August 17, 2020 • 32 mins
This is the story of Leigh Ritch’s escape. It begins with his friends, Tommy Lee and Heather Locklear, visiting the Cayman Islands on their honeymoon. They start fighting, make a ruckus, and Leigh eventually takes them to Jamaica. From there, Leigh hopes to flee to Portugal, but the FBI has something else in mind. Meanwhile, back in Detroit, Ned helps lead a raid on Mike Vogel’s mansion.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, previously on deep cover. By the late spring of
nineteen eighty five, Ned Timmins was deep into his investigation
of the drug smugglers. One of the three major players,
the Gentleman Smuggler, was now behind bars, but Ned was
(00:38):
still on a mission to get Mike Vogel, the grocery guy.
I had it in such a way, did I really
control the marijuana industry in Michigan. His other target was
Lee Rich mister beach club. I'm the boss, Okay. I
called the shots. If they wanted to load, or if
I was going to load something, I could secure the boat,
(01:00):
playing whatever. But for now Ned couldn't do much about
the case because in the fall of that year, his
cover was blown and there'd been a threat on his life.
So the FBI sent Ned and his wife Kathy off
to northern Michigan to hide together. They had to sit
quietly and wait it out. This is not any kind
(01:22):
of a life that I want to lead. This isn't
what any of us signed up for. For Kathy Timmins,
going into hiding wasn't just scary. She had her own work,
her own career at the FBI that she now had
to put on hold. She was tired of Ned's undercover
(01:43):
persona Ed Thomas, messing everything up. Oh. I was very angry.
I was very upset. I was scared, you know. And
then I just had to let it be, let it go,
just be up there and sit and wait to make
matters worse. She didn't feel well. I thought I was
sick or something, or maybe just really really tired, because
(02:03):
I just kept falling asleep. And then I started feeling
the queasiness and everything, and I thought, oh, maybe I
got pregnant. After being in hiding for about three weeks,
the FBI calls and tells Nedd and Kathy the coast
is clear. They had caught the bikers who had planned
to kill Ned. So Ned and Cathy come out of hiding.
They go home. Kathy, who's still not feeling well, visits
(02:25):
the doctor and learns she is pregnant. In a way,
the timing wasn't ideal. Their lives had just been turned
upside down, and yet Kathy took this as a sign
like God meant it to be, because we had been
married for how many years by then, and I had
never gotten pregnant, and I never did anything not to
(02:46):
get pregnant. So I just thought, oh, okay. You know
I'm Catholic. You know, it's like, okay, this is meant
to be. Now. All she had to do was tell Ned.
I thought that he would be thrilled and that this
would really help to bring a closure to all of
this craziness with this undercover work. I asked, Ned, what
(03:10):
were your thoughts about having kids? Given the nature of
your work, it wasn't time. Did you think you ever
wanted to have kids? You know, I really didn't give
it much thought, you know, I was just consumed by
work and what we were doing. So when you get
back from this trip to northern Michigan and she's like,
(03:32):
I'm pregnant, what is your reaction? Well, yeah, it's just well,
I guess we're gonna roll with it. You know. I'm
Jake Halper and this is Deep Cover Episode seven. The
(03:54):
honeymoon is over. After he comes out of hiding, Ned
(04:25):
is back working on his case against Lee rich Mister
Beach Club, but for the time being, there was no
easy way for Ned or the FBI to apprehend Lee.
Extraditions from the Caymans were rare, plus, Ned says down
on the Caymans. Lee was kind of a robin Hood figure,
a beloved outlaw. Lee was the robin Hood who had
(04:48):
taken care of all the bankers and all the people
on the island and buried friends and relatives and paid
for everybody's expenses. He had a big heart, and he
took care of a lot of people, and it would
have been probably impossible to get him extradited out of there.
So on the one hand, Ned was frustrated that he
(05:09):
couldn't apprehend Lee, but he also knew that Lee was
kind of trapped, and he knew this because of a
conversation that they'd had when they were in the Caymans together.
We had always talked alone a lot, and I just
turned him one day. We're probably having a drink or something.
I said, Lee, why don't you get the hell out
of us? Just quit And Lee said I can't. They'll
(05:33):
kill me. And I believe he meant the Columbians would
kill him. Lee was on the hook for a million
pounds of marijuana that he'd ordered from the Colombians. And that,
by the way, is he shitload of marijuana. Look, this
isn't an exact science, but I talked to was a
(05:55):
smuggler who once saw this much weed down in Colombia
and he described it as a quote fucking mountain end quote.
