Speaker 1: Ah beaute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military
Speaker 1: News and straight talk with the guys and the community
Speaker 1: soft Rep Radio on Time on Target, episode four hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty five. That's Jack Murphy on Dennis Jones. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the program. Lots unpacked to open up. So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna step out of your way. I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: you lay this all out for you. Uh, short and sweet,
Speaker 1: it's back to Eddie Gallagher. Yeah, this was the story
Speaker 1: I was talking about a few episodes ago that you know,
Speaker 1: I was going to get published sooner or later. Um.
Speaker 1: I had not really planned on breaking any news on
Speaker 1: this story because there had been just so much reporting
Speaker 1: on it by others, I mean, and and by others,
Speaker 1: I mean everybody you know, New York Times, Navy Times, uh,
Speaker 1: Military Times, CNN, Fox, I mean, tons and tons of
Speaker 1: reporting on this case. So when I see that, I think, Wow,
Speaker 1: there's really no need for me to you know, jump
Speaker 1: in there. Um, and there's probably not even anything new
Speaker 1: for for me to report, considering all these other journalists
Speaker 1: and so on that are that are working on this stuff.
Speaker 1: But then I had a story kind of come to
Speaker 1: me in a way, and I started developing it and
Speaker 1: it turned into a story that could actually be published. Um,
Speaker 1: the story came to me from sources within the special
Speaker 1: forces community and they told me the story about how
Speaker 1: they were on a operation in two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: It was Marja, Afghanistan. There's a huge clearing operation. It
Speaker 1: was a big deal in the press at the time
Speaker 1: and obviously a big deal for the military as well
Speaker 1: that they were clearing through this insurgent stronghold in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: It was considered the insurgent capital at the time. Uh
Speaker 1: and A Special Forces o d A, a Special Forces
Speaker 1: team from third Special Forces Group, was working with the
Speaker 1: Kandak Commandos, who are Afghanistan's National counter Terrors Force. They
Speaker 1: are like they're they're kind of like their version of
Speaker 1: Tier one, their premier counter terrorism team, and Afghanistan, the
Speaker 1: Government of Afghanistan, will deploy Kandak and their Special Forces
Speaker 1: advisors with them wherever they're needed around the the country.
Speaker 1: You know, they're kind of like, you know, uh, they
Speaker 1: could be a quick reaction force. They can go, they
Speaker 1: can go put out fires wherever they need to do that.
Speaker 1: So they are down there, of course, for this big
Speaker 1: operation down in Marjah. They leave Camp Morehead, they go
Speaker 1: down to Camp Bastion and stage out of their where
Speaker 1: the special Forces piece of that mission is being run
Speaker 1: out of the ao B at that camp. It's the
Speaker 1: ao B is the Advanced Operating Base and that's where
Speaker 1: all the you know, staff officers are. It's one of
Speaker 1: the logistical hub is that they're going to run the
Speaker 1: whole operation. So attached to the O d A that's
Speaker 1: going out to hit a objective um the objective is Thunderdome.
Speaker 1: They have an attachment to them. And because the O
Speaker 1: d A s are working on these big, large scale
Speaker 1: operations with the Afghans, they sometimes get attachments who are
Speaker 1: basically there to help them out and UH in this
Speaker 1: case it was a Navy seal a Seal sniper and
Speaker 1: they told me that it was Eddie Gallagher on this
Speaker 1: operation with them. So the UH joint Afghan American force
Speaker 1: they push up to this road intersection which is objective
Speaker 1: Thunderdome and they capture a house there that they're going
Speaker 1: to use as kind of their staging ground out in
Speaker 1: the field for the for this operation. So they come
Speaker 1: in and capture this area. UM. And uh, Chief Gallagher
Speaker 1: I'm told was up on the roof with other special
Speaker 1: Forces members and there's a lot of Afghan National Army
Speaker 1: and A guys driving down the road through this road
Speaker 1: intersection to participate in the operation. And they said, uh
Speaker 1: that Chief Gallagher popped off a shot at the A
Speaker 1: N A and one one round actually went through the
Speaker 1: rear window of a highlucks and embedded in the dashboard.
Speaker 1: Which not a great start now, um. And then throughout
Speaker 1: the that that day and and into the next morning,
Speaker 1: there was a farmer nearby. It was kind of an
Speaker 1: middle aged guy. And whenever there was a law in
Speaker 1: the firefight, whenever there's a law and fighting, this farmer
Speaker 1: would come out with his hoe and he'd start working
Speaker 1: his land, farming, farming, waits for no man war be damn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another another day in Afghanistan. And the interpreter UH for
Speaker 1: the team kept telling this this civilian like, go back inside,
Speaker 1: it's not safe out here, of course not. And he'd
Speaker 1: keep coming back out anytime there was a law on fire.
Speaker 1: According to my sources, UM. And so then you have
Speaker 1: the thing with the an A that night. The next
Speaker 1: morning comes and the O d A is there. They
Speaker 1: are waiting for the Marines to come in and backfill
Speaker 1: the areas that they had cleared with the Afghans, and
Speaker 1: then the ODER and the Candy commandos will move forward
Speaker 1: and capture the next village and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: So they are waiting up there, um and it was
Speaker 1: at that point that they hear a shot taken, and
Speaker 1: there's actually another O d A member up on the
Speaker 1: roof who saw this unfold and witnessed, allegedly Eddie Gallagher
Speaker 1: shoot and killed this unarmed farmer, and Gallagher was then
Speaker 1: reported to have been bragging about having shot the unarmed farmer.
Speaker 1: The team waits up on the rooftop. The team, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't mention, is split in half, so a special forces
Speaker 1: team is twelve guys. So there's six guys up on
Speaker 1: the roof of this building and then there's twelve or
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, there's the other six guys are inside a
Speaker 1: adjacent building. So when nightfall comes, the guys who are
Speaker 1: up on the rooftop egress to the other building to
Speaker 1: bring together the team. And at that point the odi
Speaker 1: A members that were on the roof said, hey, this
Speaker 1: seal sniper is doing crazy stuff and reported what he did,
Speaker 1: and the leadership on the team, the the team warrant
Speaker 1: officer and captain came to the agreement that this seal
Speaker 1: needs to be off our mission, so they sent him
Speaker 1: back to the rear. UM. There's a resupply helicopter coming
Speaker 1: in that night. They say, hey, when you come in
Speaker 1: and bringing this resupply, there's gonna be one packs going
Speaker 1: out with you. UM, but they don't report over the
Speaker 1: radio what's exactly why. No, I can understand that. Knowing
Speaker 1: what's what could the UM. So the seal gets put
Speaker 1: on the helicopter taken back to Camp Bastian the ao B,
Speaker 1: and what I was told was that Chief Gallagher continued
Speaker 1: bragging about killing this farmer and at one point the
Speaker 1: ao B Canmander overheard this and pulled Chief Gallagher aside
Speaker 1: to speak to him. And after that, whatever that conversation was,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wasn't My sources didn't know. He
Speaker 1: was then put on a plane and sent away. And
Speaker 1: so this was came to me from sources and special forces.
Speaker 1: What I was also able to obtain was a U
Speaker 1: n c I S document the two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: and c i S investigation into Chief Gallagher. What that
Speaker 1: document shows is a seal sniper who I won't name yet.
Speaker 1: I'm sure his name will almost certainly come out during
Speaker 1: the trial, which is gonna start Monday, but I agreed
Speaker 1: to withhold his name for now. Um. He was a
Speaker 1: seal sniper and he reported to the n c i
Speaker 1: S investigators that UM that Eddie Gallagher told him that
Speaker 1: he had killed an unarmed farmer during a mission in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: So now it seems that you have multiple sources here
Speaker 1: that are telling the same story. Um. In order to
Speaker 1: do my diligence on this story, I have to reach
Speaker 1: out to the other side. It's the responsible thing to do.
Speaker 1: So I contacted Chief Gallagher's defense attorney, Timothy parlatorre Uh,
Speaker 1: and I talked to him on the phone. We had
Speaker 1: a conversation and UM and Chief Gallagher's defense attorney said,
Speaker 1: the story is totally made up, totally fictional, never happened. Um.
Speaker 1: He he confirmed that Gallagher was in Afghanistan at that time,
Speaker 1: but said that he was not on this particular operation.
Speaker 1: Now that's fact checkable, right, Like, there's got to be
Speaker 1: some kind of documentation that would not necessarily that he
Speaker 1: that he allegedly shot the farmer, But wouldn't somebody on
Speaker 1: a manifest somewhere on a kana somewhere it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: with some more digging, some FOI requests, you could probably
Speaker 1: turn up those documents and confirm or deny whether or
Speaker 1: not he was present on that operation. Which is a
Speaker 1: crazy move for the defense attorney to uh claim that
Speaker 1: if if it's that if like, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: not the hard I mean, it's not the easiest of digging.
Speaker 1: But if you look into it, they're gonna find an
Speaker 1: answer one way or another at some point, whether whether
Speaker 1: he was there or not, and the other guys who
Speaker 1: were on the team in the A O B. But
Speaker 1: as a reporter, I have to keep an open mind.
Speaker 1: Of course, perhaps perhaps this is a case of mistaken identity,
Speaker 1: Perhaps something is completely wrong here. Um, But there's enough,
Speaker 1: there was enough sourcing that this was something that um
Speaker 1: had to be reported. UM. You know, I think it
Speaker 1: was the responsible thing to do was to report it,
Speaker 1: but also to report you know, the other side of it,
Speaker 1: what the defense attorney had to say. UM. So I
Speaker 1: published his comment as well, uh saying, you know, the
Speaker 1: stories entire really made up. UM. And as I've said
Speaker 1: in the past, is it possible Chief Gallagher is innocent, um,
Speaker 1: that he's gonna go He's going to trial on Monday
Speaker 1: for the alleged murder in Missoul, Iraq. Maybe he's going
Speaker 1: to be exonerated to that. Maybe he's going to be
Speaker 1: exonerated from this incident, that this alleged incident in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: as well. And I have to keep an open mind
Speaker 1: to hearing out both sides of the story, UM as
Speaker 1: I do this reporting. UM. But it's certainly interesting. UM.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I did want to mention because I
Speaker 1: think the the reporting can easily become muddled by all
Speaker 1: the different people out there trying to weigh in on it.
Speaker 1: There was also a report, and this came out in
Speaker 1: some of the n c i S documents also of
Speaker 1: a Special Forces warrant officer. He got arrested, apparently for
Speaker 1: child pornography, and while he was being interrogated, he threw
Speaker 1: out to the interrogators like, oh yeah, I also know
Speaker 1: about this murder. I also know about this seal that
Speaker 1: committed a murder in Afghanistan. But when they when the
Speaker 1: investigators pressed him, he said the seal on the mission
Speaker 1: was like six three and Gallagher, I think it's like
Speaker 1: five eight. But there's a pretty big discrepancy. Um, So
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of things that did not line up
Speaker 1: with this warrant officer. So I did a little bit
Speaker 1: of digging on this. The warrant officer was not out
Speaker 1: on the operation, whoever, whoever, this guy, I won't name
Speaker 1: him either, it's all other can of worms. But then also, um,
Speaker 1: because he was in a compromised position and he was
Speaker 1: trying to sell n C, I s, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: see that you started spinning, spinning your web of los
Speaker 1: So because of that, I took that information and just
Speaker 1: threw it out entirely and did not use it in
Speaker 1: my reporting because it's compromised and that that that Special
Speaker 1: Forces warrant officer is not a reliable source. So I
Speaker 1: have to cast that one aside and move on with
Speaker 1: other sources of information. And I just wanted to point
Speaker 1: that out, um, because I'm sure other people will bring
Speaker 1: it up and try to discredit the story entirely. So
Speaker 1: the story was published yesterday afternoon, and of course I
Speaker 1: expected a sizeable backlash and was not disappointed. Um, there
Speaker 1: was I'm not going to, you know, get down into
Speaker 1: the weeds with it. Um. Of course, Chief Gallagher's wife,
Speaker 1: Uh made a fairly strong rebuttal you know about yours truly,
Speaker 1: but that is what it is. And you know, she
Speaker 1: feels she has to fight for her family. And I
Speaker 1: don't blame her for that. I get it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: to be expected. I would I would assume that she
Speaker 1: would defend him, of course, And I although she said
Speaker 1: some things about me that aren't true, I have to
Speaker 1: respect the fact that she is fighting for her family,
Speaker 1: and I have to look at it from her perspective,
Speaker 1: that she's seeing her husband slip away and seeing her
Speaker 1: future slip. Which is which is commendable on your end,
Speaker 1: because I don't I mean, I don't think I would
Speaker 1: get down on the muck. But when people start name
Speaker 1: calling you can it can it can get it slippery slopes.
Speaker 1: So good for you for I don't rising above it.
Speaker 1: But having having a level head about this again, it's
Speaker 1: just you have to be responsible about it. There was
Speaker 1: one thing she said, um that other people ran with
Speaker 1: that I do want to address because, um, if it
Speaker 1: were true, it would be reprehensible, but it's not true,
Speaker 1: and you have the platform. And since we want to
Speaker 1: talk about facts and facts are important, let's talk about
Speaker 1: some facts, all right. There was a previous story I
Speaker 1: worked on about Chief Gallagher. This was back in January,
Speaker 1: and the title of that article is, uh, Navy Seal
Speaker 1: Chief Gallagher's stepson speaks out to defend father accused of
Speaker 1: war crimes. That was January five of this year. So
Speaker 1: I wrote this story. And what Mrs Gallagher was saying
Speaker 1: and what other people began to run with and makes
Speaker 1: sound even worse, was that I had got this information
Speaker 1: from her son's like some sort of like gaming platform,
Speaker 1: and then presented it as if I had interviewed him.
Speaker 1: And then other people are like, oh my god, like
Speaker 1: you know Jack Murphy Cyberstock, the ten year old kid
Speaker 1: on Xbox, and took his comments and ran with them
Speaker 1: like no, like factually, no, that's not what happened. Okay.
Speaker 1: Where this came from, how this story came about, and
Speaker 1: where these comments came about, was that Chief Gallagher has
Speaker 1: a step son, Mrs Gallagher's biological son, Chief Gallagher's stepson. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was eighteen at the time. He was an adult,
Speaker 1: and he did a m A on Reddit, which is
Speaker 1: always a great idea. Uh so for those who aren't familiar.
Speaker 1: And I'm not like a huge Reddit guy, but Reddit
Speaker 1: is a publicly viewable, public uh internet forum that anybody
Speaker 1: can go on and read and an a m A
Speaker 1: is asked me anything, So, like know, you know, famous
Speaker 1: celebrities and stuff, and you know Anthony Bourden or somebody
Speaker 1: like that, you know, uh, the late Anthony Borden, you know,
Speaker 1: or Bill Murray, any celebrity. I go on, there's ask
Speaker 1: me anything, and it's it's just, uh, it becomes a
Speaker 1: genre on social media and of itself. I guess that
Speaker 1: you know, anybody can go in there and ask you know,
Speaker 1: this guy any question question. I mean, they don't have
Speaker 1: to answer it, but there's some mount landerish questions out there.
Speaker 1: So Chief Gallagher stepson did an a m A on
Speaker 1: Twitter and uh and he has since deleted it. Smart Well,
Speaker 1: I screen capped all of this and I have that
Speaker 1: because I have to do my diligence, right um, and
Speaker 1: then I sent um. I sent this young man a
Speaker 1: a direct message and just asked him if he would
Speaker 1: be willing to entertain a phone call and if we
Speaker 1: could talk, and he said no, I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: getting on the phone. But he provided me with some
Speaker 1: information that I could use to verify that he was
Speaker 1: who he said he was. UM, and and that was
Speaker 1: it and we took it from there. And as I said,
Speaker 1: you know, thanks for that, appreciate it, you know, UM,
Speaker 1: and I off the bat In my first message to him,
Speaker 1: my name is Jack Murphy. I'm an investigative journalist. You know,
Speaker 1: here's where you can find my work. You know, UH,
Speaker 1: very clearly tell who you are. It's not like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: let's play some cold duty and let me get to
Speaker 1: know you a little bit. I told him, I'm working
Speaker 1: on a story and I want to get my facts
Speaker 1: straight before writing anything. So I did not trick this person. There.
Speaker 1: There was no subterfuge involved. I was not stalking a
Speaker 1: kid on Xbox. That never ever happened, nor would I
Speaker 1: ever do something like that because it's reprehensible. UM. But
Speaker 1: this was an eighteen year old adult and he posted
Speaker 1: this information publicly, and I went to him about it
Speaker 1: and talked to him about it, and then I wrote
Speaker 1: the story. And you can go and see the story
Speaker 1: for yourself. And UM, it has the quotes from UH
Speaker 1: from chief Gallagher steps on and it's it's not. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's a fairly straightforward article just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what Gallagher stands accused of. This is what
Speaker 1: the stepson says. Um, you know, this is what's going
Speaker 1: on with the with the case. Uh. And I think
Speaker 1: that the reason why you haven't heard anything about this
Speaker 1: story until today is because this first story I wrote
Speaker 1: largely supports the defenses narrative. Very fair. Yes, I mean
Speaker 1: it's in the step son's words that you know this seals. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know some of the quotes in here. You have
Speaker 1: to understand Steals aren't what they used to be, all
Speaker 1: the bad aster who doesn't really exist anymore because of
Speaker 1: ship like this. The new generation of Seals aren't like
Speaker 1: those you have movies about. Uh. Where do you say
Speaker 1: he said of Gallagher's teammates, they're out to get him.
