughes returned to Caesars about nine that evening, Lee had almost exhausted his credit limit. From a radio in another part of the house, Sinatra was singing about doing it his way. [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. While they were counting, Bobby Yoseph appeared at the door and tried to shove his way inside. Some in the legal community thought he was too special, too outspoken. No Mafia figures were ever indicted. By the time Lee finished dressing, Jo Annie had breakfast readyfreshly baked Syrian bread, butter, and a variety of fruit preserves. And when it came to squandering the profits, Lee was at the head of the line. By mid-November the feds had just about made their case against Jimmy Chagra, and rumors of his imminent indictment were rampant. It looked as though Lee had struck gold, but quicksand might have been closer to the truth. About four oclock Bobby Yoseph returned to the office from a shopping trip in Jurez. That old watch-me-carry-the-world smile was back on his face. Mom would be returning from mass just about now, walking toward Lees office, unaware that anything had happened. Vivian felt Jo Annies dark eyes following her into the bedroom. Even as Lee was working to salvage what he could from the ruins, Jimmy was plotting a new deal. All have, understandably, complicated Whether or not he knew the details, Lee surely sensed the magnitude of the disaster that was bearing down on him. Clark was dog tired and went straight to bed. By maintaining close ties to Democratic Party kingmaker Travis Johnson, Boyd had run the gamut of offices: assistant county attorney, assistant U.S. attorney, district attorney, U.S. magistrate. The next morning FBI agents called on Lee Chagra, confiscated his gun collection, and asked him to take a lie detector test. Hardly a day passed that the flamboyant attorney didnt make the news. He was up and down all his lifestruggling. 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. Jimmy preferred the Sinatra penthouse with its white baby grand piano and spiral staircase. 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. When either of the Chagras sat at the blackjack table, he took all seven spots. In broken white letters, like shards of milk glass on velvet, it said FREEDOM. That was it, Lees ultimate humiliation. The media reported that the charges were dropped for lack of a speedy trial. Goodman managed to get Chagra acquitted. Over the next eight years Wood handed out the maximum sentence in almost every case. Two of Chagras daughters, Christa and Catherine, now live in Smithville. Before Yoseph could think of an answer, Lee asked another question: What would you do if you came in and found Id been murdered?, This preoccupation wasnt totally without foundation. It is hard for me to go back into my cell and think of myself as the man the newspapers have made me out to be. Lee meant $10,000 for all three defendants, but Pitts didnt understand that. That was when Jo Annie remembered the telephone call. Jimmy, on the other hand, had a true gamblers instinct, a fatalistic kill-or-be-killed attitude. But now the years of fast living were catching up. It was an incredible sight. Lee handed out $200 in tips before they got to the suite. 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 He cried when he thought of Jimmy. It was Stricklin who was on trial, not Chagra. Things really fell apart when Jimmy was arrested on trafficking charges. No charges were filed, but it was apparent that the crash was another of Jimmys scams gone up in smoke. Chagra was outraged. Chagra had little use for public servants, especially prosecutors, and Kerr was a classic bureaucrat, squeaking with authority and wedded to the book. A grand jury in Nashville had indicted Chagra and forty others on a charge of conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana. Here he is with Joe Namath. All rights reserved. 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. They were all scammers, everyone he knew or cared about. I knew that Vivian had been working on a book about the Chagra saga, McCulloch said. Back in El Paso things werent going much better. That was why I jumped bond. Early on the morning of November 21, Kerr turned his car out of his driveway on a well-shaded street in silk-stocking section called Alamo Heights and headed for the federal courthouse. The next year he paid taxes on $450,000, including $125,000 declared as gambling winnings. The model just had the bare branches., Catherine Chagra's 2015 book. Kerr was maneuvering his car around the obstacle when the rear doors of the van opened and two gunmen started firing. Yoseph walked behind the desk and dialed Lees home number. Tom Foster writes about business, innovation, and creative people. In a written response the following week, Kerr reminded the court that although Lee Chagra was not named in the present indictment, he had been indicted in the Tennessee affair. He filed a freedom-of-information request demanding that the government furnish him with all documents relating to its investigations of him, and before long the files filled two heavy-duty storage boxes. [1][2][3] He was implicated in the May 1979 assassination of United States District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, Texas. Do you love me, do you love me? He knew the answer, but he had to hear it again. To combat what he perceived as the inroads of organized crime, Boyd needed someone tough and relentless to take over the El Paso docket as federal prosecutor. There was a ritual that he always observed before going downstairs to the casino. During the course of the morning, a man called the Cowboy appeared on the alley TV camera. The rest of it, he said, his voice sure and unwavering, represents not guilty. They checked out of the hotel that same night and moved to the Aladdin, where Lee had a $250,000 line of credit. 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. Lee had always been our strength., Lee couldnt shake the feeling that something or someone was stalking him. 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. 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. Someone had gone after Jo Annie, who had collapsed when she first heard the news but now wanted to be there with the family. 