Despite all evidence to the contrary, he had refused to let go of the notion that El Paso was being overrun by the Mafia. A sample: Q.What about Lee Chagra? When he read copies of Kerrs motion and Woods reply, Chagra was flabbergasted and then outraged. 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 Friends, relatives, and people that Donna had never seen before paraded through as though the place were a museum. The shock of Lees death didnt really hit Jimmy until he faced the prospect of walking into Judge Woods courtroom without Lee. Lee was lying face up on the floor, blood trickling from his mouth. There were at least twenty lawyers for the defense, but apparently the entire burden of prosecution fell on poor Kilcrease. Of course, not all the authorities are so blas. The case remains unsolved. He was a good, sound, all-around lawyer, but he didnt have Lees appetite for controversy. Lee sparkled like a kid with a new toy as he showed Donna and Sandy where the various safes were concealed. One client who occupied a good deal of Lees time during the autumn of 1976 was Jerry Edwin Johnson, a local con man and admitted drug smuggler accused of masterminding a scheme to defraud the IRS of a quarter of a million dollars. The documents revealed that hardly a week passed without some agents making inquiries into Lee Chagras private life. Its riddled with ethnic stereotyping of Lebanese men as reckless womanizers and Lebanese women as subservient slaves to their men. But Jimmy took most of the credit. Emily McCullar is a senior editor covering pop culture, news, and Texas history. He seemed burned out, used up, and he was hitting the cocaine pretty hard. Goodman had represented Chagra in a previous drug case, which was undone by his client testifying. He had started using cocaine some months earlier, and now he was using it daily. (At that point the public had no inkling of the earlier, even bigger Boston haul.) Jimmy was born the middle son of a Lebanese rug merchant family. 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. Goodman punched holes in the governments case, and the jury acquitted Chagra. Lee had always been our strength., Lee couldnt shake the feeling that something or someone was stalking him. 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. This didnt seem to disturb Wood any more than it had Guinn, who used to cackle, I can sentence them a lot faster than they can reverse them. Nor did Wood protest when they started calling him Maximum John. It was the way he sounded when he was counting money or totaling figures, an abstract, business-first attitude. Borrowing heavily from Kerrs own wording, Wood totally agreed: This request appears to be primarily an effort by the defense attorney to obtain reports of an investigation pertaining to him. The next year he paid taxes on $450,000, including $125,000 declared as gambling winnings. 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. Instead, this flimsy, highly prejudicial document was destined to dog both Lee Chagra and his nemesis, Judge John Wood, to their graves. A further indignation: The witness protection program first exiled them to Omaha, Neb. He would lend a stranger his last $100, knowing he was kissing it good-bye. All things considered, 1978 has probably been the worst year of Lee Chagras life. That was when Jo Annie remembered the telephone call. 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. Lee stared out the limo window at the blur of cold neon. The attempt on Kerrs life unleashed the most sweeping drug investigation in the history of the Southwest. Until now. Lee handed out $200 in tips before they got to the suite. Chagra was also a heavy gambler in Las Vegas, Nevada, and attracted attention with his flamboyant ways. The staff knew the ritual, but no one knew for sure what went on behind the closed door. After a while Clark said, You must have dropped close to half a million back there. Then, in a fashion that was typical of his relationship with Lee, Jimmy decided to take it one step farther. 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. Vivian remembered the previous Saturday at his office; shes heard murmurs from the staff as she followed him upstairs. 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. 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. Now the government was trying to prove that Johnson had helped smuggle a pound of heroin out of Mexico. September 2022 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? He was later tried and acquitted in the assassination but received an additional sentence for obstruction of justice. Lee was Clarks friend, maybe the best friend hed ever had, but in some strange, almost unthinkable way he felt the friendship slipping away. Several times Lee talked to Vivian and others about dying. However, his sister Patsy stated that he was not in the witness protection program at the time of his death. It took Lee less that half a day to discover that the search warrant used to bust the Tennessee smugglers was faulty. The family was breaking apart. 