Speaker 1: He worked on like a horse and those he's can't
Speaker 1: handle it. Uh. You know it's this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that that Gallagher was just such a tough leader that
Speaker 1: his teammates turned on him. So it supports the defenses narrative.
Speaker 1: Um in that sense, right, And that's why I think
Speaker 1: we haven't heard anything about it before. But look you
Speaker 1: you love me, hate me, indifferent. I just want to
Speaker 1: clarify that. No, I was not cyberstalking kids on their
Speaker 1: video games, Like come on, man, like really other than that,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's not more to pile on there. But
Speaker 1: like he's she claimed he was ten and he no no, no,
Speaker 1: no no she didn't say but she said like her son.
Speaker 1: And then from their others take it, take that story.
Speaker 1: And so I'm getting message. I like, I wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning, I'm getting message from people like you went,
Speaker 1: you went on their son's video games. Yeah, and it's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. Listen to episode. I'll explain everything.
Speaker 1: So we'll see what happens next with this story. UM,
Speaker 1: if anything, but it's interesting and I mean you can
Speaker 1: go and read it. The story UH is titled UH.
Speaker 1: Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher was also alleged to have committed
Speaker 1: murder in Afghanistan. Both UM. Both year one from January
Speaker 1: and the one you wrote on the twelve will be
Speaker 1: linked in today's episode. So if you're listening and you
Speaker 1: have an interest to reading it, which you should because
Speaker 1: it's a great piece, just go over to software Radio
Speaker 1: dot com and the link will be in there. You
Speaker 1: can click it and we'll take you right to it
Speaker 1: so you can read it for yourself. Um. And like
Speaker 1: you said, the trial gets underway Monday, So I don't
Speaker 1: think this is the last word we've we're going to
Speaker 1: speak about Eddie Gallagher. I could almost assure you it's
Speaker 1: not no, UM, And you could even argue we have
Speaker 1: a responsibility to report um because we have talked about
Speaker 1: him on his eventual guilt or innocence or if if
Speaker 1: there's a mistraal a report on that as well. So
Speaker 1: I think one way or the other, you know, we
Speaker 1: were going to have to follow up on the story,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean, being the reporter you are, you
Speaker 1: can't just leave it. There's there's always a follow up
Speaker 1: to we haven't even, like you said, they haven't gone
Speaker 1: to trial yet, there's no so well, I mean, at
Speaker 1: a minimum, we have to report on what the outcome
Speaker 1: of the trial at um. With that, that's that was
Speaker 1: heavy Eddie Gallagher to open um. We haven't even mentioned
Speaker 1: our our guests today, which we're not doing our due diligence. UM.
Speaker 1: His name's Ed Morales. He was a former marine he
Speaker 1: was also a special agent in the FBI, and most notably,
Speaker 1: he was involved in the FBI Miami shootout. Um, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna get much more into that because that's why
Speaker 1: we have head on four, but it is it is
Speaker 1: certainly you and I were discussing off fair wild story,
Speaker 1: um shootouts in general, like you know you see in
Speaker 1: movies in there one thing, but this this man lived it.
Speaker 1: So hearing his story is gonna be incredible as all
Speaker 1: the guests we have on. But definitely looking forward to
Speaker 1: having it on. And not much more than needs to
Speaker 1: be said with that without having him on. Yeah, absolutely, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be interesting
Speaker 1: to say for sure. And this is this is a
Speaker 1: famous famous firefight that yeah, I mean we were we
Speaker 1: were reading about it and it said they I mean,
Speaker 1: he'll hopefully he'll talk more about it. But it changed
Speaker 1: how agents handle uh tactically, just with the the handguns
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And and I'm sure it will delve into that. Also,
Speaker 1: he was the first agent. I'm sure I'll mention in
Speaker 1: my my intro of it, but he's the first man
Speaker 1: to win, first agent to win the Middle of Valor,
Speaker 1: which is interesting, also incredible on his behalf didn't know that,
Speaker 1: so um, something else to add to the legend of
Speaker 1: Ed Morales. So we're looking forward to having him on,
Speaker 1: which will be shortly for you guys. But first the
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Speaker 1: tons of gear that you're going to love. You can
Speaker 1: find that on air Drop. Is there anything else you
Speaker 1: would like to discuss? I know this was predominantly Eddie
Speaker 1: Gallagher base, but no, that's all I got off hand.
Speaker 1: I mean quite an intro. You did a phenomenal job
Speaker 1: explaining the story. It's defending not You're not defending yourself.
Speaker 1: You're explaining yourself. Um, the whole rice farmer, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say it's a rice farm, but the farmer crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, you said another day in Afghanistan in but
Speaker 1: um are you do you watch a lot of um
Speaker 1: military movies. I know, probably the old stuff you do.
Speaker 1: But like I want to say, it was Triple nine.
Speaker 1: It was called It's on Netflix. It came out within
Speaker 1: the past half year. Um. But as reading this, it
Speaker 1: reminded me of the scene in there, which I mean
Speaker 1: they very well could have pulled from it, but they
Speaker 1: might not have. It was, um it's Ben affleck um
Speaker 1: Triple Frontier, Triple Frontier, not Triple nine, Triple Frontier. Watch that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that reminded me of the scene. I'm not the spoilers
Speaker 1: for anybody that hasn't seen it, you should. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Um where after they go and they're trying to get
Speaker 1: to the boat and they come upon that village and
Speaker 1: they kind of had that field and not necessarily the same.
Speaker 1: But I feel like directors in Hollywood. They pull from
Speaker 1: situations like this where obviously you don't want to do it,
Speaker 1: you know, step by step, but you take it and
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, here's the situation, like, you know,
Speaker 1: these people are trying to live their lives and you've
Speaker 1: got these military guys doing something that's not exactly you know,
Speaker 1: on the up and up. Um you with the background
Speaker 1: you have? Is that? And am I just like trying
Speaker 1: to pull strings here? What? Look? Well, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: sure that well we I have to draw a hard
Speaker 1: line between fact and fiction, but you're you're right in
Speaker 1: that they these these Hollywood product producers and so on,
Speaker 1: they hire um technical advisors who have military backgrounds. So
Speaker 1: all right, Well that that answered That was my question.
Speaker 1: I mean, because obviously, I mean it is fiction. Let's
Speaker 1: clear that right up, right off the bat, Triple Frontier
Speaker 1: is fiction. But I wanted to see your opinion if, like,
Speaker 1: almost how much do they put not I mean the
Speaker 1: technical advisors, because you're on both ends of this, like
Speaker 1: you're you know, your former military, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: you want to put a good UM product for television
Speaker 1: or movies whatever. So is it that little bit of
Speaker 1: like you know, here's the story. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you're you're like, you know, these guys are my brothers. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not giving you the almost like
Speaker 1: a magician, I don't want to belittle, but like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I'm not really a Hollywood guy,
Speaker 1: so I really couldn't say, but um I did. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll just leave it at that. I don't really know
Speaker 1: what goes on in Hollywood, fair enough. Um, But yeah,
Speaker 1: that that was just something I wanted to bring up
Speaker 1: because reading the story, it reminded me of that scene
Speaker 1: and I had seen it within the past month, so
Speaker 1: that's why it popped in. It was an entertaining movie, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, definitely ridiculous, but entertaining, And I mean that's
Speaker 1: what you want when you watching Netflix, at least unless
Speaker 1: you're watching the documentaries, which are good. Um. With that
Speaker 1: weird sidetrack on my part, I apologize. We're gonna bring
Speaker 1: on Ed Morales, former marine and special agent for the FBI,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna tell us all about the shootout in Miami,
Speaker 1: so enjoy joining us. Now we have Ed Morales, former
Speaker 1: marine and a graduate from the University of Maryland. But
Speaker 1: you were most notably known for being a former special
Speaker 1: agent in the FBI, where you were involved in the
Speaker 1: FBI Miami shootout. Is that correct? That is correct? All right.
Speaker 1: We are happy to have you on. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us, and we are I know, Jack
Speaker 1: and I have discussed affair very much looking forward to
Speaker 1: hearing your account. This is just a wild story thirty
Speaker 1: years later, um, and we're very excited to get right
Speaker 1: into it. Okay, super Yeah, just asked me, asked me
Speaker 1: any question you want to know. I'm I'm you know,
Speaker 1: generally pretty pretty direct. Thank you. Ed. Uh, well, why
Speaker 1: don't we, Uh could you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about you know, your your background growing up and how
Speaker 1: you came to join the FBI. Yeah, I was born
Speaker 1: in South Texas in the early fifties, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a small little Texas town. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember the days and it was almost
Speaker 1: almost reminds me of a rock you know, those hot,
Speaker 1: hot days. You know, no no rain, you know, the
Speaker 1: dust is flying, you know. And you know I had
Speaker 1: a great life, you know, family, church, school, and uh
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, I was watching Uh we
Speaker 1: had a black and white TV, which was the center
Speaker 1: of the house in the fifties. I watched a program
Speaker 1: called the FBI FBI Stories with the from Resemblance Jr.
Speaker 1: And Uh. I sat there watching the show, and I'm thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be great to be an FBI agent, you know?
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, and it'll never happen, you know,
Speaker 1: it'll it'll just never happen, you know. But I kind
Speaker 1: of folded it away and you know, continue to live
Speaker 1: my life. I went to elementary school, you know, junior
Speaker 1: high high school, and then I, uh during that time
Speaker 1: frame in the sixties, Uh, the US had the draft,
Speaker 1: so I was subject to the draft. And uh, as
Speaker 1: it turned out, I had a had a high number
Speaker 1: or low number, depending on how you look at it,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh I thought I would eight eight
Speaker 1: by the horns, you know, and say hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna name you know, my time, my place. And
Speaker 1: I enlisted rather than be drafted, you know. So I
Speaker 1: joined the Marine Corps. And you know that was an interesting,
Speaker 1: uh interesting uh career path, I suppose I could call it,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was lucky enough to have been
Speaker 1: involved with a get to know an FBI agent, real
Speaker 1: life FBI guy, you know. So, and he took an
Speaker 1: interest in me and kind of recruited me. Um, he said, hey,
Speaker 1: I he liked what he saw. Uh, he said, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I as soon as I finished my my
Speaker 1: studies at the University of Maryland, he said, hey, give
Speaker 1: me a call. I'll I'll get you an application and
Speaker 1: we might be able to get you in into the
Speaker 1: FBI pretty quickly. And sure enough he was a man
Speaker 1: of his word, you know, he he got me an application.
Speaker 1: I applied and you know, as luck would have it, Uh,
Speaker 1: I was accepted, you know, and the rest of it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, that's that's the rest of the story,
Speaker 1: as has been said. So which field officers were you
Speaker 1: sent to and what kind of cases did you end
Speaker 1: up working in those early days during your career. I
Speaker 1: was recruited, Uh since the University of Marylands around you know,
Speaker 1: Washington d C. I was recruited out of the I
Speaker 1: was living in Virginia. I was recruited out of the
Speaker 1: FBI office in Alexandria. It no longer exists. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess merged with the Washington d C. Office.
Speaker 1: Now you have the General h Washington d C Office,
Speaker 1: which covers northern Virginia, Washington, and southern Maryland. You know,
Speaker 1: so I was assigned there for five years. I had
Speaker 1: an undercover operation that I worked in Miami for about
Speaker 1: eighteen months. Then I came back to Washington and uh,
Speaker 1: and subsequently I was transferred to Miami in nineteen five.
Speaker 1: But while I was in Washington, it was Washington is
Speaker 1: a neat place to work. It. Um, I was on
Speaker 1: a terrorism squad um, which was kind of like cutting
Speaker 1: edge at the time, you know, back in the it
Speaker 1: was actually to be exact. And uh, I don't know
Speaker 1: if many people remember the Iranian embassy takeover, you know,
Speaker 1: four hundred and forty four days, you know, and if they,
Speaker 1: if they listen to this podcast, they better be familiar
Speaker 1: with it because we've had people who are on that
Speaker 1: operation to rescue the hostages on here. Correct. Correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm still honestly excuse my friends, but I'm still piste off.
Speaker 1: You know at that whole incident. You know, the US
Speaker 1: responded so poorly. I mean, I'm not for you know,
Speaker 1: you know, bombing people into the stone Age, but you know,
Speaker 1: it should have been somewhere in between there, and and
Speaker 1: and diplomacy because I was you know, I was just
Speaker 1: so ticked that these these uh, these quote unquote students
Speaker 1: are marching our our diplomats and and our our staff
Speaker 1: around blindfolded, you know, like like trophies, you know. And
Speaker 1: I still have that image in my mind, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was just so so upset about that. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I digress a little bit. But everything at the time
Speaker 1: was Middle Eastern terrorism. So we were hotting, you know,
Speaker 1: going hot and heavy on you know, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who in the US was a legitimate student and
Speaker 1: who was a potential terrorist. You know. So it was
Speaker 1: it was interesting times back then. And then subsequently, I
Speaker 1: was in eight five, I was transferped to Miami, UM
Speaker 1: and I was assigned to a bankrupty squad. Can can
Speaker 1: you talk at all about those undercover operations you were
Speaker 1: working in Washington, d c um do encounter? I guess
Speaker 1: anti terrorism is the term I should use. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we were just like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: we were just invest getting. You know, at the time,
Speaker 1: I was really amazed, I mean, because I had no
Speaker 1: exposure to this at all, you know, I mean, we
Speaker 1: were trying to figure out there were so many students
Speaker 1: quote unquote students that were involved that we're not not involved,
Speaker 1: that there were from the Middle East, and uh we
Speaker 1: ended up looking around and and and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who was a legitimate student and who was at
Speaker 1: the time, who was quote unquote one of the uh
Speaker 1: running and intelligence folks or running and hit hit squads
Speaker 1: that were supposedly sent by the Yatola Comany, you know,
Speaker 1: to hunt down people that were against his government and
Speaker 1: and and against him personally. So you know, we would
Speaker 1: go through a process or you know, we'd have to
Speaker 1: find everybody, you know, O. You know, our country so great,
Speaker 1: you know, folks use U use those freedoms against us,
Speaker 1: you know, because you know, people would come in as
Speaker 1: a student and then they disappear, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: that'd be here for six months and then you know
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be at the University of Georgetown or
Speaker 1: Catholic University, and then they'd be in San Francisco, you know,
Speaker 1: working somewhere else, doing something else. You know. So that
Speaker 1: was our job, tracking these folks down and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, Hey, what's your involvement, you know with the
Speaker 1: potential intelligence operations or potential terrorism operations in the US,
Speaker 1: you know. So, I mean that was like full time work.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like unbelievable the number of students
Speaker 1: that were in the country. And you know the old
Speaker 1: you know illegal immigration you know, uh conversation that's going
Speaker 1: on now. I mean a lot of these were overstays,
Speaker 1: you know that get a visa and then the overstayed
Speaker 1: the visit, you know, and then you know, nobody would know,
Speaker 1: would would care, you know, so except US. UM. Before
Speaker 1: we get into you know, your assignment to the bank
Speaker 1: robbery squad, UM, I wanted to ask you a question
Speaker 1: as far as what sort of training or preparations you
Speaker 1: had through um, the FBI or elsewhere, UM to deal
Speaker 1: with a firefight as a sort of life and death firefight. UM.
Speaker 1: I think you can see where I'm going with this,
Speaker 1: but I'm just curious, before you get before all of this,
Speaker 1: you know, what kind of training did you have? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I was one of the lucky ones. I
Speaker 1: had small unit tactics, you know, training in the in
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps, you know, back then here's another another
Speaker 1: term that many people don't don't remember. We were I
Speaker 1: was actually training for the Vietnam War. You know, it
Speaker 1: was towards the end. I enlisted in seventy and you know,
Speaker 1: we were actually preparing my unit actually got orders to
Speaker 1: report to Vietnam. And right about that time frame, the
Speaker 1: Honorable Mr Nixon and the Secretary of State kissing her,
Speaker 1: were negotiating with the Vietnamese, and uh, the President and
Speaker 1: I guess kissing her you know, worked out a deal
Speaker 1: where they started pulling back, they started ending the war.
Speaker 1: So we were actually, excuse me, we were actually loading
Speaker 1: our gear. I was part of an artillery group, um,
Speaker 1: and we were loading our equipment on ships you know,
Speaker 1: to be a transferred over to Vietnam. And uh, I
Speaker 1: remember it was like midnight when when evening, you know,
Speaker 1: and they said, hey, stop loading guys in the way.
Speaker 1: The presidents called off the war. We got to take
Speaker 1: all this crap off the ship. It was kind of funny,
Speaker 1: you know. But it's like what I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: an E two, you know, a snuppy, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just I just do what I was told, you know.
Speaker 1: So so anyway, so, but getting med to to your
Speaker 1: original question, yeah, I had you know, we we we
Speaker 1: shot a lot, you know, we did a lot of tactics.