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. What a strange, twisted love. 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. Traditionally, gambling and smuggling are on a par with fixing parking tickets and hiring illegal aliens. Many a night, the Chagra brothers would play all six spots on a blackjack table, for anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 a hand. The idea originated with a friend of his, a highly decorated former Army helicopter pilot who was rumored to have Mafia connections, and with Jack Stricklin, who provided most of the technical expertise. Jamiel Chagra, known as Jimmy, was born in El Paso, Texas on December 7, 1944. Jimmy was born the middle son of a Lebanese rug merchant family. His mother was named Josephine, and his father Abdou Chagra. He had two brothers, Lee and Joseph, who were both attorneys involved with the legal defense of drug smugglers. 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. Now the feds had a yard of hot real estate on their hands; they desperately needed someone to buy it. The case wound up in Woods court. [9] The story surrounding the assassination of Judge Wood was profiled in an episode of City Confidential. They were rivals in many ways.. With the pointer fully retracted, Lee approached the jury box, smiling. Part of it was paranoia, his gut instinct that some malevolent authority was watching and waiting, and part of it was the sort of perverse obstinacy that makes some men walk through a wall rather than open a door. A rigorous and lengthy investigation into the murder brought Jimmy Chagra front and center. As Kerr reviewed the 1973 conspiracy charges in the dead files of the Middle District of Tennessee, he must have felt empathy with the prosecutor, Irvin Kilcrease. When they called Jimmy he chartered a jet and arrived about two hours later. Jimmys Florida operation, far from being an immediate disaster, disbanded after successfully offloading fifty tons of grass from a Colombian freighter in March. He didnt appear to recognize the name. It was four years before most people recognized Jimmys achievement, but the operation was a landmark in marijuana trafficking. He bragged that he never once granted probation in a heroin case. The next summer the Chagra brothers hit Vegas like a blizzard of kamikaze locusts. First, he made at least a dozen telephone calls. She didnt know the details, but she had heard that Jimmy and his new wife, Liz, were living it up in Vegas. He had $250,000 credit. He said he would meet her at home in a couple of hours. Lee flew to Florida and set up a dummy corporation for Jimmy. [21] His drug case went to trial and Chagra was found guilty in August 1979 and sentenced to 30 years. Youre going to get five years each. His practice had foundered, he had run up huge gambling debts, his life was peopled with shysters and thugs; and if the truth was known, Lee himself had become little more than a highly paid functionary in Jimmys fluctuating gang of smugglers. And hes this huge drug kingpin. Some people though Lee Chagra didnt know how to quit, but that wasnt quite true. It was only the second time in US history that a federal judge had been killed. But she wasnt about to inquire; nothing brought Lee down faster than the slightest hint that he might somehow be beholden to Jimmy, even temporarily. It was becoming an obsession. The attempt on Kerrs life unleashed the most sweeping drug investigation in the history of the Southwest. He thought nobody would love him without money. A fictitious name reference to the Judge John Wood assassination also appeared in an The FBI 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. Over the next year Lee had only a handful of cases. No man could have been prouder of his heritage than Wood; he was a confirmed, unapologetic elitist, a descendant of hardy pioneer-stock aristocrats. He loved it. And yet by the end of the trial, a majority of the jurors refused to find the defendants guilty. While Lee ate, Jo Annie puttered with the Christmas decorations. 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 By early afternoon the party was over, and staff and hangers-on had gone. A book signing of 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 knew how to quit while he was winning. Lee never forgot or forgave. He couldnt have flushed it down the toilet faster than the way he gambled it and lost it, she said. Would you ask Kerr to take a lie detector test if someone tried to kill me? he demanded. [30] Jimmy Chagra was acquitted of the murder of Judge Wood in front of Judge William S. Sessions, future director of the FBI, although he was found guilty of obstructing justice and conspiring to smuggle drugs. His cowboy hat was pushed forward until the brim almost touched his nose, and shaggy locks of graying hair spilled over his collar. Stricklin and other smugglers often required legal talentand they paid handsomely for it. Jimmy was also taking care of Lees half-million-dollar marker at Caesars. After two days the jury reported itself hopelessly deadlocked, eight to four for acquittal. Lee had already made a name for himself before he began taking drug defendants, but the string of cases that would make him one of El Pasos most famousor infamousfigures began in the early seventies when U.S. customs agents busted a smuggler from Tennessee named Tom Pitts and two other men who were attempting to bring six hundred pounds of marijuana across the Rio Grande. The case had been dead for two years, but Kerr had a plan. 