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. He just picked up the money and tossed it in a drawer. Instead of flying in the customary small planeload of 2000 pounds from Mexico, they imported 54,000 pounds from Colombia. As Boyd must have realized, Kerr and Lee Chagra were natural enemies. 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. [11][24][9], Jimmy Chagra died of cancer on July 25, 2008. On five minutes notice, Caesars would dispatch a Learjet to fetch one or both of the Chagras. He wanted to dress the way Lee dressed, in fine clothes and jewelry, and he wanted to hear whispers of respect when he walked into a room and silence when he told a story. [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. Fighting seemingly hopeless causes became his passion. Boyd was wrong. Part of the reason was his honest conviction that even the lowest, meanest, rottenest scum on the face of the earth deserved, and in fact were guaranteed, a right to a fair trial. The Museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission to advance the public understanding of organized crime's history and impact on American society. 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. Oh, yes. His sister, Patsy, recalled, It scared me to hear Lee talk like that. Leave them blank to get signed up. 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. One strategy that Liddy and the newly created Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) finally settled on, as defense lawyers in El Paso soon realized, was the use of agents provocateurs, whose job it was to create crime. Jimmy had given her a couple of kids and a lasting pain in the ass. I knew he was dying, Catherine Chagra said. 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. He did quit for the night, though. It was hard to imagine two men more different. 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 a few years Abraham and Chagra had the leading anti-establishment law firm in the city. They were scheduled to fly back to El Paso Monday morning. He was convicted of obstructing the investigation of the Chagra, 39, a licensed professional gambler, was accused of paying Charles V. Harrelson $250,000 to kill the judge. If you fill out the first name, last name, or agree to terms fields, you will NOT be added to the newsletter list. Shortly after the Ardmore trial, DEA agents visited Jack Stricklin at La Tuna federal correctional institution, where he was doing time for a drug rap Lee hadnt been able to get him out of. [36][37] However, his sister Patsy stated that he was not in the witness protection program at the time of his death. In a short time the bust was being described as the biggest one in El Paso history. Clark excused himself and went to his own room, alone. 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. Donna had never seen him before, but Lee said that he was expecting the man and pressed the electronic button to admit him. Lee and Joanne Chagra raised their five children in a rarified world of glitz, glamour and money few other El Pasoans could imagine. He hustled personal injury cases, divorces, wills. Curiously, this kind of heavy action seemed to bring out the best in Jimmy and the worst in Lee. Jimmy Chagra, in another conversation recorded in prison and later transcribed, would not go quite as far, although he further muddied the waters. One of his key tactics was to source the details of a model of the apartment complex where Wood was shot, built for $11 million by the prosecution. 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. Two of their five children were with her. On the cartoon, Clark had written Wood below the eagle and Chagra below the mouse. Kerr was an empire builder, Boyd said. The family name was originally Bushaada, but Lees grandfather mexicanized it during the revolution. 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. What investigation against him? She dismissed the greeting as a typical Sailor Roberts lie: she didnt believe for a second that hed gone out of his way to wish her anything. Lee had been accused of a lot of things, but this was the first time anyone had ever accused him of representing himself and not his client. Thats the reason Im going to release it to you.Thats what Ive been trying to tell you. It was obvious that the prosecution and the DEA had problems coordinating their investigation. As in: Heres a picture of Jimmy in Vegas with Muhammad Ali, both in black tie. He was also used in FBI: The Untold Stories. The government had been after him ever since Nashville, but 1977 was to be worse than anything that had gone before, largely because of three men: U.S. attorney Jamie Boyd, Boyds assistant James Kerr, and Judge John Wood. The 38-year-old prosecutor had given up his apartment in El Paso and moved back to San Antonio, where he felt more comfortable. Unlike many casinos, the Aladdin allowed a player to lay double odds; thus it was possible to win or lose twice as fast. 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.. If you scratched Stricklin deep enough, Kerr reasoned, you would find Chagra. 