Speaker 1: We march alot, you know, we uh you know, as
Speaker 1: a as a as a as an artillery guy. I
Speaker 1: wasn't a cannon cocker. I was a forward observer, you know,
Speaker 1: So I mean I had to hump a lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, out front, you know, hoping that some big
Speaker 1: piece of steel didn't land on my head. You know.
Speaker 1: It's certainly you know, since I'm the one calling it in,
Speaker 1: you know. But luckily for me, like I said, I had,
Speaker 1: I had that training, you know. But then in the FBI,
Speaker 1: you know, there is a unfortunately, uh, if I'm honest,
Speaker 1: which was I try to be our training at the
Speaker 1: time in the in the eighties, which I came in
Speaker 1: at seventy nine into the FBI, our training was was
Speaker 1: good training. Um, but there's a difference between you know,
Speaker 1: training a person how to shoot and then you know,
Speaker 1: actual combat training. You you being you know with your background,
Speaker 1: you know what combat training it's it's a whole different environment.
Speaker 1: You know, shooting at a at a five d at
Speaker 1: a five hundred yard at the five hundred yard line,
Speaker 1: you know, just shooting at a at a target, the
Speaker 1: static you know that you could plank all day, you know,
Speaker 1: but then you get you get in a close quarter battle,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean you're moving and shooting and and
Speaker 1: and you know you're assessing and move forward, moving, move right.
Speaker 1: You know. The FBI didn't have any of that. We
Speaker 1: would shoot in lines. They were teaching marksmanship and uh
Speaker 1: towards the end of our training. It was a sixteen
Speaker 1: week program. Towards the end of our training, we we
Speaker 1: we would go into what they called Hogan's Alley, the
Speaker 1: old Hogan's Alley, you know, the little mock city, and
Speaker 1: you know, they were just pop up targets and turning targets,
Speaker 1: you know, very very little actual uh stress, you know,
Speaker 1: and and it was very limited at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: but you know, it is what it was, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I mean, that's what it was back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty, you know. So then the rest of
Speaker 1: it had to be on your own. You know, when
Speaker 1: you were assigned to your field office, you know, you
Speaker 1: were expected to continue to train and and maybe if
Speaker 1: you had any outside interests, you know, and train on
Speaker 1: your own and look for for any like ex military
Speaker 1: guys that you know that could help you out, you know,
Speaker 1: with any tips or whatever you or maybe go to
Speaker 1: some private trainers that that could teach you, you know, tactics.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm moving and shooting that type of stuff.
Speaker 1: If I could just interrupt just for one, one quick second,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to point out to listeners that
Speaker 1: at this time nine into this was when the idea
Speaker 1: of um combat reloads or drawing a weapon from concealment
Speaker 1: and firing it, drawing a side arm from concealment and firing,
Speaker 1: those were drills that were not really taught at that time.
Speaker 1: I think the only person, the only place where people
Speaker 1: could really get that kind of training was from Jeff
Speaker 1: Cooper at gun Side exactly exactly exactly right. And you
Speaker 1: know that was that was viewed by by many, you know,
Speaker 1: law enforcement guys are not guys, but not law enforcement
Speaker 1: trainers as exotic or you know top you know, you
Speaker 1: know so. But you know, unfortunately, I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but the attitude at the time and the FBI was, hey,
Speaker 1: if you have to use your gun for something, then
Speaker 1: you screwed up. You know, It's like, what what do
Speaker 1: you mean I screwed up? You know, that was that
Speaker 1: was the attitude. You know, the old the old school guys,
Speaker 1: you know, the the true you know, gum shoe investigators.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm talking like really old school. You know.
Speaker 1: Well Son, if you had to shoot somebody, then then
Speaker 1: you probably made a mistake somewhere. You know, you should
Speaker 1: have talked to him a little more so. But that
Speaker 1: attitude to change. Believe me, my friend, it has changed
Speaker 1: a great deal. You know. On that note, let's um,
Speaker 1: let's then start talking about getting assigned to the bank
Speaker 1: robbery UH squad down in Miami. And I imagine as
Speaker 1: a as a young FBI agent, that must have been
Speaker 1: kind of exciting. Oh it was. It was super exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like a dream come through, you know,
Speaker 1: because my squad was it was a bank robbery, investigations,
Speaker 1: fugitive investigations, kidnappings, and extortions. I mean, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like the trifecta of of good stuff, you know, to work.
Speaker 1: I mean, what what young person wouldn't want to work
Speaker 1: bank robberies? And I loved you know. Some one of
Speaker 1: my neighbors asked me, and I think he got mad
Speaker 1: at me, says, do you hunt? You know? And and
Speaker 1: I used to hunt as a kid back in Texas.
Speaker 1: I used to hunt rabbits and you know stuff with
Speaker 1: my dad, you know. Um, And as I grew older,
Speaker 1: and when I got of the Marine Corps, I stopped
Speaker 1: hunting animals. You know, I just didn't, you know, I
Speaker 1: just didn't sit well with me. And I'm shooting you know,
Speaker 1: some port defenseless little rabbit, you know. So I stopped
Speaker 1: hunting all together, you know. And one of my neighbors
Speaker 1: asked me, says, do you hunt? I said, only people,
Speaker 1: you know, and he looked at me and he never
Speaker 1: talked to me again. You know. But but I tell
Speaker 1: you I loved to hunt people. Man. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's like Henryway said, you know, there is no no
Speaker 1: thrill like hunting, uh a man and hunting armed men.
Speaker 1: You know, once you get a knack for it, I
Speaker 1: forget the exact quote. Once you get a taste for
Speaker 1: hunting armed men, you'll never want to do anything else
Speaker 1: again in your life, you know. So, and it was true.
Speaker 1: I mean I I used to jump out of it
Speaker 1: in the morning, you know, going to work. I mean
Speaker 1: it was fantastic because engaged in man hunting, tracking down exactly,
Speaker 1: and we were hunting, you know, armed humans, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I mean, talk about the most dangerous
Speaker 1: game in the world. You know, it's like wow, I
Speaker 1: mean it's like apparbably know, I mean you you kind
Speaker 1: of you know, terrorists and tally Man and folks on
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. You know, it's it's kind of exciting,
Speaker 1: I mean in a in a very kind of odd segue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we uh speaking of which we had FBI HRT
Speaker 1: guys with us on on some of those terms. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was told, you know, I was aware of that,
Speaker 1: you know, because uh, any time there's a possibility of
Speaker 1: tracking down a wanted uh terrorist in the U S.
Speaker 1: You know, they like to assign some folks to it,
Speaker 1: you know. That way, there's no issues with Oh yes,
Speaker 1: he was given his miranda right for right. So can
Speaker 1: you before before the six incident, were there any really
Speaker 1: interesting cases that you worked on, uh, you know, working
Speaker 1: on the bank robberies and extortions and all of those.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, you know there were, I mean, there were
Speaker 1: always little I mean, there was always something funny going on.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, I remember, I've been looking for
Speaker 1: this guy out of New York and uh it was
Speaker 1: what we call a dog case. You know, it had
Speaker 1: been you know, sitting around for like three or four
Speaker 1: or five years. Nobody could find this guy. And I
Speaker 1: got the case, and I'm thinking, a great, you know,
Speaker 1: a dog. You know. It's like, you know, supposedly all
Speaker 1: the leads have been covered, you know. So I opened
Speaker 1: the case and I went back to the very first page,
Speaker 1: you know, I said, okay, let me read, you know,
Speaker 1: how this thing started. And I'm reading, and I'm reading,
Speaker 1: and I go through through the whole case file, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, hey, you know, I just realized something.
Speaker 1: You know, this guy was supposedly enrolled in a technical
Speaker 1: class a technical school in Miami. And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I saw that, and and the the agent at the
Speaker 1: time went down to check with the university UM and
Speaker 1: the the agent made a report saying that that nobody
Speaker 1: UM knew him or something like that. So I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, that that's interesting, you know. So I
Speaker 1: started looking into it and I started calling. I think
Speaker 1: it was a Dade County or Miami Dade university. So
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, let me find out, you know.
Speaker 1: So I went to admissions and I said, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find a friend of mine. You know,
Speaker 1: his name is, you know, Bill Jones, you know, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. You know. Of course I didn't tell him.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, hunting him, you know. So they said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, uh here's his record. I said, well, did
Speaker 1: he have any friends? I mean, did he can? Do
Speaker 1: you have any professors that he may have known or
Speaker 1: that that he took classes from? So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just going down you know, just you know, actually just
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like you know, a shotgun lead.
Speaker 1: I just you know, fired a shotgun up into the
Speaker 1: air and see what, see what I could hit? You know,
Speaker 1: And in lone rehole, I found a what do they
Speaker 1: call it in college? A counselor or, like a student counselor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: student counselor. Right. I found a student counselor listed on there,
Speaker 1: and and I said, what the heck? You know? So
Speaker 1: I went over and I found the student counselor and
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, I remember Bill, you know he was
Speaker 1: he had he was getting a disease. Uh. He said
Speaker 1: he stopped coming to class because he couldn't commute anymore,
Speaker 1: he couldn't drive. I guess he started getting Parkinson's or something.
Speaker 1: I have forget what it was. So I said, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, I said, uh, you don't happen to have
Speaker 1: his his contact information to you. And know he goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, I think I might be able to find it,
Speaker 1: so long behold, he actually found an address for me
Speaker 1: that he had used when he registered for classes. So
Speaker 1: I said, what the heck, you know, I can't believe
Speaker 1: I'm so lucky man. So I went to the address
Speaker 1: and it was on Miami Beach. And I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a transient area, you know, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to store up too many you know, you know, move
Speaker 1: too many leaves, you know, because it'll it'll, you know,
Speaker 1: let him know that I'm looking for him. So I
Speaker 1: kind of narrowed it down to a building, you know,
Speaker 1: an a farmer building. And then I started flashing his
Speaker 1: photo photograph around, you know, the local grocery stores, the
Speaker 1: local bar. You know. Back then there was Blockbuster, you know,
Speaker 1: going he went to the Blockbuster, and somebody at Blockbuster
Speaker 1: Video said, oh, yeah, this guy comes in periodically and
Speaker 1: the rent video. I said, okay, he's still in the area.
Speaker 1: So I just kind of set up set up out there,
Speaker 1: you know, looking for him, you know, just in the
Speaker 1: mornings or in the evenings. And then one day he
Speaker 1: just walked out of the apartment in the in the building,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, wow, you know, I asked, you watched him.
Speaker 1: He goes into a car or opens a car, puts
Speaker 1: in his his his things, his briefcase or something, goes
Speaker 1: back into the apartment. And that's when I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I drove my car around, parked it around the side
Speaker 1: be where he couldn't see it. And then I kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, stood around, you know, pretending to wait for
Speaker 1: a bus or something. I forget what I did. And
Speaker 1: he went to his car, and I walked up behind him,
Speaker 1: and I said, this is terrible, you know, because in
Speaker 1: Miami you have all kinds of robberies and you know,
Speaker 1: car jackings and home and made you know. And I
Speaker 1: didn't have any any markings on me except my badge
Speaker 1: on my chest, you know, and most people don't don't
Speaker 1: see that. They just see the big gun in your hand,
Speaker 1: you know. So you know, so and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I hope I don't get shot, you know, I hope
Speaker 1: he doesn't turn around and try to find me thinking
Speaker 1: I'm trying to rob him, you know. So, but luckily,
Speaker 1: you know that that didn't happen. You know, I just
Speaker 1: announced myself. You know, FBI, don't move, you're under arrest,
Speaker 1: you know. And it was it was pretty anti climatic,
Speaker 1: you know. So but anyway, when I when I got him,
Speaker 1: you know, and put him in the car, you know,
Speaker 1: and I said, so, dude, you know, I said, how
Speaker 1: you know, how you've been? You know, it goes I've
Speaker 1: been fine, you know, he said, he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you caught me. He said, what I took
Speaker 1: you guys so long? You know, it's like, wow, dude,
Speaker 1: you know, he said, man, I've been living for like
Speaker 1: I think it was seven years. He'd been a fugitive
Speaker 1: for seven years, he said, Man, he said, he gets
Speaker 1: tiring looking over your shoulder all the time. You know.
Speaker 1: I said, well, I mean, you could have turned yourself in,
Speaker 1: and but I don't think he wanted to do that,
Speaker 1: you know. So that that was an interesting case. And
Speaker 1: then there was another case. We made fun of the agent.
Speaker 1: You know, um he went out there looking for a
Speaker 1: fugitive and and he asked for some help, you know,
Speaker 1: because he was. There was an informant who said the
Speaker 1: fugitive might be in the in a shopping mall. So
Speaker 1: he couldn't cover a shopping mall, you know, by himself,
Speaker 1: you know, so he asked for a couple of guys
Speaker 1: to go help him. So we were out there looking,
Speaker 1: you know, for for the guy, and I hooked up
Speaker 1: with him. His name was Bobby, I mean, the agent's
Speaker 1: name was Bob. We called him Bobby. I said, Bobby,
Speaker 1: what are we looking for? You know? He says, oh, man,
Speaker 1: that's him over there. Let's him over there. So he
Speaker 1: starts walking fast, you know. I said, Bob, which guy
Speaker 1: is he? And he's pointing. He said there, he is.
Speaker 1: There he is, you know. And I said, Bob, where
Speaker 1: are you pointing us? Who is this guy? He said,
Speaker 1: it's a guy in the wheelchair. You know, Bob, you
Speaker 1: get you called the troops out to the arrest the
Speaker 1: wheel chair. He said no, he said, I just can't
Speaker 1: cover this whole moll by myself. So so I helped him.
Speaker 1: I helped him stop this guy. I stuck a cane
Speaker 1: in the spokes of the wheelchair and he kind of
Speaker 1: skidd out of control and fell out little wheelchair, you know.
Speaker 1: So no, I'm kidding, that didn't happen, you know, But
Speaker 1: the big joke was that, yeah, you know, you got
Speaker 1: the guy was getting away until you you you stuck
Speaker 1: a stick in his in the spokes of his wheels,
Speaker 1: you know, and then he skied out of So it
Speaker 1: was it was a big It was a big deal,
Speaker 1: you know. So but you know it was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun though, I mean, we we did handle some
Speaker 1: some dangerous people, you know, I mean a lot of killers,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of murderers, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: rapists and stuff like that. You know, probably one of
Speaker 1: the one of the ones that I'm glad I didn't
Speaker 1: work on was and this is going back like ancient history. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a lead from Texas about parental kidnapping. Got
Speaker 1: to be a big deal back then. You know, a spouse,
Speaker 1: you know, which is it's fair. You know, a spouse
Speaker 1: is supposed to have joined custody, and you know that
Speaker 1: either the husband or the wife takes takes her child
Speaker 1: and leaves the state. You know, it doesn't tell anybody
Speaker 1: where where he or she is going, So then it
Speaker 1: becomes a parental kidnapping case. So there was a parental
Speaker 1: kidnapping case in out of Texas, and I knew something
Speaker 1: was stinky because the case didn't come to us. It
Speaker 1: went to another squad. I don't know how, but I
Speaker 1: am so glad we had nothing to do it. And
Speaker 1: apparently the father had some political connections in Texas and
Speaker 1: he got a warrant issued for his ex wife's arrest.
Speaker 1: And they told us that the wife would be in
Speaker 1: Miami at a certain hotel, and two agents you know,
Speaker 1: from from another squad went down there to look for her.
Speaker 1: And oh, my lord, had caused a big hullabaloo because
Speaker 1: she had she happened to be a contestant in the
Speaker 1: Miss USA. So they went down to the Miss USA
Speaker 1: pageant and arrested one of the protest Oh my god,
Speaker 1: during the pageant, you know. And I'm thinking you got
Speaker 1: to be kidding me, man, I said, even I'm not
Speaker 1: that stupid. I mean, come on, guys, you know, so,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it caused a big hullabaloo. But the
Speaker 1: wands in the papers and everything else. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: mean they had to warrant, you know. And like I said,
Speaker 1: the guy in Texas had had some He was like
Speaker 1: a muckety muck, you know, like I don't know, some
Speaker 1: somebody's son, you know, a mayor's son or a state
Speaker 1: senator son or something like that. And he said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I want this, I want this woman caught. You know,
Speaker 1: she took my baby, you know. Blah blah blah. You know.
Speaker 1: So you know, we were so glad we had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with that case, because I mean they were
Speaker 1: there was a righteous arrest, you know, but I think
Speaker 1: it could have been a little bit more disqueet than
Speaker 1: to go to the Miss America or Miss You and say,
Speaker 1: whatever the hell it was, Miss You say just you know,
Speaker 1: to cough and and and perp walk some beautiful looking woman.