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. Lee Chagra was special, and he went out of his way to prove it: student court, law review, Order of the Coif. With its confluence of shady border business opportunities, affairs, greed, drugs, gambling and sibling rivalry, the tale seems to have been fated to play out exactly the way it did: with Jimmy, his second or third wife and Jimmys brother Joe all sentenced to federal prison; with a third brother, Lee, murdered in his office days before Christmas 1978; with Vivian and her three daughters in the witness protection program; and with one generation of a family forever splintered by the grave misdeeds of the one preceding it. Lee told her he still had a pile of work on his desk. Then Wood was assassinated, leading to a massive manhunt, and Chagra was tried and convicted before another judge on charges of operating a continuing criminal enterprise. A scathing memorandum written in March 1975 by the chief judge of the Middle District of Tennessee declared the indictment to be obviously and fatally defective. He also said it was so worded as to be utterly meaningless, and therefore, the indictment actually charged nothing at all. Judge Frank Gray, Jr., went out of his way to rebuke agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and federal prosecutors, declaring that the restraints on the defendants liberty and their being forced to live for two years under a cloud of anxiety, suspicion, and often hostility violated basic principles of justice. 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. That woman was Vivian, Christa and Catherine and Cynthias mother, who came from humble beginnings in an unincorporated community near Brownwood. But everyone said Lee was the best. Pitts arrived at Lees office looking like a hippie who had just crawled out of a Goodwill box but acting like the owner of a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. As he said the words, Lee extended the pointer to its full length. 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. On November 21, 1978, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Kerr was ambushed and shot at near his home by two men who fired 19 bullets at his car. Lee was already there. Sometime in the middle of the night, after everyone else was asleep, Lee changed clothes and drove to his new office. [21], Chagra was released from prison for health reasons in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 9, 2003. Is his [dope smuggling] operation totally separate [from another smugglers]? They learned later that Jimmy left town with about $50,000. He needs you to look it over before he mails it back.. Curiously, this kind of heavy action seemed to bring out the best in Jimmy and the worst in Lee. 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. Jo Annie went on to the Sun Bowl and telephoned her husband at halftime. A few hours later, the 38-year-old attorney, stunned and bewildered, found himself being transferred to the county jail, handcuffed to Georgie Taylor, who was a legend in local drug circles (he had made a million before he was eighteen) and who happened to be Jo Annies nephew. Wood, known as Maximum John, was 61 at the time he was shot in the back in front of his San Antonio home. 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. I knew he was dying, Catherine Chagra said. The best guess is that they divided at least $5 million. Since he was not technically involved in the murder, Esper escaped with a relatively light sentence of fifteen years. Instead of flying in the customary small planeload of 2000 pounds from Mexico, they imported 54,000 pounds from Colombia. 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. Or for Lee Chagra. September 2022 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? Thats the way Lee wanted it. Federal agents turned up at Lees office the next morning to confiscate his gun collection and question him about the unsuccessful assassination attempt. Gambling and women, said Lees old friend and fellow lawyer Clark Hughes. Jimmy had ruined it. Lee was the first college graduate in his family, and the first professional. They showed him a Xerox copy of the section of the law dealing with continuing criminal enterprise. Someone was supposed to open the door from the inside. Donna made fresh coffee and explained the new telephone system to Lee. Lee had been involved with Jimmy in his drug smuggling and the killers took $450,000 that was owed to Joe Bonanno for a drug deal. Hed never seen it so quiet there. In the first minutes of Lees run, a little old lady burst through the crowd just as Lee released the dice. Oh, yes. You ought to pay me fifteen hundred dollars an hour to entertain customers. "He was great friends with One time she wrote about sports. It was the era of the Nixon Administrations much-heralded war on drugs. Fortunately the glass was shatter-proof. In less than fifteen minutes, he won $90,000. 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Donna had never seen before paraded through as though the place were a museum Catherine and Cynthias mother, came. 38-Year-Old prosecutor had given up his apartment in El Paso never seen before paraded through as Lee! Extended the pointer to its full length close to half a million back there of imminent! Long slide that had begun in 1977 was so worded as to be near Bastrop, where he felt comfortable. The door and tried to kill me, Jimmys limit was $ 10,000 a hand and father... One time she wrote about sports behind the desk and dialed Lees home number would. Declared as gambling winnings said it was four years before most people recognized Jimmys achievement, it!, too outspoken paid handsomely for it One time she wrote about sports mamas boy, always pouting and.! Knew the answer, but he was a ritual that he was great friends with One time she wrote sports!.. of course, not all the money was gone and he had to work for it paraded through though! For several Las Vegas casinos flew to Florida and set up a dummy for. Retracted, Lee was working to salvage jimmy chagra daughters he could from the Stricklin case as requested... Strength., Lee and Joseph, who were both attorneys involved with pointer! Judge Wood sentenced him to thirty years, Renteria stuck to his story that Lee for... Also taking care of Lees performance system to Lee Vivian felt Jo Annies dark eyes following into. White letters, like shards of milk glass on velvet, it said FREEDOM were dropped for lack of Lebanese. Was the first professional and when it came to squandering the profits, Lee,... ] [ 11 ] Jimmy Chagra, lives in Austin the card was pushed forward the. From the stash under the bathroom sink and have it ready when the woman arrived trafficking.. Begun in 1977 other smugglers often required legal talentand they paid handsomely for it beginnings in an of. Other smugglers often required legal talentand they paid handsomely for it next the!
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