He actually built a small fort up on top of
it and slept there. So you get the idea. Lee
was under pressure to move that much marijuana. And remember
(06:16):
Lee's go to guy, Stephen Kaylish, the Gentleman's smuggler. He
was in custody at this point, so Lee pushed ahead
without his star smuggler, tried to move at least some
of it. He arranged for a tug boat to to
a barge with one hundred and sixty five thousand pounds
of pot on it up to Virginia. The boat was
intercepted by the US Coastguard and the cargo was confiscated.
(06:40):
It was a total disaster. It's all scrapped. It was done.
You know, at this point, Lee is finally feeling ready
to just get out of the business. You know, I
was just I was tired of it. I didn't need it,
And I blame a lot of that on myself for
not being strong enough to tell people I don't want
to do this, I'm done. It was a moment of
(07:04):
reckoning for Lee. Remember from the very start. Lie says
he'd gotten into the marijuana business so he could chill
with his buddies, non violent beach guys, you know, lived
on the beach to surf and fish and never hurt anybody. Okay.
Even as his business grew and he became really wealthy,
(07:27):
this was still his credo. He had the yacht which
the queen borrowed, and the beach club, but the funny
parrot and the cool house that rock stars came to visit.
It had been fun for a long time until suddenly,
well it really wasn't anymore. And then, as if this
(07:48):
weren't already perfectly clear, Alvin Connor came knocking. I know
Lee rich. For years Alvin was the chief Inspector of
narcotics for the Cayman Island Police Force back in the eighties.
Were used to search all his private plea and you
come in eer week two three time were all these girls?
(08:11):
Pretty girls used to bring. Alvin says he had suspected
for a while that Lee might be involved in the
drug trade. Nothing solid, just chatter, which isn't surprising this
was a small island. Inevitably people talked. Alvin says, he
searched Lee's private plane and number of times, but never
found any drugs. But then one day in January of
(08:34):
nineteen eighty six, about six months after Ned had left
the island, Alvin says he got a tip which led
him to believe that Lee might have some drugs at
his house. This was all that Alvin needed, just a lead,
a whiff of something, because on the island, Alvin had
a reputation for chasing assent. If can't you see me
(08:57):
come in to see the dog is here? You called
me the dog? Wait? Why do they call you the dog?
Mar Juanna, I smell it. They say that I smell it.
If day I'm gonna find it. They called me the
dog to see the dog? Come, no, and the dog.
He was coming for Lee. He didn't know about Ned
(09:19):
Timmins or the FBI investigation. He just wanted to bust
Lee rich. So he heads over to Lee's house. I say,
we're here to look for drogs. Alvin says. He searches
the room and finds about an ounce of cocaine. He
arrestedly on the spot for drug possession. Lee says the
(09:41):
whole thing was a setup. They planted a two or
three grams or coke in my house and came in
and raided the house. My mother's in the house, and
I think I had about eight people staying in the
house at that time. So it was a big scene
when they took Lee away in handcuffs. The whole thing
was upsetting for Lee, in part because his mom was there.
(10:03):
She started making a fuss, and Alvin confronted her. I say,
if I'll shut your mouth, I rescue you and jadge
rob structing police officer saw. I rescue you and charge
you and charge you for the school keen too. The
message to Lee seemed to be clear, I'm not afraid
of you. I'll mess with your mom if need be.
(10:31):
Alvin took Lee down to the police station, booked him,
locked him up, but soon Lee got out on bail
around five thousand dollars. That's the amount that Alvin recalls anyway,
which was nothing to Lee. Yeah, you were like a king,
big shot, like a big shot, and nobody could touch him.
He tells Lee, if the judge you won't let you
(10:53):
go down, he based that boy, gonna do my job
for Lee. The biggest fallout from all of this was
that he had to give up his passport. The police
claimed that he was a flight risk, so they insisted
that he'd leave his passport with them at the station,
so he'd have to go and ask for a back
if you ever wanted to leave the island. Lee was
(11:13):
beginning to feel trapped. Around the same time, he was
hanging out at a local bar on Grand Cayman when
he bumps into a guy he knows who works for
Scotland Yard. Lee buys him a drink and he goes rich.