Speaker 1: You know, that's unreal. Oh my god, there's so many stuffs,
Speaker 1: so so many perfectly at the bikini contests. Oh yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: wait wait for the bikini continent and then per perp
Speaker 1: walk around. You know, So, what's your special talent getting
Speaker 1: arrested by the FBI? No, but you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I those are some funny cases, but no, there were
Speaker 1: some other cases you know where I mean it was
Speaker 1: we had a situation. It wasn't me directly in mom,
Speaker 1: but it was the squad. They were looking for somebody,
Speaker 1: and uh, they found him at his ex wife's residence,
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, he was giving him top cover
Speaker 1: and they surrounded the place and then the guy tried
Speaker 1: to speed away in in the watch car, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was it was just a big, big, you
Speaker 1: know screw up, you know, I mean, not his part,
Speaker 1: not our part, you know. I mean, we had a
Speaker 1: warrant and we had about twelve bodies and about you know,
Speaker 1: eight cars, so there was no way he was going
Speaker 1: to escape, you know, down a residential street, you know,
Speaker 1: and he crashed his car into a bunch of police cars,
Speaker 1: FBI cars, and they told him to put his hands up,
Speaker 1: you know, and he reached, you know for something, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of putting his hands up, he reached for something
Speaker 1: on the seat, under the seat, and somebody lit him up.
Speaker 1: Man put a shotgun rifle slug through the back of
Speaker 1: his head, you know. And the story, man is, there's
Speaker 1: no way you can recover from from an announcer lead
Speaker 1: going through your your head at about a thousand ft
Speaker 1: per second, you know. So you know, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some fun stories, but there's also very
Speaker 1: very serious, you know, you know, shooting incidents, you know.
Speaker 1: So well, then can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about the lead up to uh shootout and how you
Speaker 1: guys were sent to stake out these two uh, these
Speaker 1: two criminals. Absolutely. You know. The thing is, you know,
Speaker 1: back in the in the like August of eighty five, Um,
Speaker 1: we started seeing a I mean, Miami's, Miami's Miami. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, I mean, you can't sugarcoat it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's uh, I mean, it's a it's a violent place.
Speaker 1: It can be very violent, you know. Uh. And um
Speaker 1: we had at the time, we had two separate gangs
Speaker 1: of armor truck and bank robbers were you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't want anybody to think that we were racist
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but we call them the Black
Speaker 1: gang because they were black suspects. And then we call
Speaker 1: it the Hispanic gang because there were Cubans. Okay, and
Speaker 1: so we call hey, you know, the black the black
Speaker 1: guys said again or the cubes hit again, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that type of stuff, you know, So we said, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, we run out there and
Speaker 1: again that was very violent. They there was one case
Speaker 1: where a Wells Fargo guard was walking and walked into
Speaker 1: a building and the subjects costed him in the hallway,
Speaker 1: and I guess he must have resisted or something, but
Speaker 1: they just shot him in the head and killed him
Speaker 1: right there, you know, and they grabbed the bag and
Speaker 1: took off, you know. So I mean, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a violent profession, violent enterprise. But then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden in August, we started getting a third group
Speaker 1: because their their style didn't match the black group or
Speaker 1: the or the Hispanic group. So we just started calling him,
Speaker 1: calling them the third group because we didn't know. Witnesses,
Speaker 1: you know, could never tell us whether they were black
Speaker 1: or white, you know, because they wore ski masks and gloves,
Speaker 1: and they wore military style like the old field jackets
Speaker 1: back into the fifties and sixties. You know, they yeah,
Speaker 1: just playing green Field jacketsino and gloves and booze and stuff.
Speaker 1: So and everybody, you know, gets kind of distracted when
Speaker 1: someone shoves a forty four or or an assault rifle
Speaker 1: in your face. You have a tendency not to look
Speaker 1: at people's skin color, you know. So they said, what
Speaker 1: did it look like? You had a long nose? Officer. Uh, So,
Speaker 1: you know, we knew something was up because it wasn't
Speaker 1: the two the two groups that we were running, you know.
Speaker 1: And the very first robbery that we had was just
Speaker 1: odd all the way around, you know, because it was
Speaker 1: a steak and Ale. Two guys they attacked a Wells
Speaker 1: Fargo guard coming out of the Steak and Ale restaurant
Speaker 1: Um Street Candle Drive, and they they hit the guard,
Speaker 1: you know, they took his gun and took his little
Speaker 1: currier bag, and then they marched them up to the
Speaker 1: front of the truck with a gun in his ear,
Speaker 1: and they told they told him, tell your partner to
Speaker 1: open the door. And he's telling the driver opened the door,
Speaker 1: open the door, you know, and he's got a gun
Speaker 1: in his ear, you know, and you know, uh, the
Speaker 1: policy for these drivers is don't open the door, you know.
Speaker 1: So he turned the truck on and drove away, you know.
Speaker 1: And I interviewed the guard. He survived. He said he
Speaker 1: was so pissed at his partner. I said, well, no kidding,
Speaker 1: he keeps you standing in a parking lot with a
Speaker 1: gun in your ear. But I mean that's that's the policy.
Speaker 1: You don't open the door. I mean, if you open
Speaker 1: the door, they'll take the whole truck, you know, and
Speaker 1: the banks in the back, you know, so he begged
Speaker 1: for his life, you know, and they just hit him
Speaker 1: on the head, you know. And and one of the
Speaker 1: two guys had an assault rifle and he fired like
Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen shots at the back of the armored truck.
Speaker 1: And of course it didn't do anything, you know, the
Speaker 1: polle is just bounced, bounce stoff. But the interesting part,
Speaker 1: I mean that that part, you know, the shooting and
Speaker 1: the attempted robbery, that's a normal day in Miami. I'm serious,
Speaker 1: you know, so, But the interesting part of this whole
Speaker 1: whole thing, the whole event, was when they jumped in
Speaker 1: their car to get away, they popped smoke you know.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they threw out to smoke grenades
Speaker 1: in the parking lot to cover them. It's like what,
Speaker 1: you know, So we said, this is odd, you know,
Speaker 1: even from Miami. You know, it's odd. You know, It's like,
Speaker 1: we said, what the heck? You know, we thought we
Speaker 1: were dealing with like a couple of military guys from
Speaker 1: Homestead Air Force Base or maybe some At the time,
Speaker 1: they used to call them survivalists, you know, before they
Speaker 1: called them militious, you know, So we didn't know what
Speaker 1: we had, you know, so we knew it was something different,
Speaker 1: you know. So and then we started seeing a series
Speaker 1: of these types of strange robberies, you know. The next
Speaker 1: the next robbery was at a at a grocery store
Speaker 1: and man, they lived up the parking lot. You know.
Speaker 1: The guard him out of the grocery store and one
Speaker 1: of the two players yelled freeze, And as soon as
Speaker 1: the yale freeze, he shot the guard. You know, he
Speaker 1: he with a shotgun. He shot, He shot him in
Speaker 1: the legs, and the guard goes down. Um, and then
Speaker 1: all hell breaks out because the guard you know, took
Speaker 1: his revolver out of his hoster and starts firing in
Speaker 1: the direction that the shot came from. And there were
Speaker 1: two additional guards in the in the armory truck they
Speaker 1: opened up. So the guards fired eighteen shots in total.
Speaker 1: Thank god, you know for that, because if they would
Speaker 1: have had more bullets, it would have fired more bullets.
Speaker 1: But then the bad guys fired an additional They returned
Speaker 1: fire an additional I think it was like fifteen shots,
Speaker 1: so it was about thirty rounds fired in the middle
Speaker 1: of a parking lot. In front of a grocery store. Okay,
Speaker 1: like like any any any ordinary grocery store. You go
Speaker 1: to your grocery store, you know, anywhere, and what you had.
Speaker 1: You've got people coming and going and you know, shopping cards,
Speaker 1: people parking and stuff. About thirty rounds were fired. Not
Speaker 1: one angle person was shot except for the guard, and
Speaker 1: we said, thank God for that. Boy, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: You know, So they dumped in a car and and
Speaker 1: and and got away. But they didn't pop smoke this time,
Speaker 1: you know, so I guess they figured were you know,
Speaker 1: white white pop smoke when we're speeding away at fifty
Speaker 1: miles an hour. But these guys have a propensity for violence.
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're they're playing fast and yes, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah for sure, you know. So. Uh but we asked
Speaker 1: the witnesses were who were they? And they said, well,
Speaker 1: they were black, and then somebody else said they were white,
Speaker 1: and then somebody else said they were Hispanic. What type
Speaker 1: of car? It was a two door car, It was
Speaker 1: a four door car. It was a station wagon. It
Speaker 1: was a pickup truck. It was blue, it was green,
Speaker 1: it was yellow, it was you know, it's like holy cow,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean when when when stress goes up,
Speaker 1: you know, people's reasoning goes down, you know. So you know,
Speaker 1: so the witnesses are pretty much worthless, you know, um,
Speaker 1: because we really didn't know, you know. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like it was it two or four door. You know,
Speaker 1: some people said it was a pickup truck. You know,
Speaker 1: so it's who knows, you know. So, so anyway, we
Speaker 1: knew right then, you know, that these guys were you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, a calling card. We're new in town.
Speaker 1: You know, we're here, We're here to play, you know.
Speaker 1: So and that's continued on, you know. Uh as it
Speaker 1: turned out that the car they used for those robberies,
Speaker 1: we we uh, it was abandoned. We we recovered it
Speaker 1: like in January, I think it was the next year,
Speaker 1: and it was a stolen car obviously, you know, and
Speaker 1: we found out that the owner had been that had
Speaker 1: been missing for since August, you know. So, and eventually
Speaker 1: some hikers found the owner in in the Everglades. You know,
Speaker 1: they found his skeletal remains. You know, he had been
Speaker 1: shot and killed for his car. You know. So the
Speaker 1: following March, another guy, another citizen, had the misfortunate of
Speaker 1: being in the in the Everglades again target shooting, and
Speaker 1: two white guys approached them, and they shot him and
Speaker 1: left him for dead. They stole his car, you know,
Speaker 1: and his car ended up being used in a robbery
Speaker 1: like within ten days, you know. So, so that that's
Speaker 1: how the lead happened. Okay, up until that time, up
Speaker 1: until the second individual was shot and his car was
Speaker 1: toldn we had no clue. I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: all the witnesses were just panicked because these guys would
Speaker 1: come in, you know, usually like you know, like the
Speaker 1: movie Heat, you know that come in shooting, shooting the
Speaker 1: place up, you know, threatening people. Uh, you know, so
Speaker 1: most people, you know, And and they were pretty good,
Speaker 1: you know that, Like I said, they always were their
Speaker 1: scheme masks uh And and most people don't have the
Speaker 1: wherewithal I guess to be able to look at somebody's eye,
Speaker 1: eye area and determine, you know, if they're if they're
Speaker 1: white under if there's white skin there or brown skin
Speaker 1: or black skin. You know, most people, like I said,
Speaker 1: just look at the weapons and fraid to god, they
Speaker 1: don't get killed, you know. So, so it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the the second individual, his name was Jose colazo Um
Speaker 1: was shot and left for dead that and he survived. That.
Speaker 1: We got our first actual eyewitness who said, hey, there
Speaker 1: are two white guys, and he gave us a good description.
Speaker 1: There were about six ft tall, about two hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: had a military bearing to him. They were driving a
Speaker 1: white pickup truck and they told his car, you know.
Speaker 1: So you know, we had the stolen car and the
Speaker 1: white pickup truck to go with. That's how we ended
Speaker 1: up on surveillance on the morning at Maprili eleventh. You know,
Speaker 1: the car had been stolen, and about ten days after
Speaker 1: it was stolen, it was confirmed involved in the bank
Speaker 1: robbery again in South Florida, Okay, because we had a
Speaker 1: U S Customs officer at the time going to the
Speaker 1: bank to cash check. When he's parking his car, he
Speaker 1: said he looked over at the at the front door
Speaker 1: of the bank and he's he's two guys dressed in
Speaker 1: in camouflage clothing with sche masks running out of the bank,
Speaker 1: you know, and he goes, oh, ship, So he hunkers
Speaker 1: down and watches and he saw them get into the
Speaker 1: into the stolen the known stolen car. It was a
Speaker 1: black mart of Carlo and and he a law enforcement guy,
Speaker 1: got got the actual tag on the car, you know,
Speaker 1: so he verified that the tag that he saw the
Speaker 1: robbery was the tag on the car that was stolen
Speaker 1: ten days before. So that that's how, that's how this
Speaker 1: whole you know, like ten or fifteen different attempted and
Speaker 1: actual robberies came to a head on the morning of
Speaker 1: April eleven. So you put the vehicle under surveillance. We
Speaker 1: were out between a hundred and thirtieth Street and a
Speaker 1: hundred and five Street southwest Miami. We were we set
Speaker 1: up in four different locations, you know, we set up
Speaker 1: at four different locations for there have been previous robberies
Speaker 1: and m We were going to have a static surveillance
Speaker 1: and then a rolling surveillance, you know, just kind of
Speaker 1: like to be in the area h in case anything happened.
Speaker 1: Let me back up a little bit. Um, the supervisor,
Speaker 1: Gordon McNeill. Uh, he said, hey, let's let's do let's
Speaker 1: do this. Um, he said, Hey, I have a hunch
Speaker 1: gonna hit tomorrow tomorrow being Friday this Thursday that he
Speaker 1: put this out. He said, Uh, the last time they hit,
Speaker 1: they only got three thousand dollars normally, not three thousand,
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars, eight thousand dollars normally when they hit before,
Speaker 1: they were getting fifty thousand, you know, sixty thou dollars,
Speaker 1: you know, so they it's a good payday. He said.
Speaker 1: The last time they hit, they only got eight. And
Speaker 1: of the time they hit on Fridays, you know, the
Speaker 1: other the hit on on the other weekdays, you know.
Speaker 1: So he said, tomorrow's Friday. They their last robbery was
Speaker 1: was a light hall and he said, it's been two
Speaker 1: or three weeks, so I think they're due. And that
Speaker 1: was it. That that's the only information we had, you know,
Speaker 1: a hunch. So he said, hey, I want to set
Speaker 1: up surveillance, so you know, he said to anybody who
Speaker 1: was available to be down there, and we had a
Speaker 1: briefing in the area at about eight thirty, eight thirty
Speaker 1: and uh thirty am, and the rest of it, you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of spread out, you know, and just kind
Speaker 1: of observed, look looking for the for the black Monty Carlo,
Speaker 1: looking for white pickup trucks, and low and behold, you know,
Speaker 1: they they show up and they stolen money. Carl. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just unbelievable, you know, I mean, I I honestly,
Speaker 1: I have to be very kindid you know. I was
Speaker 1: like thinking, oh my god, this is this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. We've got nothing, we got no leave,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh what happens? Uh they show in
Speaker 1: the stolen car. I'm thinking, Holy cow, what what what
Speaker 1: are the odds? I mean, you know, who knows, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know what the I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not a gambler or anything like that, you know, but
Speaker 1: I mean think about it, what are the odds? And
Speaker 1: uh wow? And the rest of it is just kind
Speaker 1: of like, uh like a like a TV movie really,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like, you know, the only thing missing
Speaker 1: was the music. You know, because from the time the
Speaker 1: case A special agent Ben Grogan called out attention, all
Speaker 1: units were behind the Black Monte Carlo, Florida tag and
Speaker 1: t J nine one until he called up felony car stop,
Speaker 1: let's do it in four minutes. That's I mean, he
Speaker 1: had four minutes to try to rally the troops to
Speaker 1: his location and then formulate a plan and then execute
Speaker 1: that plan. So it's all it's going down very quickly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's I've been real quick, you know, and
Speaker 1: you know again, you know, one of the criticisms has been, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you guys should have had a better plan,
Speaker 1: you know, since you guys knew they were going to
Speaker 1: be there. No, we didn't, you know, it was just
Speaker 1: a hunt. And then the other criticism has been, well,
Speaker 1: you guys should have notified Metro. What we did, We
Speaker 1: notified that. You know, we worked hand in glove with
Speaker 1: the Metro robbery, you know, but they had a different
Speaker 1: assignment on Friday they were working, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: we handled federal stuff, Metro handles all robberies, you know,
Speaker 1: they handled you know, you know seven eleven robberies, you know,
Speaker 1: McDonald robberies and so on and so forth. You know,
Speaker 1: they had a a series of uh, convenience store robberies
Speaker 1: like seven eleven, Circle Case and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: they said, hey, we can't help you in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know, because we're working for the midnight on the
Speaker 1: on the on the convenience store robberie. So you know,
Speaker 1: we asked them, but they said, no, you know, we can't,
Speaker 1: you know. So and then we notified the patrol units
Speaker 1: in the southwest south east area of Miami where we were,
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean the rest of it is like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just kind of like fate. You know,
Speaker 1: you hate to say fate, but you know you have to.
Speaker 1: You have to take it with a grain of salt,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, because you know, even the Bible says,
Speaker 1: you know, though I saw under the sun, you know,
Speaker 1: the race is not always to the swift, nor the
Speaker 1: battle to the strong, you know. But time and chance
Speaker 1: happened to them all, you know, And and that was it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was time and chance. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: the like I said, four minutes, four minutes, uh, the plan,
Speaker 1: you know. And then the other criticism that that's been
Speaker 1: laid on us is well, you guys, you know, you guys,
Speaker 1: you know had what's the word, what's the word that's
Speaker 1: been used? You guys didn't do your cash stop, right,
Speaker 1: you know. And I have to laugh at people. It's like, dude,
Speaker 1: there's only two types of stops, compliant and non compliant.