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. Lee, the man was saying, Im not gonna say this againno more credit!. From Kilcreases files, Kerr concluded that all the elements needed to satisfy the kingpin law were amply presentmany separate transactions and many people, most of whom worked for Stricklin. Catherine remembers the prison visits as the best times she ever had with her father. [9] The story surrounding the assassination of Judge Wood was profiled in an episode of City Confidential. He walked to the top of the stairs and looked down at two black men with guns. Please feel free to use any other table in the casino. Like so many sheep, the nickel-and-dime players started backing away. It became his trademark. There is no way to calculate how all the damning publicity affected the careers of Sib Abraham and the others. And it was killing Lee. Lees success in trying drug cases soon led him to meet Jack Stricklin, who had sent the Pitts case his way. A third, Cynthia Jones Chagra, lives in Austin. Jo Annie left the game early, and when she stopped by the office Roberts was just leaving. He crossed the living room and closed the apartment door behind him. They showed him a Xerox copy of the section of the law dealing with continuing criminal enterprise. Lee was the first college graduate in his family, and the first professional. Sometime in the middle of the night, after everyone else was asleep, Lee changed clothes and drove to his new office. Chagra used one of his trademarks, a solid-gold retractable pointer, to demonstrate his case. Chagra: The King of Dope Drugs, Deceit and Dirty Darlings, WATCH: Indiana father arrested on live TV after toddler is seen with gun. Is there any secret about that?. 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.. Yosephs gazed moved around the room. Until now the media had treated the charges against Stricklin as routine news, but Woods ruling added a bizarre new twist. 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. It appeared to be a clear example of double jeopardysame events, same evidence, same witnesses. The door was partially open, but the office appeared empty. 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 would try to join the family by half-time. They mentioned four namesLee Chagra, Jimmy Chagra, Sib Abraham and Vic Apodaca (a well-known bail bondsman). [39], Chagra married his third wife, Lynda Ray, while living under the name James Madrid on November 22, 2005. Is his [dope smuggling] operation totally separate [from another smugglers]? Back in El Paso things werent going much better. Though neither knew it, this was the last time the two old friends would ever go to Vegas together. Technically and legally, the unsworn interview shouldnt even have been a part of the grand jury report. He helped develop Operation Intercept, a massive media event in which millions of U.S. citizens were stopped and searched at the border. The law was wide open to interpretationtailor-made for a crusading lawman like James Kerr. Whatever Jo Annie was thinking, she wouldnt say anything. That was the year Lee and Jo Annie started building their new home on Frontera Road in the Upper Valley. 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. And, of course, Jimmy Chagra. Catherine Chagra and her two sisters, Cindy and Christa, were the darling daughters of Jimmy Chagra, the biggest pot dealer in the history of the U.S.A., and one of 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. An electronic current unbolted the door. Death came in Mesa, Ariz., on July 25, 2008. The real show was on the casino floor in special sections roped off for the Chagras. Kerr was maneuvering his car around the obstacle when the rear doors of the van opened and two gunmen started firing. He left his hat and keys on the couch and walked down the hall to Lees office. Clark assumed that he would go straight back to Caesars and claim some of his markers, but that wasnt Lees plan. Boyd had never been regarded as a crusader, but one exception was his views on gamblinghe hated gamblers. Jo Annie went on to the Sun Bowl and telephoned her husband at halftime. The government seemed to know it didnt have a case, but it was determined to see how far it could travel. Kerr was frail and sallow-faced and talked in a high-pitched voice that suggested he was about to shatter. The greatest job of bullshit advocacy Ive ever seen, Clark Hughes said of Lees performance. He hardly seemed aware she was in the room. Clark was painfully aware that all serious gamblers harbored deep and irrational superstitions: once hed seen Lee go berserk because a Chinaman approached the table. 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. Narcotics and gambling were crimes that grew from a common stem composed of the worst elements in society. 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. He didnt appear to recognize the name. Who do you think you are? The pit boss had heard the spiel many times and smiled patronizingly as he personally counted out the stacks of $500 chips. You sonuvabitch, how are you gonna pay off those markers?, He took a deep draw on his cigarette and pressed Clarks shoulder. He called himself a pacifist, and yet he was comfortable around violence. 2023 www.statesman.com. Lee flew to Florida and set up a dummy corporation for Jimmy. 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