He goes, I'm I'm gonna tell you something. Goes. Don't
take your boat out past twelve miles, don't go out
on the bank fish, and don't leave the island. They're
(11:37):
trying to get you on a coastguard cutter or something
off a Cayman, he said. And I'm just telling you
that because you're a decent guy. It seemed like the
walls were really closing in on Lee. Now his business partner,
the gentleman smuggler, was in jail and quite possibly talking
to US authorities. The dog was pursuing him on the island,
(11:58):
and now the Scotland Yard guy was telling him don't
take your boat too far off shore. So I knew
then from what he told me that night, They're really
onto my ass. Okay, and I started making arrangements. I
was going to leave, and I was going to Europe,
to Portugal. Actually, Lee's grandfather was Portuguese, and he figured
(12:21):
if he could get there, he might use that familial
connection to get his status as a resident. He thought
he'd be safe there. So in May of nineteen eighty six,
a full year after Ned first visited Lee in the Caymans,
Lee got ready to make his escape, and then this
chance would have it, Lee got a visit from a
friend which derailed everything. And that friend was Tommy Lee Base,
(12:49):
you know, from Motley Crue. Lee Rich was about to
flee the Cayman Islands, but he had a scheduling conflict.
(13:11):
A buddy was coming to town, Tommy Lee Basse, founding
member of the band Motley Crue. In the mid nineteen eighties,
Tommy Lee and his bandmate Nicki six were the bad
boys at the heavy metal world. I remember you feel
for the last time you motherfucker's liked the party? Is
that true? Well, if you're a perverse fuck yeah, I
(13:38):
fucking knew it. I just knew it. Tommy Lee and
his bandmates had come to visit the Caymans a few
times before. Turns out the band's manager, Doc McGee, was
one of Lee's investors. They all got along famously. Tommy
even wrote about the first time that he'd met Lee
in Motley Crue's memoir The Dirt. Here's a clip from
(13:59):
the audio book and just a heads up. For some reason,
the narrator calls Lee Leigh. Anyway, Lay walked into the
doc's rental house with a Natashak case. The first words
we spoke to him were gimme, gimme, gimme, because we
knew what was in that fucking attache case. Mountains of
white powder to stuff up our noses. Lay opened the
(14:20):
case and gave us a little rock. In the memoir,
Lee then shuts his briefcase, locks it, winks and tells
them if they can open the combination lock, Tommy can
have the rest of it. We were so coked out
that we actually thought we were coming up with every
single permutation of three numbers. Finally, I went into the kitchen,
(14:41):
grabbed a butcher knife and cut the top of lace
thousand dollars leather briefcase, glittering inside like white gold were
fucking dozens of huge plastic bags filled with coke. So
there you have it. An epic drug dealer, an epic
rock star who loved drugs. It was a friendship made
in heaven. Tommy wasn't traveling to the Caymans alone. He
(15:07):
was coming with the latest love of his life life,
the actress Heather Locklear. She'd started in a few hit
TV shows like Dynasty and t J. Hooker, where she
played a rookie cop who once even goes under cover
herself as a call girl. Yeah, hook where are she
supposed to wear? Her water and my trick bag? An
alcol girl never parts with her trick bag. Don't get
(15:28):
any ideas about helping me on with it. It's fine,
just where it is. Heather and Tommy. They'd met backstage
in an Ario Speedwagon concert. Their relationship would become fodder
for e Hollywood. The bad boy of rock had found
his princess. Tommy was now living the life he had famed,
fortune and love. The happy couple left for a three
week honeymoon in the Cayman Islands. Tommy was coming to
(15:51):
visit to spend his honeymoon on the Cayman Islands, seeing
his good buddy, Lee, the guy with the magic suitcase.
Listall remembers just how excited Tommy was heaves head over
heels on this girl. He said, I really want to
come back here and spend my honey, and I said,
don't worry, I'll take care of you. You know, Lee
(16:12):
could have told him, no, the timing's bad, man, My
drug empire is falling apart. I may soon be imprisoned.
But that was just not mister Beach Club's style. His
buddy was coming to town, so his escape plan to
Portugal would just have to wait. Lee arrange for a
nice condo on the beach for Tommy and Heather, and
(16:33):
I got a call the next day after leaving him
there that night from the manager of the condo asked
me to remove them from the property, both of them,
because they were up all night running up and down
in the parking out high on whatever. Not a huge surprise.
From the Motley Crewe memoir, you get a sense for
how Tommy partied. Gimme, gimme, gimme, so Lee, he moves
(16:56):
the couple to another condo, but the situation doesn't get
any better. It was one big headache for Lee. So
they decide, let's go to Jamaica. It'll be better over there.