Speaker 1: You know. You know, Compliant means you know, when when
Speaker 1: you get pulled over on the interstate, you know, by
Speaker 1: the state trooper. You know, you pull a pull over
Speaker 1: to the side and take take your hit. You know,
Speaker 1: you just take the licking, you know. You know the
Speaker 1: other part is a non compliant, you know, and that's
Speaker 1: when when you see people on in California speeding away
Speaker 1: from the cops, you know, so you know that usually
Speaker 1: ends badly. You know. So our our car stopped turned
Speaker 1: into a nine compliant car stop, like from the gate,
Speaker 1: right from the beginning from this for the first second,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as they heard a siren boom,
Speaker 1: they were they were speeding away or trying to speed away,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the rest of it just turned
Speaker 1: out into bumper cars. You know, we were we were
Speaker 1: not We were as we were as determined to stop
Speaker 1: them as they were determined to escape. And you know,
Speaker 1: we were not going to let them escape because we
Speaker 1: had no clue who they were. I mean, these guys
Speaker 1: were like dantems, you know, they were absolutely I mean
Speaker 1: we we didn't even know they were white guys until
Speaker 1: like the previous you know, the four weeks up until
Speaker 1: that time. We had no clue. So you know, like
Speaker 1: I said, we were not going to let them escape.
Speaker 1: You know, how long did the car chase go on
Speaker 1: for before they were stopped? Oh it didn't two blocks.
Speaker 1: I mean, however, long it takes you to speed down
Speaker 1: two blocks. I mean it's like, uh, there was four
Speaker 1: cars involved in in in the in the in the
Speaker 1: in the immediate car stop. It was three three police cars,
Speaker 1: three FBI cars and them, and my supervisor was playing
Speaker 1: catch up behind us, you know, so as as quick
Speaker 1: as it takes a car to go down a two
Speaker 1: hundred yards and not even that a hundred and fifty yards, okay,
Speaker 1: and then crash, you know, crashed into the side of
Speaker 1: a tree. You know, that's how fast the car stopped. Lasted.
Speaker 1: It didn't last long, you know, so and you know
Speaker 1: we had the sirens on, we had our our police
Speaker 1: lights on. You know, they knew who we were. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no no grow big surprise there, you know, sou
Speaker 1: but they just refused to stop. And as soon as
Speaker 1: the cars came to rest, uh like maybe um, there
Speaker 1: was enough time for people to kind of catch our
Speaker 1: breath and um, you know, shake off the effects of
Speaker 1: the crashes, because I mean I was actually shocked, physically shocked,
Speaker 1: you know, because our car hit a hit hit a
Speaker 1: concrete wall, you know, going about forty you know, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know I wasn't wearing my seatbelt, you know,
Speaker 1: by choice, you know. So um, as soon as I
Speaker 1: shook off the effects of the of the crash, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of oriented myself to see what the what's
Speaker 1: going on where they were, you know, And I immediately
Speaker 1: figured out where they were, and I started moving moving
Speaker 1: in that direction, you um. Um. And as soon as
Speaker 1: I stepped out of the car, you know, gun the
Speaker 1: gunfight was on, you know, the the two suspects opened
Speaker 1: fire on you guys. And then yeah, I heard, I
Speaker 1: heard the supervisor, who was closer than me, I was
Speaker 1: one of the farthest away when it happened. He he's yelling, FBI,
Speaker 1: gave yourselves up, give up, give up, you know. And
Speaker 1: then they responded with um, they said f you. But
Speaker 1: they said it with gunfire, you know, a career message.
Speaker 1: They didn't they didn't use words. They use non verbal communication,
Speaker 1: you know. So that non verbal was a rifle shot.
Speaker 1: You know. So the second you stepped out of the car,
Speaker 1: you were in a firefight right there, I mean, and
Speaker 1: I was about fifty yards away, you know, and I
Speaker 1: had to I had to decide, Hey, you know, what
Speaker 1: do I do? I had a shotgun with double up buck,
Speaker 1: which is you know, on average, the maximum effective page
Speaker 1: for that is twenty five yards. And I was fifty
Speaker 1: yards away and my revolver. I mean, I'm pretty good
Speaker 1: at you know, with a revolver back then I was,
Speaker 1: you know, with fifty yards. But man, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a tough shot. Fifty yards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 1: it was there were in a jumple of cars. There
Speaker 1: was just a big pile of cars. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't even know where they were. So the gunfights on,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm thinking, shoot, you know, there's no
Speaker 1: way I need to get closer, you know, So I
Speaker 1: ran across the street and sort of my partner, John Handlon,
Speaker 1: he ran to the slightly to the right, and I
Speaker 1: went slightly to the left. His uh, his closest point
Speaker 1: of cover was forty yards and my closest point of
Speaker 1: cover was fifty. So it was it was invigorating, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like, holy sh it, bad man. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm running, I'm running. I don't even know
Speaker 1: where the bullets are flying, but you know you could
Speaker 1: hear them, you know, like zipping by, you know, you
Speaker 1: know how you know how they sound, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: like crack cracking sounds, you know, that type of sound
Speaker 1: they make you. So, like I said, it was pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. And I almost made it to the gunfight,
Speaker 1: you know, almost got there, and then I, um, I
Speaker 1: took a well, I mean, I know now I took
Speaker 1: a hit, but at the time that had happened, I
Speaker 1: didn't know what had happened. I was running forward to
Speaker 1: reinforce my supervisor on the left side of the of
Speaker 1: the scene of the of the event, and I was
Speaker 1: trying to get into his left side, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, instead of running forward, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: flat on my back, looking up at the blue sky,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, what the heck happened here? You know,
Speaker 1: I had no clue, and you know, and I it
Speaker 1: took me several seconds to figure out what the heck
Speaker 1: was going on, you know, And honestly, it I honestly
Speaker 1: don't know how long it took me. It could have been.
Speaker 1: It could have been I don't know, it could have
Speaker 1: been a minute. I mean, I I mean, I honestly
Speaker 1: don't know, because at that time, you know, I go
Speaker 1: into you know, the fight or flight syndrome, you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, the time slows down you lose your hearing,
Speaker 1: your motion, you know, you feel like you're moving in
Speaker 1: slow motion, that type of stuff, you know. So, but
Speaker 1: I could not figure out I plus my my I
Speaker 1: lost all my hearing. I had this horrendous ringing in
Speaker 1: my ears, um, and I couldn't figure out what the
Speaker 1: heck was going on, you know, And of course bullets
Speaker 1: was still flying over my head, and I'm thinking, holy shit,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I need to do something here.
Speaker 1: You know. Why the hell you know I said you?
Speaker 1: I kept calling myself names, you know, because I'm thinking
Speaker 1: you were stupid. For I thought I had run into
Speaker 1: the back of Supervisor's car. You know. I was trying
Speaker 1: to cut the corner too close. That was my perception.
Speaker 1: I cut the corner too close, and I I clipped
Speaker 1: it with my right hip and I knocked myself back,
Speaker 1: you know. So, Uh, I had no sensation to pain,
Speaker 1: but nothing, I mean no, no, no, no sensation at all,
Speaker 1: you know. So I'm thinking, what the heck, you know,
Speaker 1: And it must have been about a minute before I
Speaker 1: actually made a physical examination of my arm because I
Speaker 1: was trying to use my left arm to push myself up,
Speaker 1: and uh, I couldn't not think of what the heck
Speaker 1: is going on here? You know. So I had to
Speaker 1: make a visual inspection and that's when I realized I've
Speaker 1: been shot. You know, I'm thinking, holy count. You know,
Speaker 1: I said, no, wonder, my arm doesn't work. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all toast, you know. So um, you know, at
Speaker 1: that point in time, you know, and people ask you
Speaker 1: what's your feel like to get shot? Honestly, it was
Speaker 1: kind of disappointing. You know. It was like no sensation whatsoever,
Speaker 1: you know, which is nature's way of up saying, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're you've taken a bad hit, but
Speaker 1: you know you can still survive. You know, you can
Speaker 1: still you can still move, you know, And that's what
Speaker 1: I did. It was it was the human body is
Speaker 1: a fantastic machine, you know, because that's what happened. I
Speaker 1: felt no pain, no sensation whatsoever. And uh, physically, mentally,
Speaker 1: I said, holy I mean I went from apprehension, you know,
Speaker 1: the closer we got to the subjects and then you know,
Speaker 1: we were right behind them, and then some you know,
Speaker 1: somebody said, hey, kept telling any cars, you go from
Speaker 1: apprehension to a little bit of you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit more maybe a little fear, and then the car
Speaker 1: chase starts, you know, and then there's um, you know,
Speaker 1: crashing and banging, you know, and um you know, then
Speaker 1: you crash into the wall and then the shots are fire.
Speaker 1: You know. Then you go into like a real fear
Speaker 1: and all that's what I would call real fear, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I'm not ashamed to say it, you know, but
Speaker 1: that that's what happened. However, when I looked at my arm,
Speaker 1: you know, and and realized that I'd been shot, then
Speaker 1: you know, I went into a level above fear, and
Speaker 1: that was called I would call that error. Okay. I
Speaker 1: was terrified, you know at the time, and thinking, holy shit,
Speaker 1: how am I going to survive? How am I going
Speaker 1: to be able to fight for my life? You know,
Speaker 1: when when my left arm is completely destroyed me because
Speaker 1: the rifle round hit me right right square, you know,
Speaker 1: between the wrist and the elbow. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: completely just exploded my arm out, you know, the two
Speaker 1: bones were shattered, you know, it was there was nothing
Speaker 1: holding my hand up. You know, it was just like
Speaker 1: a rag doll, you know rag you know, hanging off
Speaker 1: my arm. You know. So at that point I went
Speaker 1: from fear to terror and taking ship. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's going to be hard enough to you know, to
Speaker 1: fight for survival with two hands now, but now I
Speaker 1: only have one, you know. So, but I've had a
Speaker 1: lot of first aide classes, and part of it was,
Speaker 1: you know, knowledge. The other part was instinct. I knew instinctively.
Speaker 1: I knew that I was severely injured, but I was
Speaker 1: not going to die immediately. I mean I could, I
Speaker 1: could sense it. I mean, I knew I was eating,
Speaker 1: but I knew I had several minutes. Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how else to explain it.
Speaker 1: It was an instinct, you know. So I just you know,
Speaker 1: ignored my arm and I grabbed the shotgun again, and
Speaker 1: I started, you know, scanning for a threat because there
Speaker 1: were the shots are still being fired over my head.
Speaker 1: I'm behind a car at this point, shots still being
Speaker 1: fired over my head, you know, and I'm thinking, hey,
Speaker 1: you know this, this guy can still come around the
Speaker 1: side of the car or roll over the hood of
Speaker 1: the car and put a bullet in my head, you know.
Speaker 1: So I said that would be that would be a bad,
Speaker 1: bad option, you know. So I I started focusing on
Speaker 1: continuing to scan and and survive, you know. Like I said,
Speaker 1: my my arm was secondary at that point. And the
Speaker 1: gunfight lasted so long that the shooting went from it's
Speaker 1: hard to describe on the phone. The shooting went from
Speaker 1: my life directly in front of my nose. It started
Speaker 1: moving from from my nose off to the right, to
Speaker 1: the right, and farther to the right, and father way
Speaker 1: farther to the right. So I'm thinking, well, everything's moving
Speaker 1: to the right. So I started crawling behind the cars
Speaker 1: to try to see where I could see over on
Speaker 1: the right side, because I couldn't see anything with the
Speaker 1: cars in the way. And that's when I saw that
Speaker 1: my fellow agents, three fellow ages were down, you know,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know whether they were alive or dead.
Speaker 1: So I said, oh my god, you know. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, I saw a pair of legs running
Speaker 1: from the rear of one of the FBI cars towards
Speaker 1: the front, and that's when I engaged. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know who it was, you know, but I knew that
Speaker 1: my fellow ages. I knew where they who they were,
Speaker 1: and where they were, so I figured, well, you know,
Speaker 1: all three ages are down on that side. I said,
Speaker 1: it has to be a bad guy, you know. So
Speaker 1: I didn't even look at his face. I just stuck
Speaker 1: the shot shotgun out with with my right hand on
Speaker 1: the ground, and I aimed. But to this day, I
Speaker 1: don't remember firing that round. You know. It's called traumatic amnesia.
Speaker 1: I was shooting in the direction of three agents, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking ship, you know, if I miss the
Speaker 1: if I missed the shot, my my pellets might actually
Speaker 1: hit other ages and maybe kill them, you know. So
Speaker 1: I said, I don't want to be responsible for that,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's that's what's called traumatic amnesia. You know.
Speaker 1: So I don't remember making the shot, even though the
Speaker 1: evidence shows that I had five shots in my shotgun
Speaker 1: and I fired all five shots. Plus you know, the
Speaker 1: the subject had shotgun pellet hits to the feet, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a moving yeah. So anyway, so
Speaker 1: then I continue moving to the right, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to flank them, you know, and then by the time
Speaker 1: I moved, you know, they were already inside the FBI.
Speaker 1: They were they were in the FBI car trying to escape.
Speaker 1: You know. There's no doubt about it in my mind,
Speaker 1: you know, so the perpetrators were trying to get one
Speaker 1: of your vehicles and escape. They weren't trying. They were
Speaker 1: actually in one of the one of the FBI cars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were they were leaning over the steering column
Speaker 1: and looking at it like, uh, you know, where the
Speaker 1: keys and how do we get the keys in there?
Speaker 1: I mean, what the heck? And immediately became obvious to
Speaker 1: me that they were trying to escape and the only
Speaker 1: avenue of escaped the head was to run over three
Speaker 1: three FBI agents and yeah, who were down around and
Speaker 1: behind the car. And I said, no way, There's no
Speaker 1: way that these guys are gonna, you know, gonna accomplish
Speaker 1: that task because I'm not going to let them because
Speaker 1: if they back the car up, um, they will definitely
Speaker 1: if they're not, if the agent aren't dead, they will
Speaker 1: be dead after they get run over, you know. So
Speaker 1: I said, no way. So that's when I employed the
Speaker 1: shotgun one handed, you know, um behind the car, and
Speaker 1: I tried to put as much as much lead into
Speaker 1: the compartment of the cars that could, you know. And
Speaker 1: as it turns out, U, I don't think I fired
Speaker 1: four rounds into the compartment. I don't think any of
Speaker 1: the pellets had hit anybody, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: because the the forensics, the crimsing UH investigation doesn't show
Speaker 1: any pellets. I mean, the perpetrators had had bullet wounds
Speaker 1: on them, but none of them were shocking pellets. But
Speaker 1: just out of curiosity, how are you able to shock
Speaker 1: the shotgun one handed? I was sitting on my butt
Speaker 1: on the ground, and I had my back up against
Speaker 1: UH one of the cars, and I was on the
Speaker 1: on the back right side of the car, and I
Speaker 1: was sitting and I when I fired the first shot,
Speaker 1: I used the lip of the the bumper as my
Speaker 1: as my support hand. And when I fired, UM, I
Speaker 1: was kind of pushed back, and since I was already
Speaker 1: in a sitting position, I said, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is easy. And I could just you know, lean
Speaker 1: back against the car let the shot. And I had
Speaker 1: the shotgun in my right hand. I let it slide
Speaker 1: through my hand between my legs and my knees were up,
Speaker 1: you know that my my my legs were flat on
Speaker 1: the ground straight out. They were up in a crowd position.
Speaker 1: So I pinched the shotgun with my thighs, used my
Speaker 1: right hand to rack the action, and then took my
Speaker 1: right hand back to the trigger guard, rolled over to
Speaker 1: my left again and placed the shotgun on the lip
Speaker 1: of the car and fired. You know, that fired four shots.
Speaker 1: And you know, the rest of it is just kind
Speaker 1: of like I said. You know, none of the none
Speaker 1: of the actual rounds had had hit the hit the
Speaker 1: anyone inside the car, but you expended the rest of
Speaker 1: the shotgun shells into the into that right. I ran
Speaker 1: out of m O and at that point in time,
Speaker 1: you know, I I this first time, I actually took
Speaker 1: my eyes off the threat. I actually called out to
Speaker 1: the agents across the street. There were two ages, Gil
Speaker 1: Arontia and Ron Riser were across the street providing overwatch,
Speaker 1: kind of like cover fire, and they I yelled at
Speaker 1: and I said, it's okay, coming over. And they didn't
Speaker 1: know what the bad guys were, so they were yelling
Speaker 1: at me to stay down and stay down, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking about cops. You know, they don't know,
Speaker 1: they don't know the gunfights over. You know. Well, unbeinoest
Speaker 1: to me, it wasn't over because the witness said that
Speaker 1: the passenger in the driver's side of the car, I mean,
Speaker 1: the perpetrator on the in the driver's seat, got out
Speaker 1: of his car and walked within about ten ft of me,
Speaker 1: you know, behind cover, and fired his revolver at me.
Speaker 1: You know, but I never heard it because I said
Speaker 1: before my my hearing was completely toast, you know. So
Speaker 1: so when I yelled at the ages across the street
Speaker 1: that it's okay coming over, they it dont on me
Speaker 1: if they could, holy come, you know, we're going to die,
Speaker 1: you know, because by that point, I mean it's been
Speaker 1: like at least three or four minutes since I've been shot,
Speaker 1: and I was starting to lose consciousness, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, we are going to die here. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just no doubt about it. But something interesting happened.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like I went through, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know the five stages of the five stages of grief,
Speaker 1: you know, denial, anger, and then um, bargaining, depression, and
Speaker 1: an acceptance. I went through those except for for depression.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously I didn't have time to get depressed,
Speaker 1: you know, but I went through those four you know, denial, anger,
Speaker 1: bargaining acceptance. I went through those like an you know,
Speaker 1: it was an accelerated process, you know. I went through
Speaker 1: that in about probably ten seconds, and then I came
Speaker 1: to the realization I accepted. I said, hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: I d your screwed and you're gonna die. I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually was talking to myself, you know, at the
Speaker 1: same time I'm passing out, I'm trying to shaking my
Speaker 1: head to try to stay awake. And it's like something
Speaker 1: something happened, you know. It's like it's like a metamorphosis.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, once I accepted that I was
Speaker 1: going to die all fear, I was no longer fearful,
Speaker 1: you know, And I told my friends would say I
Speaker 1: became the most dangerous man unseen, you know, because what
Speaker 1: are you going to do somebody who's already accepted death,
Speaker 1: you know, you know nothing, I mean, what can you
Speaker 1: do to So I I was fearless, you know, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, I still held some hope of survival,
Speaker 1: you know, because I was still able to function. And
Speaker 1: I looked up and down the street. I looked north,
Speaker 1: and I looked south, and by that time that the
Speaker 1: gunfight had lasted so long that there must have been
Speaker 1: a sort of god twenty fire engines and ambulances on
Speaker 1: the north side, and another twenty on the south side,
Speaker 1: but they I set up a perimeter, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's what also reinforced my thought. You know, these guys
Speaker 1: don't know the gunfights over, you know, only I know that,
Speaker 1: you know. So I said, hey, you know, I need
Speaker 1: to let them know what's over. So the last thing
Speaker 1: in the world I wanted to do is stand up,
Speaker 1: because I mean that was just totally weak, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean I could have no strength left. So I said,
Speaker 1: what the heck, I'm going to die anyway, so maybe
Speaker 1: I can do something to survive, you know. So my
Speaker 1: uh desire to stand up was to show everybody that
Speaker 1: it was a safe zone. You know, the l C
Speaker 1: was clear. But at the same time, you know, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know what, if I'm going to die, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take those two bastards with me. So when I
Speaker 1: stood up, I drew my revolver and then I went
Speaker 1: around the back of the car and I started moving
Speaker 1: in on the on the subjects inside the FBI car.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of shuffling along, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: people's witnesses said that I actually shut uh kind of
Speaker 1: half jogged half and wasn't a run, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: a walk either, they said. I kind of like shuffled forward,
Speaker 1: you know, as quickly as I could. I don't remember
Speaker 1: it that way. I just remember, you know, standing up,
Speaker 1: setting a position and firing, and then taking a couple
Speaker 1: more steps forward, firing, moving forward, setting, firing. And I
Speaker 1: did that six times and until I got to the
Speaker 1: actual window of the car, you know, which, and and
Speaker 1: I actually, you know, those shots actually hit, you know,
Speaker 1: I fired six shots, and five shots hit the subjects,
Speaker 1: which ended up killing them. You know. So at that point,
Speaker 1: the guys across the street had run. They saw me
Speaker 1: stand up, so they ran across. They had like fifty
Speaker 1: yards you know to run across, and then the additional
Speaker 1: like fifteen yards from you know, to the actual subjects.
Speaker 1: So they ran across the street to reinforce me. And
Speaker 1: when I fired my last shot, you know, they actually
Speaker 1: showed I saw them, felt them on either side of me,
Speaker 1: and to reinforce in case anything happened. And they said, ed,
Speaker 1: put your gun away, it's over, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: you know I heard that, you know, and I put
Speaker 1: my gun in my hoster and then I tell people,
Speaker 1: I said, training, training, training, When I put my gun.
Speaker 1: In my host story, I actually snapped the hoster, you know,
Speaker 1: to secure the weapon and the host. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: just like training. You know, it's like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you do it a hundred thousand times, you know, it
Speaker 1: just comes automatically, you know. So but after that, I
Speaker 1: took about four or five steps backwards, kind of like stumbling,
Speaker 1: you know, and then I fell on my button and
Speaker 1: I was, you know, flat out on the street, you know,
Speaker 1: and and the rest of it it was over. At
Speaker 1: that point, man, a pandemonium had you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually came down off the of the adrenaline, you know,
Speaker 1: and my hearing started coming back, you know. And at
Speaker 1: that point, you know, an interesting thing happened. Um. You
Speaker 1: know I mentioned before that I didn't I didn't feel
Speaker 1: any pain, and I didn't even know I'd been shot stuffed. Man,
Speaker 1: when the adrenaline left, Oh my god, I was in agony.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was like, I mean, the medics gave
Speaker 1: me to two shots of morphine, you know, and they
Speaker 1: put my arm in a in a in one of
Speaker 1: those balloons what do they call it, splints, and uh
Speaker 1: kind of immobilized the arm, you know, to keep it
Speaker 1: from moving and one of them was walking by, you know,
Speaker 1: and I grabbed him by the ankle with my right arm,
Speaker 1: and I grabbed him his candy. So I said, give
Speaker 1: me another shot. I remember that. I felt like a
Speaker 1: damn addict. You give me another shot. I need another hit,
Speaker 1: you know. So and the guy said, dude, we've given
Speaker 1: you enough to put out a horse. If we give
Speaker 1: you another shot, you're gonna die the way this pain's
Speaker 1: going ship, you know. But you know, they they took
Speaker 1: care of me right way, and they put me in
Speaker 1: on a gurney and took me in in an ambulance
Speaker 1: to the hospital. But you know, it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: got to the hospital that they actually gave me some
Speaker 1: good stuff. I guess the the medics didn't have the
Speaker 1: good stuff, man, because I got to the hospital. It's like, man,
Speaker 1: it's hardly any pain, you know after that, you know,
Speaker 1: but man, you know when the when when that pain
Speaker 1: killer wars off, it's horrible, you know, absolutely horrible. So
Speaker 1: you had that, I mean that's pretty much the end.
Speaker 1: You know. It's kind of a pretty pretty quick, down
Speaker 1: and dirty, you know story. You know. So and you
Speaker 1: had eliminated the two perpetrators. What was the outcome for
Speaker 1: the three FBI agents that you saw down in front
Speaker 1: of the vehicle. That's the unfortunate part. On that side
Speaker 1: of the vehicle. Ben Grogan was was dead on the scene,
Speaker 1: and and Jerry Dove was dead on the scene. And
Speaker 1: the third agent, John Hannon, he survived. He was shot
Speaker 1: once through the gun hand and once in each stye,
Speaker 1: so he was shot three times. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know what rifle rounds can do to a human,
Speaker 1: you know body. I mean it's pretty devastating. I mean
Speaker 1: those hits, Uh, those rifle hits are damn devastating, you know.
Speaker 1: And our supervisor Gordon mcneio, he was shot through the
Speaker 1: you know, next to the neck on the shoulder and
Speaker 1: he was ducking for cover and he was shot. You know,
Speaker 1: the round went down through his his torso you know,
Speaker 1: from on the right side and went down and hit
Speaker 1: his spinal cord, ricocheted off his spinal cord and then
Speaker 1: uh was kicked back to the right and and shattered
Speaker 1: into his right lung, you know. So uh, he was
Speaker 1: probably the worst hit, uh, you know with a rifle round.
Speaker 1: You know. So he was in the hospital for for
Speaker 1: three weeks in recovering. You know. Obviously the lunghead was
Speaker 1: pretty pretty significant, you know. So, but in total, there
Speaker 1: were eight FBI agents and two bank robbers um in
Speaker 1: an area I would say, uh about thirty ft by
Speaker 1: thirty ft. You know. It wasn't a big area, you know,
Speaker 1: and people think, oh, it's like a big parking land
Speaker 1: gun right now. It was like it was up close
Speaker 1: and right on top of each other. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was thirty ft by thirty ft for the majority of
Speaker 1: the shots were fired, and there were a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty shots fired in in about four or five minutes,
Speaker 1: you know, so it was pretty intense. Man. It was
Speaker 1: like being inside of a building, you know. Yeah, that's inside,
Speaker 1: like the room we're recording in right now. I mean
Speaker 1: it's a very small area. Yeah, yeah, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of obstacles. You had a lot
Speaker 1: of cars, you know, a lot of cover, you know.
Speaker 1: But I'm telling you I was shot from a distance
Speaker 1: of about oh the width of a car plus another
Speaker 1: three feet that would be what twelve ft. I was
Speaker 1: shot from twelve ft away. Gordon McNeil were shooting at
Speaker 1: the at the driver from a car with away and
Speaker 1: the way he had his arm extended out, so he
Speaker 1: was probably shooting at the driver um from about his
Speaker 1: weapon was about five or six feet from from the driver.
Speaker 1: The problem was, you know, if you've been in Florida
Speaker 1: at all, you know, all those all those cars have
Speaker 1: tinted windows. And it's not not the glass it's tinted,
Speaker 1: it's the plastic that's on the glass. So when rowns
Speaker 1: were going through, it wouldn't shatter. I mean, the glass
Speaker 1: was shattered, but it wouldn't it wouldn't fall down, you know.
Speaker 1: So there's plastic material just kept kept the glass up.
Speaker 1: And you know, in some cases, you know, ten fifteen
Speaker 1: rounds would have to go through a window before it
Speaker 1: would collapse, you know, because you know, that's that's how
Speaker 1: the film. You know that that tinting film it works.
Speaker 1: So when it started taking hit, it's it was spider web.
Speaker 1: So you really couldn't see clearly into the car, you know.
Speaker 1: So even though he was about six seven feet away
Speaker 1: from the subject, the subject was hunkered down, you know,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't you know, presenting a big target. He
Speaker 1: was hunkered down, you know, so it was hard to hit.
Speaker 1: Plus he's taken incoming fire too, you know, so that
Speaker 1: kind of kind of puts a damper on things. And
Speaker 1: I imagined that you had to have reconstructive surgery on
Speaker 1: your arm. Mm hmm. I had a total of seven surgeries,
Speaker 1: seven major surgeries and three minor ones. I think I
Speaker 1: had a totally you know, if you count everything, uh
Speaker 1: tent tent surgeries over the course of two years and
Speaker 1: three months. You know, the last part of the recovery
Speaker 1: was was just recovery, you know. But in the first
Speaker 1: year I had about ten surgeries and in total, and
Speaker 1: this shootout, of course became a case study for you know,
Speaker 1: everything that came after and really changed tactics and weapons
Speaker 1: and and and really was a learning moment, you know,
Speaker 1: for the law enforcement community. But I was wondering, if
Speaker 1: you could tell us yourself, I mean, what what was
Speaker 1: the fallout um from all of this where you guys
Speaker 1: hailed as heroes, where you decried as as guys who
Speaker 1: screwed up or botched the job. I mean, I just wondering, like,
Speaker 1: how how did the law enforcement community and the bureau
Speaker 1: um regard this in the immediate aftermath both in the
Speaker 1: immediate aftermath, it was both you know, It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, they screwed up somehow and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But see when all the facts came out, then you know,
Speaker 1: people started changing their tune, you know, because it was
Speaker 1: it was nothing short of heroic, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody took a step back. You know, um outgunned. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a big thing about outgun you know. You know
Speaker 1: there's a line in one of the spaghetti westerns with
Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood. I think it U fistful of dollars or
Speaker 1: something like that, when when one of the Mexican bandits,
Speaker 1: you know, is is challenging Clint, he says, hey, when
Speaker 1: a man with a forty five meets a man with
Speaker 1: a rifle, the man with the forty five as a
Speaker 1: dead man. You know. And that's true if you're going up,
Speaker 1: if you're going up against an assault rifle with a pistol, man,
Speaker 1: you're your toast. May Now, you know, if you've got
Speaker 1: four people with guns, you know, spread out, you know,
Speaker 1: in a in a semi circle, you know, or something
Speaker 1: like that, you know, or behind good cover against one
Speaker 1: guy with an assult rifle, then you know, then you
Speaker 1: know you've got a pretty good chance. You know, you
Speaker 1: you maneuver you you you you know, you you have
Speaker 1: to be smart you know about it. So there were
Speaker 1: eight of us and two of them, you know, So
Speaker 1: that's what it ended up being. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, four or four guys with handguns, you know,
Speaker 1: against one guy with with an assault rifle. But I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, boy, you know, it's like that assault rifle.
Speaker 1: When you're hit with an assault rifle, man, you know it,
Speaker 1: there is no doubt about the fact that you've been hit.
Speaker 1: You know. Also, so I mean it cuts growth ways.
Speaker 1: You know. The philosophy is like you know, maybe maybe not.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, you know, is it even not
Speaker 1: even so that part of it caused the and and
Speaker 1: that's where one thing, that's one thing where I really
Speaker 1: praised the Bureau, you know, the FBI, because they saw
Speaker 1: that and they immediately asked for a Congress for for funding.
Speaker 1: By the end of by the end of my recovery,
Speaker 1: they had purchased UH one MP five semi automatic submachine
Speaker 1: gun with thirty round magazines and or one UH saw
Speaker 1: it off shotgun for for every two agents. So every
Speaker 1: team of two would have a submachine gun or a shotgun. Okay, Additionally,
Speaker 1: they authorized the personal purchase, personal carry of semi automatic
Speaker 1: assault rifles like the A R fifteens and stuff. So
Speaker 1: I went out and got myself an A R fifteen
Speaker 1: once I recovered, you know, so, you know, and I
Speaker 1: got about, you know, twelve thirty round magazines, you know
Speaker 1: that I carried in a in a in a carry pouch,
Speaker 1: you know, one of those like drop bag pouches, you know. So,
Speaker 1: and they started training swat more swat guys, you know.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I forgot to mention that we
Speaker 1: had we had three SWAT guys on on surveillance and
Speaker 1: were they were, you know, time and chance. You know,
Speaker 1: the race is not always to the swift. Those three
Speaker 1: SWAT agents were not involved in the car stop. They
Speaker 1: were farther south and they were responding to the call,
Speaker 1: you know, saying, hey, Ben, where are you. We're a
Speaker 1: hundred and twentieth street, you know, car stop. Let's let's
Speaker 1: do it. They did not get to the to the
Speaker 1: shootout until it was over. One agent had a fully
Speaker 1: automatic MP five, the second agent had a twelve gage shotgun,
Speaker 1: and the third agent, you know, had an M sixteen. Okay,
Speaker 1: which would have changed everything, would I would have changed everything. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: He had an M sixteen rifle swat guy, fully auto,
Speaker 1: full auto. You know, he had several magazines. But by
Speaker 1: the time he got to the scene, the confight was over,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's just I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: eight you know, time and chance. Now that part of it,
Speaker 1: you know, the weapon side of it, you know, it
Speaker 1: went I mean, the Bureau went out and got you know,
Speaker 1: as as much firepower as as was logical. You know,
Speaker 1: people say, well, you know, if he had a choice,
Speaker 1: what would you carry if well, I'd carry a full
Speaker 1: auto M sixteen. But the problem is, you know, as
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies and officers, we have to be responsible.
Speaker 1: You know, you cannot carry a forty four magnum because
Speaker 1: if you if you've shoot it, I mean, where the
Speaker 1: hell's that Around're gonna stop And it's going to stop
Speaker 1: in Kansas by the time it stops, you know, So
Speaker 1: we have to be responsible for our our rounds. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not like you know, some of these cities you
Speaker 1: know where you hear people some poor child gets shot
Speaker 1: through a window, you know, because some gang banger you know,
Speaker 1: fired pirt of pistol two blocks away. You know, so
Speaker 1: so we we we do have to be responsible in
Speaker 1: that regard the other change where the huge change was ballistics. Okay, ballistics, ballistics,
Speaker 1: ballistics okay, Jerry Dove shot Platt in like in the
Speaker 1: first minute and a half of the shooting. He shot
Speaker 1: him through the right bicept. The round hit his the
Speaker 1: side of his chest wall, penetrated his lung and it
Speaker 1: was directly in line with his heart. There was a
Speaker 1: great shot. I call it a million dollar shot. But
Speaker 1: I'm told that the bullet that he fired, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a hundred and fifteen grain uh silver tip,
Speaker 1: hollow point, you know, it just it was too light,
Speaker 1: It was too light of around. If it had penetrated
Speaker 1: another inch and a half two inches, it would have
Speaker 1: hit him in the heart. But it didn't. It stopped,
Speaker 1: you know, just short of the heart. And the gunfight
Speaker 1: could have been could have been way different otherwise, you know.
Speaker 1: But you know the ballistics thing. You know, people said, well,
Speaker 1: it hit him, it severed his brake, you'll, artery in
Speaker 1: his right arm, and it it it exploded his lung.