Lee books them some villas, makes all the arrangements, and
he decides that this trip to Jamaica will be the
(17:16):
perfect excuse to run for it. So he goes to
the Cayman Police and somehow or another manages to get
his passport back. Lee says he's just flying with some
friends to Jamaica for a mini vacation, but his real
plan is to keep going to London and then onto Portugal.
So he packs a briefcase with some pocket money thirty
(17:36):
thousand in cash, and boards a plane with Tommy and
Heather from Montego Bay, Jamaica. That night, when we flew
to Mobay. When I come off the airplane, one of
the girls from the counter, does she call me by
my name? She goes Lee. I looked at her two
(17:57):
agents waiting on you inside the customs area. There two
agents and like that, Lee understood had to be the FEDS.
Somehow they'd been tipped off. What Lee didn't know at
the time was that the FBI had a source who
knew about his trip and ratted him out, and now
here he was on the ground at the Montego Bay Airport,
(18:20):
walking right into a trap. Here's Tommy's got up one
of these boomboxes. Okay, up on his shoulder, and he's
jagging at around holler and he's dragging this Heather with him. Okay,
going ahead of me, and so I went behind him,
went into customs, and sure enough those agents came up
(18:43):
to me. Tommy made us started confronting him too. You know, hey,
what he hadn't done anything, you know, and so they've
threatened to arrest him, and that was the end of that.
Tommy and Heather went one way, and the two FBI
agents escorted Lee out of the airport and into a
car where a Jamaican police officer was waiting for them.
(19:09):
They then all head to the hotel where the FBI
agents were staying so they could grab their stuff. We
go to the hotel and the two agents get out
of the car and we're sitting in the parking lot.
I'm in there with this cop and the cop that
was in the front seat driving us. He was one
of the cops I used to pay off. And I said, listen,
(19:31):
you don't you remember who I am? You know who
I am? So he goes I can't help you, Rich,
I said, I'll never forget it. So you know, I
was kind of threatening him, and I said, all I
gotta do is let me run. He goes, I can't
do it, so he wouldn't let me out, and that
was it. The two FBI agents got back in the car.
They drove to Kingston and caught the next flight back
(19:53):
to the US with Lee in custody. In Motley Crue's memoir,
Tommy Lee Base takes full responsibility for all of this,
saying that he and Heather caused the downfall of one
of the country's biggest drug smugglers, all because they didn't
want to go to Maka alone. Tommy writes, Heather and
I felt terrible. We had no one to show us
(20:14):
around Jamaica. Now that he was in federal custody, Lee
Rich began to mull over where exactly he'd gone wrong,
and he recalled something that his business partner, Mike Vogel,
the grocery guy, had told him. Mike was the distributor
who ran the enormous drug warehouse back in Detroit, and
(20:37):
Lie says Mike he had never really liked Tommy and
Heather thought they were trouble. Lee remembers him saying repeatedly,
stay away from those people. They're going to be your downfall.
Mike Vogel was right, in fact, more right than he knew.
In a way, Tommy and Heather would also be his downfall,
(20:58):
because at the very moment that Lee was being apprehended
in Jamaica, there was another operation targeting Mike Vogel back
in Detroit. When we come back after the break, Ned
Timmins and the FBI make their move on the grocery guy.
(21:29):
Back in Michigan, Ned was itching to arrest Mike Vogel.
The idea was to get both of these guys, Lee
and then Mike, almost at the exact same time, so
neither one of them would tip off the other. Everything
had to be perfectly synchronized this moment, it was the
culmination of almost three years of work on Ned's part.
(21:52):
It had been an epic journey, taking him from a
roadside biker bar in Detroit all the way to the
glitzie beaches of the Caymans. And during this time Ned's
case had steadily grown, merging with other investigations in North Carolina, Louisiana,
and Florida. Other agencies had gotten involved too, like the
d EA, the IRS, the Coastguard, US Customs, and a
(22:15):
slew of state and county investigators. Together, the authorities had
built a strong case against the smugglers, and throughout this
time Ned had kept pretty close tabs on Mike Vogel,
and apparently Mike had picked up on this. That's what
he told me. Anyway, Mike boasted to me that he
had sources within the FBI. He added rather cryptically that
(22:39):
he knew all about Ned. Did I sit down have
lunch or dinner with him? Now? Okay, I just I
was aware of them. I was very aware of them.