Speaker 1: You know, he's leading internally, okay. But the argument has
Speaker 1: been was that a survivabal or non survivable hit, okay,
Speaker 1: and it's really a mood point, you know. Uh, he
Speaker 1: ended up dying, okay, I mean, he got some extra
Speaker 1: hits on him, you know, but it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: whether it was survivable or nonsurvivable, because from that point
Speaker 1: when he's hit through the lung, he continues to fight
Speaker 1: and he will shoot. Uh, he will shoot Jerry Dove
Speaker 1: twice and the second time Astonomy kills him. He shoots
Speaker 1: John Hanlon three times, he shoots he shot Ben Grogan
Speaker 1: twice and and kills Ben Grogan. So even though he
Speaker 1: was shot that quote unquote nonsurvivable hit, he continued to
Speaker 1: fight and he ends up shooting and three agents and
Speaker 1: he kills two of them. Okay, at some point in
Speaker 1: time it really does become a nonsurvivable hit because at
Speaker 1: autopsy they said he had lost about of his fort
Speaker 1: of the blood of his system. Okay, that's called a
Speaker 1: class four hematoma or some some something like that. AD
Speaker 1: forget what the word is. But when they say, hey,
Speaker 1: when you use, when you lose the blood in your system,
Speaker 1: you're you're running real close to not being able to
Speaker 1: get revived that you know, I mean your your blood.
Speaker 1: You know, your your system just starts shutting down, you know.
Speaker 1: So the ballistics part of it, you know that that
Speaker 1: they did a lot of research, you know into you know,
Speaker 1: what bullets really do inside a human target. You know,
Speaker 1: so the that changed now the other the other thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of people and I just went to
Speaker 1: a lecture. I I lectured a group of law enforcement
Speaker 1: guys NXT week. You know, there's probably better than most. Okay,
Speaker 1: there are two philosophies out there. There's a law enforcement
Speaker 1: philosophy and then there's a military and the law enforcement philosophy.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, hey, you take, you take incoming
Speaker 1: shots and coming round. You know, you you try to
Speaker 1: get out of the kill zone, take a barricade, position
Speaker 1: of cover, call for backup, and then hunker down. You know.
Speaker 1: In the military you know better than I do. You know,
Speaker 1: you take, you take incoming fire, you return fire, and assault,
Speaker 1: assault the position, assault the ambus. Okay, Uh, that's what happened.
Speaker 1: You had these two guys were a hundred first airborne, Okay.
Speaker 1: And you could see in their movements they flanked the
Speaker 1: agents and at the in in Ben's car, Platt laid
Speaker 1: down suppression fire. And he assaulted their position. Okay, we're taught,
Speaker 1: you know, to hunker down behind cover of fire, shoot,
Speaker 1: you know, a call for backup. That's exactly what we did.
Speaker 1: So those two philosophies came, you know, came head to
Speaker 1: head um and that's the result. You know. And I
Speaker 1: lectured last week and I said, guys, you know, you
Speaker 1: need to be aware that there are people out there,
Speaker 1: especially now in the United States in this era after
Speaker 1: Desert Storm, and there's a shield and you know, the
Speaker 1: Son of Desert Shield and all of you all these
Speaker 1: different programs that we've gotten. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of military folks out there that have a lot of
Speaker 1: good training, you know, and if they choose to do evil,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you need to be prepared, you know.
Speaker 1: You you're we're trained to hunker down behind cover, and
Speaker 1: they're training to assault the position, to flank, laid down
Speaker 1: suppression fire and and you know, through fire and maneuver
Speaker 1: and assault the position. You know. So I mean there's
Speaker 1: just two to two you know, different philosophies, you know,
Speaker 1: And like I said, they came into clash that day.
Speaker 1: How did how did this end up influencing how FBI
Speaker 1: agents and other law enforcement officers were trained the FBI
Speaker 1: at least, I mean I can speak, I can speak
Speaker 1: from from an FBI perspective of all training now is
Speaker 1: combat training. Okay. We we teach marksmanship, you know, because
Speaker 1: every agency has to has to be able to justify
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, a case and officers involved
Speaker 1: in a in a shooting, they have to be able
Speaker 1: to show in courney. Listen, this officer is an eight
Speaker 1: percent shooter. You know, historically he fires at an eight
Speaker 1: percent level. You know, here's his training records. Blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. Okay, now beyond that, Okay, that's for
Speaker 1: a liability purposes, you know, for survival purposes, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to We've started teaching officers and agents combat shooting,
Speaker 1: shooting from inside cars, shooting from around cars, moving and shooting,
Speaker 1: you know, shooting from one position and moving to a
Speaker 1: second position, shooting and moving targets, you know, multiple assailants,
Speaker 1: you know, drawing weapons. Uh, you know, you you're you're
Speaker 1: in your car, you have a side arm. How do
Speaker 1: you get to your long weapon? Where do you keep
Speaker 1: your long weapon? You know? Shooting long weapons from inside
Speaker 1: the car, you know, shooting, you know, I mean it
Speaker 1: assists great. I mean, you know we have mock uh
Speaker 1: combat satis. Now like the military. You you kicked down
Speaker 1: the door and then you you go in with with
Speaker 1: a long weapon or a handgun and you assault, you
Speaker 1: engage multiple targets. You know, there's a scenario it's like
Speaker 1: a you know, a bad guy has a hostage. All
Speaker 1: you see, you know, part of his head. You know,
Speaker 1: do you take the shot or not or not? You know,
Speaker 1: well he's got a gun. He's going to either shoot
Speaker 1: you or the hosses. So you have to make a
Speaker 1: quick decision, you know. So it's it's improved, I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, but there's always room for more improvement, you know.
Speaker 1: And I went to a training scenario last week that
Speaker 1: was outstanding. I mean absolutely. You know, car stops, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're more training and car stops, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like, uh, I mean, you get a four
Speaker 1: thousand pown machine, you know, being chased by four or
Speaker 1: five other four four thousand pown machines. I mean that's tough, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, everybody, everybody worries about the liability,
Speaker 1: you know, but beyond that. I mean it's okay when
Speaker 1: the car stopped. I mean, how many how many California
Speaker 1: car chases do we have to watch on TV to
Speaker 1: realize it's like, man, this stuff is dangerous, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: so the FBI stone more cash, car stop training and
Speaker 1: uh shooting you know again eoting from inside cars, shooting
Speaker 1: around cars, you know that type of stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: So um you know, I mean it's improved. Like I said,
Speaker 1: you know, how about for you personally, like on a
Speaker 1: more personal level, how did all this impact you? I
Speaker 1: mean something you said really kind of resonated with me
Speaker 1: when you were talking about how you you had this
Speaker 1: intense fear and then you got over it, like you
Speaker 1: went through those stages very quickly. I was wondering if
Speaker 1: that was a feeling that's stuck with you after the fact. Well,
Speaker 1: yes and no. I mean, like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I I don't want to give you the impression that
Speaker 1: I'm good at two shoes, you know, but I mean
Speaker 1: I I was. I mean I was raised you know, Catholic,
Speaker 1: you know, from a Hispanic family, you know in South Texas.
Speaker 1: You know, my mom used to beat the crap out
Speaker 1: of us, you know, when we didn't go to church.
Speaker 1: But you know we won't go there, you know, so
Speaker 1: you know, but h I mean, you know, I I am,
Speaker 1: I am, you know, religious and spiritual and stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: But when I trained folks, I say, hey, listen, you know,
Speaker 1: do you believe in luck? You know, in a lot
Speaker 1: of hard core stuffs, don't know. I don't believe in luck.
Speaker 1: You know what a lucky you know? Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: I said, okay, you don't believe in luck? I can,
Speaker 1: I can, I can respect it. But let me ask
Speaker 1: you this question, would you rather be lucky or unlucky?
Speaker 1: And that kind of gets him. It's like, well, tell me,
Speaker 1: would you rather be lucky or unlucky? Will I'd rather
Speaker 1: be lucky? I said, okay, that's that's good. Now, if
Speaker 1: you have a choice between living and dying, you know,
Speaker 1: what would you choose living? Of course? You know, And
Speaker 1: and that's what I tell him. I said this, I said,
Speaker 1: this is all about I mean, if you have a choice,
Speaker 1: you know, would you would you do something to help
Speaker 1: you survive or not do it? And there there's so
Speaker 1: much concern nowadays about liability. It's like, screw liability, dude,
Speaker 1: I mean, I want to be around to worry about liability.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be you know, carried you by
Speaker 1: by six people, you know. And I think we've gotten
Speaker 1: so our society has just gotten so out of whack,
Speaker 1: you know that. You know, officers are afraid to respond.
Speaker 1: You know. It's I can, dude, I'm old school, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I see a threat, I'm going to
Speaker 1: address that threat. You know. It's like, yeah, but what
Speaker 1: about this what I dode. You have a legal right
Speaker 1: to defend your life against death or serious bodily harm.
Speaker 1: You have a right to do that for your partner,
Speaker 1: and you have a right to do that for the
Speaker 1: citizens of the United States. Okay, that's the law. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's simple. Now. I don't want to get into this
Speaker 1: politically correct stuff correct stuff, you know. But hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to lose my life, you know, over
Speaker 1: some politically correct crap, you know. And that's what I
Speaker 1: tell officers. I said, by all means, you need to
Speaker 1: follow the law, by all means, you know, but you're
Speaker 1: not paid to get killed. And so I tell them,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, if if that's if that's your contract,
Speaker 1: and that I'd probably go, you know, work at McDonald's
Speaker 1: or something, you know, because you know, nobody is paid
Speaker 1: to get killed. You know. It's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: have an absolute right to defend yourself, you know. So
Speaker 1: as what I'm tell him, I said, hey, you need
Speaker 1: to have the mindset that you are going to survive
Speaker 1: and at the end of the day, you're gonna go
Speaker 1: home to your family, okay, And you know, sometimes not
Speaker 1: sometimes a lot of times or most of the times,
Speaker 1: survival is ugly, you know, when you get when you
Speaker 1: get down and dirty. I mean, you know you I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know better than I do. You know how
Speaker 1: getting down and dirty can can be pretty awful, you know.
Speaker 1: But that's what I tell these guys. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, you can be a righteous man, you can
Speaker 1: be a righteous woman, you know, but when it comes
Speaker 1: time to survival, it can be pretty ugly, you know,
Speaker 1: and you need to get ugly sometimes. And did you
Speaker 1: end up coming back to work and retiring out of
Speaker 1: the FBI eventually? Yes? I did. You know it took me,
Speaker 1: like I said, twenty seven months to be uh to
Speaker 1: come off light duty because my my my arm, you know,
Speaker 1: it took my arm was shattered into like a hundred pieces,
Speaker 1: you know, and they put it together with rods and
Speaker 1: plates and pins and stuff. You know. So it took
Speaker 1: it took about, like I said, seven months for it
Speaker 1: to heal. And uh, after that, you know, I uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to get back in the field,
Speaker 1: and they wanted me to go into management. You know,
Speaker 1: people would would counsel me and saying, hey, man, you
Speaker 1: know you paid your dues, you know, go go go
Speaker 1: into management. You know. It's like, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't be a manager, you know, you know, I
Speaker 1: like to be out in the field, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: talking talking to criminals, you know, talking to you know,
Speaker 1: the bad guys, you know, and and and that's what
Speaker 1: I decided to do. So after after the FBI was
Speaker 1: kind enough to send me the Quantico, the training academy
Speaker 1: for for two years, you know, when I recovered. And
Speaker 1: then after after I recovered, I requested a transfer back
Speaker 1: to Miami and I ended up working undercover narcotics cases
Speaker 1: for probably fifteen years till I retired. And that's unreal.
Speaker 1: I mean that that took the I'm familiar. I was
Speaker 1: familiar with this incident, but not nearly at this level
Speaker 1: of depth and hearing it from you directly has been amazing.
Speaker 1: Like that took grit what you did out there. And uh,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you telling this stories, um with some humor
Speaker 1: mixed in there, because I mean, this is like what
Speaker 1: it is, a dark thing. You know, two agents were lost.
Speaker 1: You had to kill the two perpetrators, although they had
Speaker 1: they had it coming. But I mean you've got to
Speaker 1: laugh sometimes, otherwise you'd be crying, you know. Oh yeah, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And it's been it's been over thirty years now. But
Speaker 1: the thing is that the point that I said, people
Speaker 1: have said, hey, you know, I mean people say, hey,
Speaker 1: you did a heroic thing. You know. It's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you know I showed up. You know, the real heroes
Speaker 1: are Ben and Jerry, Ben Groken, Jerry Doub. You know,
Speaker 1: none of us took a step back, okay, and they
Speaker 1: certainly didn't. You know, they gave you know, they gave
Speaker 1: the full measure. Okay. They gave me enough time to
Speaker 1: regroup and and to be able to come up with
Speaker 1: a land and and try to flank these these two,
Speaker 1: these two killers, you know, and in the end, you know,
Speaker 1: they did give me the time to do that, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was able to to gather up enough strength,
Speaker 1: you know, to to move forward and in the gunfight.
Speaker 1: You know, but you know, it's it's really not about me.
Speaker 1: It's about Ben and Jerry, you know. And like I said,
Speaker 1: the arrest team, not one person took a step back,
Speaker 1: you know. And and that's all you ask. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the guy to the left, the
Speaker 1: guy to the right. You know, you you're doing the
Speaker 1: job for them, you know. And uh, you know, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, you know you do it. You do it
Speaker 1: for the for the public to you know, but you
Speaker 1: know they're the real heroes. There are the true heroes,
Speaker 1: you know. Like I said, I just kind of showed up,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you went back for more after
Speaker 1: after you got back together. Yeah, like I said, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm kind of an odd person, you know. So well
Speaker 1: you can you tell us what you're up to today?
Speaker 1: Are you enjoying retirement or are you still I Once
Speaker 1: I retired, you know, I started working contractor covernment contracting,
Speaker 1: and I worked for a company in Alexandria for about
Speaker 1: four or five years. And then a buddy of mine said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, uh they're looking for police trainers, police advisers,
Speaker 1: you know, to help the the service in the military services.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, could you know, so he he
Speaker 1: gave me a link and I signed up, you know,
Speaker 1: and I ended up doing uh four years in Iraq.
Speaker 1: You know, I was a police advisor in Iraq. The
Speaker 1: pit teams what we call it lips that there was
Speaker 1: a law enforcement professionals. We were going in with with
Speaker 1: the military units to help them do crime scenes and
Speaker 1: site exploitation, you know, that type of stuff. And uh
Speaker 1: and UH I ended up doing four years or of course,
Speaker 1: you know, the end of four years, you know, the
Speaker 1: our our mission, you know, transition, you know, we went
Speaker 1: from when I got there, there were still doing they
Speaker 1: were still still doing a lot of shooting, you know,
Speaker 1: but but towards the end, you know, everything it kind
Speaker 1: of settled down, I guess to uh a reasonable piece,
Speaker 1: you know. And and then I was working at BAGGED
Speaker 1: at headquarters, you know, trying to gather intelligence, you know,
Speaker 1: from from police agencies. And then my last year there
Speaker 1: was with the State Department. You know, they took over
Speaker 1: for the military and that State Department end of the program,
Speaker 1: you know, because it was just I don't know, it
Speaker 1: just got too expensive or something, you know. So and
Speaker 1: then after that, I went to Mexico City for a
Speaker 1: year to help train Mexican cops. And after that, I
Speaker 1: went to Belize, you know, Sunny Belize for a year
Speaker 1: to help train Belizian cops. You know. And now I'm
Speaker 1: back in the States, you know, and I've just you know,
Speaker 1: I've been trying to write my book for since two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, you know, and and you know it
Speaker 1: just I kept hitting uh, you know, roadblocks, and you know,
Speaker 1: people just didn't you know, uh literary agent didn't care.
Speaker 1: People in it's a crap book, and you know, so
Speaker 1: it kind of it kind of you know, discouraged me.
Speaker 1: But then when I got back to the States and say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to do this. I don't
Speaker 1: care if I have to self publish. So, um, I
Speaker 1: self published my book last year, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just you know, been out there doing training conferences and
Speaker 1: and some law enforcement agencies helped me to just come in,
Speaker 1: I mean asked me to just come in and help
Speaker 1: train some of their troops and stuff. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I was just in Boston last week, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: talking to a group of officers, you know, about car
Speaker 1: stops and and you know, lessons learned and that type
Speaker 1: of stuff, which was good because you know, I was
Speaker 1: told by some of the instructors that some of my
Speaker 1: uh like a large percentage of my comments, my my
Speaker 1: lecture was validation for their training. You know. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, well, that's good. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: glad I helped validate validate the training for him, you know.
Speaker 1: So but I said, you know, pretty much, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a trainer, I you know, try to advertise my book,
Speaker 1: um and uh just kind of you know, working out,
Speaker 1: working out of the home, you know, so, well, what's
Speaker 1: the name of your book, and where can people find it?
Speaker 1: The name of the book is FBI Miami Firefight, and
Speaker 1: uh people can find it at Ed Morrell's one word
Speaker 1: dot com and they can order it online, you know,
Speaker 1: right on in the story. Obviously it includes the firefight
Speaker 1: we're talking about today. Is there anything else in it
Speaker 1: that that people should do exactly? Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it has a little bit of my my background,
Speaker 1: you know, childhood background, you know, and then a little
Speaker 1: bit of my military history, but most most of it,
Speaker 1: most of the book is just strictly the case. It's
Speaker 1: really a case study of of the the events leading
Speaker 1: after the shooting, the events during the shooting, and then
Speaker 1: post post shooting, and lesson lessons learned. You know. So, um,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good read. You know, it's more
Speaker 1: of a uh more of a lessons learned, you know,
Speaker 1: not not a training manual. I mean that would be
Speaker 1: you know, that would be outrageous for me to say.
Speaker 1: But it's a it's a historical event, and you know,
Speaker 1: people tell me it's just it's just a plane downright
Speaker 1: good story, you know, so unreal. Add and before we
Speaker 1: let you go, add Um, almost four years to the
Speaker 1: day of the firefight, you were awarded the Medal of Valor.
Speaker 1: You were the first ever agent um can you can
Speaker 1: you talk about that a little bit, like obviously it's
Speaker 1: a huge honor. I just want to hear that our
Speaker 1: own in our own word was it was huge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: weird because the the FBI has always been i don't know,
Speaker 1: not not stingy, but kind of like they know men
Speaker 1: and women you know, serve you know, and most most people,
Speaker 1: you know, they're just regular folks. You know, they're not
Speaker 1: looking for limelight. They're not looking for anything. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: they're not looking for any clamor or anything else. You know.
Speaker 1: So you know, uh, and the Bureau has always lacked
Speaker 1: in in you know, a recognition program. You know, they
Speaker 1: used to give you a letter of you know, appreciation.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, we appreciate, we appreciate your your service.
Speaker 1: You know, we appreciate your getting a shot to pieces
Speaker 1: have a nice day, you know, not quite that bad,
Speaker 1: but you know what I'm saying. And then some some
Speaker 1: folks are saying, hey, you know what the some other
Speaker 1: agencies around the country have uh medals, you know, for
Speaker 1: for their officers, you know, but officers were uniforms, you know,
Speaker 1: so like the military, you know, they can wear their
Speaker 1: medals on their uniform you know. So that's why most
Speaker 1: civilian you know, non uniform agencies. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to you know, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to wear a metal you know. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: unless you're like a Russians are you know, you were
Speaker 1: you wear your medals on your t. So, but someone
Speaker 1: came up with the idea of in like in seven
Speaker 1: say hey, you know what, we got to have a
Speaker 1: medals program, you know, and then the medal uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm totally oblivious that I don't have any idea
Speaker 1: this is going on, you know, but they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to recognize that, you know, because
Speaker 1: of the good work he did, you know, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. Then one day I get a call,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking, hey, you know, you've been selected to
Speaker 1: for the what's the word I'm looking for here? Help me,
Speaker 1: like the kickoff the program inaugural uh, inauguration of the
Speaker 1: medals program. So I was the first recipient of any
Speaker 1: medal whatsoever that the FBI gave and I was the
Speaker 1: first recipient of the medal of medal of valor. And
Speaker 1: there was a huge, huge honor a minute because, like
Speaker 1: I said, I had no clue. They just you know
Speaker 1: called me not to find me on the phone, saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: we'd like you f f in DC, you know, and
Speaker 1: with you and your wife you know, and come up here.
Speaker 1: And uh, I said, what the heck? You know, I
Speaker 1: show up And it was a huge deal. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like all the past directors, you know,
Speaker 1: the Attorney General. They had they had a military band,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was out on the in the
Speaker 1: courtyard of the FBI building. It's like I looked around,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean because they had me inside, you know,
Speaker 1: and and a little uh, I guess you'd call it
Speaker 1: the green room or something, you know, waiting, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I went outside that there must have been
Speaker 1: like a thousand people there. It's like wow, you know,
Speaker 1: so uh and and it was a big deal, you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, the director at the time, Williams. Sessions,
Speaker 1: you know, but you know, it comes out, reads the
Speaker 1: citation and then put the metal around my neck. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like wow, you know, I felt I really felt
Speaker 1: like like one of the militaries ours in Russia, you know,
Speaker 1: had the medal on my neck. I'm wearing a suit,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, so it was kind of cool,
Speaker 1: It really was, you know. Plus it was a great
Speaker 1: honor though. I mean, it's like, you know, and then
Speaker 1: you know, they said, well, you know the standard for
Speaker 1: for all medals of honor, medals of Valley will be
Speaker 1: Admillis is uh you know, and you know so that
Speaker 1: that's pretty tough, you know, so uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: think they're probably lowered the standards a little bit because
Speaker 1: it was just like almost pretty near impossible, well incredibly
Speaker 1: well deserved obviously without saying well, thanks guys, you know,
Speaker 1: but that's that's pretty much you know, how the program started,
Speaker 1: you know, and again it was it was a great,
Speaker 1: great honor. You know, it's an incredible ad um Wow. Man,
Speaker 1: I just want to say thank you so much for
Speaker 1: sharing your story with us. No thanks, guys, I mean
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the opportunity to talk, you know, to
Speaker 1: you guys and hopefully your audience. You know, we'll get
Speaker 1: something out of it, you know, so they most certainly will.
Speaker 1: I know that well, I know that will. And by
Speaker 1: the way, you know, Jack, you know, I really appreciate
Speaker 1: the your service, you know, to the country. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, thank you for your service. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean, a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, you know, our society today,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't think the military folks enough, you know,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, I mean, I've served up in overseas,
Speaker 1: you know, and I've seen seen some things, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like we don't thank you enough. Man, And
Speaker 1: likewise said. I mean you served long and hard as
Speaker 1: a law enforcement officer, including you know, a few years
Speaker 1: over in Iraq. Um. Yeah, you know, and and as
Speaker 1: you said, you had the opportunity to go and ride
Speaker 1: a desk if you wanted it. You didn't have to
Speaker 1: be h. Yeah, well it's just not my I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just not my style. And it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to sound dramatic, but I'm
Speaker 1: a man of actually you know, I can't sit on
Speaker 1: my butt. You know, I'm sitting on my butt now.
Speaker 1: But now that I'm retired, you know, but I'm back then,
Speaker 1: no way, Well the well learned. Yeah, thank you guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. I really appreciate your time, you know, and
Speaker 1: again thanks thanks for us to you and I appreciate
Speaker 1: the opportunity. Thank you. Here's a great job. This was
Speaker 1: very insightful, great to listen to. Okay, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: Take care bye. I mean what a story. Tough act
Speaker 1: to follow. Uh sure, I don't even know if there
Speaker 1: is an act of fault there. Um that was ed Morillis.
Speaker 1: Obviously you just listened to the whole thing. Uh. Three
Speaker 1: quick points. I wanted to talk about the the interview.
Speaker 1: First Off, it was very early. He would call it hunting, um,
Speaker 1: like man hunting, you would call it hunting. I thought
Speaker 1: that was just such a like a that was a
Speaker 1: badass thing to do. He's like, yeah, we're hunting these
Speaker 1: these cult like perpetrators. That is right after bad. I
Speaker 1: was like, this guy means business. You talked about hunting humans,
Speaker 1: like not even like Deadliest Games, just oh yeah, like
Speaker 1: we weren't. We weren't like a following. We were hunting him.
Speaker 1: It was like, okay, trying to hunt down some armed,
Speaker 1: dangerous suspects Like that was good. Secondly, I knew he
Speaker 1: had flair his um, his what was He'd be like,
Speaker 1: he would tell the story and he goes what And
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, this guy, he's got a
Speaker 1: flair for storytelling. I knew that was gonna be enjoyable. Um.
Speaker 1: And Thirdly, you could hear like the obviously the story
Speaker 1: was incredible in its own right. Traumatic amnesia. I I
Speaker 1: could tell that that caught your eye a little bit,
Speaker 1: just in the sense of obviously most civilians hopefully I've
Speaker 1: never had to deal with that, but being in the
Speaker 1: military law enforcement, if God forbid you don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with it, but if you are, it's almost reactionary.
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I mean, I can't put myself
Speaker 1: in those shoes, but I could just I saw that
Speaker 1: you reacted to it and him describing me like he
Speaker 1: was like, I think this is what happened. People told
Speaker 1: me this is what happened. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest, I don't really know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: to my not knowledge, uh into my recollection, which is
Speaker 1: a stupid thing to say. Since we're talking about amnesia.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever had that experience, but I've
Speaker 1: read about it, and yeah, the human body and mind
Speaker 1: at a certain point will shut down, which is if
Speaker 1: you've ever um, I mean, if you cover things like
Speaker 1: war crimes and you study, uh this kind of pretty
Speaker 1: dark stuff. But um, like, for instance, women who were
Speaker 1: raped may experience traumatic amnesia. Like it's it's it is
Speaker 1: a known psycho, it's a real nomina. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: real thing. And uh and yes, like soldiers in combat
Speaker 1: of experienced it. I I remember one story that I
Speaker 1: had a guy I worked with tell me he was
Speaker 1: in the invasion of Iraq with special forces, and he
Speaker 1: told me the story about how they were driving in
Speaker 1: a convoy and um, they accidentally drove right by like
Speaker 1: an entire battalion of Iraqi troops. They didn't know we're there, Okay,
Speaker 1: so immediately they get into a huge firefight. And he
Speaker 1: said that after they drove through this this area and
Speaker 1: this huge firefight, and and he he remember, he recalls
Speaker 1: he was shooting his his rifle out the window. But
Speaker 1: after they cleared through the area, he said, I looked
Speaker 1: down and I saw like two or three expended magazines
Speaker 1: in between my feet. And he's like, I don't remember reload. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just going through your because that's how you were trained,
Speaker 1: almost like blackout, and it's just muscle memory. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: you're in this moment. Your your heartbeat goes through the roof,
Speaker 1: your adrenaline goes through the roof. Um. But he he
Speaker 1: had been well trained, and he did everything he was
Speaker 1: supposed to do, but he didn't specifically recall taking the
Speaker 1: magazine out of the magazine pauch, dropping the magazine from
Speaker 1: his rifle, putting the magazine into the rifle, dropping the bolt,
Speaker 1: And he didn't remember that for several magazine changes. He
Speaker 1: firefight that's the amnesia. Yeah, it's that's just something that
Speaker 1: you don't experience in real life. But I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: well obviously that's real life, but like normal everyday life
Speaker 1: that that's just something when hearing hearing and talk about
Speaker 1: it and then hearing your story just now that it
Speaker 1: really puts as you said, the human body is just
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating machine as Ed called it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really gives you appreciation for like the training you said,
Speaker 1: he you know, you know what you're doing, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, your body it's almost the uh, the
Speaker 1: lights around but nobody's home and you're just kind of
Speaker 1: reacting right right, it can become that. I mean, you
Speaker 1: hope it doesn't turn into but yeah, in combat when
Speaker 1: you're that yeah, and I mean it obviously went through
Speaker 1: like it just takes over, like you know, Okay, these
Speaker 1: guys are down, like I gotta go help my guys.
Speaker 1: Have a great job by you by asking how he
Speaker 1: how he shucked the shotgun, I was, I'm sitting there,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like he describes his arms just dangling and
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, well what are you doing, buddy.
Speaker 1: It's just I pictured him like terminator just one hand
Speaker 1: in it, like uh, like Linda Hamilton's at least. I
Speaker 1: mean this, that whole story was just incredible because he
Speaker 1: was a grievous, grievously injured UM and stayed in the
Speaker 1: fight and he was still yeah, shocking rounds into the shotgun, firing,
Speaker 1: doing it again again again, and then actually like like
Speaker 1: passing out and he gets up and shuffles over to
Speaker 1: the car firing his service revolver. It's like, holy sh it,
Speaker 1: like this guy is hardcore. From beginning to end, that
Speaker 1: was just I mean, we we had known what this
Speaker 1: conversation was leading to, but just hearing and for it
Speaker 1: to only take from probably the time they recognized the
Speaker 1: vehicle for four minutes, five five minutes, like tops, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: You can go through a drive through fast, like in
Speaker 1: the the amount of the time it took and how
Speaker 1: he was saying he got out of his vehicle was
Speaker 1: running towards where the firefight was fifty yards I think
Speaker 1: he said, and that that's that's a long movement to
Speaker 1: make in a firefight. Half half a football field. Um,
Speaker 1: And he says the next thing, I remember, I'm staring
Speaker 1: up at the sky, which and he's like I don't
Speaker 1: know how I got there, Yeah, because your forums blasted.
Speaker 1: But um, but you know he's given a t is straight,
Speaker 1: you know, which I appreciate you and you acknowledge that
Speaker 1: like you need to interject humor otherwise you know, well
Speaker 1: that that as well. Yeah, um but he I mean,
Speaker 1: that was an incredible story and and the true story,
Speaker 1: like Hollywood couldn't script something like that. That was just
Speaker 1: five minutes long from beginning to end, and it was
Speaker 1: jam packed. And he and thirty what was it eighty
Speaker 1: six or thirty two, thirty three years later, thirty four,
Speaker 1: I don't even know, thirty four years later, and he
Speaker 1: still remembers it as if it was yesterday. And yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, but definitely not. But just every detail of
Speaker 1: it was yeah, and well, you know what it comes
Speaker 1: down to. And one of the things that I people
Speaker 1: get out of listening to these some of these podcast
Speaker 1: interviews and stuff is that like America is just lucky
Speaker 1: to have these people without a doubt, you know that
Speaker 1: that you know these people are out there, uh, and
Speaker 1: that they're on our side. Um, you know, Ed was
Speaker 1: actually he was another listener recommendation. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: I was vaguely familiar with the you know, the Miami
Speaker 1: FBI shootout, UM, because it's pretty famous or infamous if
Speaker 1: you will. UM, but I never would have thought that
Speaker 1: we'd be able to get ed on the show. Um,
Speaker 1: but we he was referred to us, and you know,
Speaker 1: introductions were made a great job about you guys. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for that. UM. Hopefully you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it as much as we did. I don't see
Speaker 1: how you could not. That was incredible. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: listeners are not going it out of the park with
Speaker 1: these recommendations lately. UM, I'm glad. I'm glad I asked them,
Speaker 1: you know, for sure, Like I think the last definitely,
Speaker 1: Cody was a recommendation. I think, UM, trying to think
Speaker 1: the next one will be. So there's a tease. UM, No,
Speaker 1: just the listeners phenomenal. You get. You sent me the
Speaker 1: list you were like, hey, these guys suggested I don't
Speaker 1: know whatever, it was twelve people, and you know, we've
Speaker 1: been reaching out and we've got on a handful of
Speaker 1: them so far, and every one of them has been
Speaker 1: a home run. I like, I mean, I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: otherwise anyway, But no, they truly they that would just
Speaker 1: be bad business on my end. But they truly have
Speaker 1: been incredible interviews. I mean, and we talked about this
Speaker 1: every time after every interview, is that it's such an
Speaker 1: individual story with the overall umbrella, like you know, these
Speaker 1: people are heroes and I we had talked about it
Speaker 1: at the end of last episode, but I knew Ed
Speaker 1: was gonna do this when we asked him about the
Speaker 1: Middle valor and he was like, you know, I was
Speaker 1: just doing much and I knew he was gonna do it,
Speaker 1: like I'm just doing my job. And it's like he
Speaker 1: did a little bit more than just doing his job, right, Like, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: like any other normal humans, you know, got a chicken
Speaker 1: wing for an arm and and they're you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not loading shotguns. I'm just I'm high under
Speaker 1: a car and calling it up. Yeah, he deserved it.
Speaker 1: He went above and beyond that day. So honestly, I
Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming on that was that
Speaker 1: was incredible. Hopefully the listeners you guys should enjoy it
Speaker 1: as much as as Jack and I did. Um also
Speaker 1: be sure to check out Create Club. It's a club
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Speaker 1: as a reminder to you, the listener, now is the
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Speaker 1: of shows. As always, keep up with us at soft
Speaker 1: Rep Radio as well. With that, I don't think much
Speaker 1: needs to be said that ed was very lengthy. I
Speaker 1: was I didn't know I couldn't gauge through email. You
Speaker 1: can I usually have a good feel of like, all right,
Speaker 1: this guy's gonna be like Cody. I knew was gonna
Speaker 1: be entertaining. Ed was very yes, so I'd love to
Speaker 1: come on. Thank you for the opportunity. So I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, he might be buttoned up, he was anything,
Speaker 1: but he he let loose right from the get go,
Speaker 1: which we greatly. Yeah, it's his story, so he knows
Speaker 1: it quite well and he would hope so yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's great that you know here directly
Speaker 1: from the source, oh, without question. But yeah, there's not
Speaker 1: much much I in say to follow onto that wild shootout.
Speaker 1: In my head is everything like HiT's all the boxes,
Speaker 1: you know, everything you wanted to be. The good guys
Speaker 1: win in the end. Well, there are two agents lost.
Speaker 1: That it's not everything but tragic, but all all things considered,
Speaker 1: outside of there, yeah, the two what was it? Ben
Speaker 1: and Jerry, Which it's hard not like he said that,
Speaker 1: and obviously that being the large man I am you
Speaker 1: think ice cream, but it's like, uh so sorry for
Speaker 1: their loss obviously four years later. Um, but outside of that, Ed,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on. That was awesome. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check us out, subscribe, rate review, do the whole nine. Uh.
Speaker 1: Leave us messages on Instagram, Twitter, email the show. If
Speaker 1: you got any questions, we're happy to throw them out there.
Speaker 1: So I hope you guys enjoyed this one and we
Speaker 1: will see you again Tuesday. Next time. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to self Rep Radio. New episodes up every Wednesday and Friday.
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Speaker 1: Radio