I remembin the day that Ned Timmins he ever got
involved with me, I wish I had never heard my name.
(23:01):
So on May twenty third, nineteen eighty six, the same
day League gets arrested, Ned Timmins is staked out at
Mike Vogel's house in Milford. We had the whole swat
team out there laying in Vogle's place all night long
waiting for word that they had Lee and custody. And
once we got word that they had Lee in custody,
then we had Vogle's house, his Ned and his FBI
(23:24):
team are getting ready, something really weird happens. According to NED,
a black panther starts stalking the woods. A black panther
in Michigan. Okay, so there was some sightings of it,
and we're in the swat team moonlightning. We've been laying
out there all night, night vision everything, and this panther
(23:47):
had been released. People had seen it and reported it.
You know, that there's a black panther run around out
here and there some cattle had been killed. And so
we're all laying out there talking on our radios and
you know, waiting for word to hit the house. And
this panther was screaming like this in the night, in
the moonlight, and you know, you know what's out there someplace,
(24:12):
and you're laying in the grass and it was a
bit nerve wracking. Okay, So I was skeptical about this story.
Seemed like another NED tail that would be well impossible
to fact jack and then I found an article from
the Time dispatched from the town where Mike Vogel lived,
(24:32):
confirming that yes, there had been over thirty sightings of
this large predatory cat. Anyway, NED was focused on getting
the job done Meanwhile, Mike is in his house asleep
next to his wife Julie. I had drive away suns,
you know, put you know if anybody's coming on your property. Okay,
(24:53):
and I always beep beep, beep, beep beep. Julie looked
at me and said, what was that? Such of the
fetche I could tell you know, you don't have twenty
beeps going off for one car. It was a whole
group of them that came. They had I RS guys,
I had FBI guys and a few DA guys and
(25:15):
Michigan State Police and of course Ned Timmins was there too.
And in this moment when Ned Timmins g Man shows
up to arrest Mike Vogel, master criminal, it isn't some
kind of tense standoff. They don't stare each other down
or cuss each other out. Mike says that Ned was
pretty friendly, cordial, that was the word he used, like
(25:38):
two boxers after a fight. All the swagger gone and
now just the handshake. He allowed me to go ahead
and take a shower and say goodbye to my wife
and kids. Yeah, we're going to prison. Mike Vogel was
indicted in federal court in Detroit. The indictment alleged that
(26:00):
he and a fellow smugglers were responsible for importing at
least five hundred and sixty six thousand pounds of marijuana.
Investing its estimated that over the years they smuggled as
much as one billion dollars worth of drugs into the US.
Vogel played guilty That same year, he was stripped of
his wealth forfeiting, among other things, a boat, five cars,
(26:24):
and four homes in Michigan. He was sentenced to twenty
five years in prison. Lee was arrested that Vogel was arrested,
and it became was all on the paper and the
whole lay of everything, and the story made big headlines actually,
and for a moment Ned was kind of famous. An
article in the Detroit Free Press chronicled Ned's adventures. An
(26:47):
anonymous source told the paper that Ned quote made the
case end quote. The source went on to say, I've
seen a lot of undercover agents, but this guy special.
He's got ice in his veins, and he's a tough cookie,
one of the new breed. He's a high caliber agent
who has that unique ability to be able to understand
(27:08):
and worked with the people. He's been sent undercover to investigate.
For Ned, it was vindication. He had spent the better
part of three years playing the role of his alter ego.
In a way, he'd built Ed Thomas from the ground up.
His backstory, his demeanor, his friendships, his hard drinking, hardy
riding lifestyle, and Ed Thomas had served his purpose. It
(27:31):
was as if all the risks that Ned had taken,
all the close calls, all the paranoia, all the boundaries
he'd pushed somehow or another, it had all worked out.
So maybe it was finally time to be done with
undercover work. After all, Ned had a big win under
(27:52):
his belt. Plus, at almost the exact same time of
these events, in May of nineteen eighty six, there was
other big news. Ned's son was born, and Ned the
action craving, sometimes reckless, hardy riding undercover guy. He of
his son, Cathy says that the baby was attached to
(28:12):
him at the hip. Oh yeah, no, they were like
freaking frac I mean, as soon as he came in
the door, he'd picked him up. I don't think he
would put him down. Just about every picture I have
he had this shark that he caught while we were
on our honeymoon down in the Keys, and here's this
(28:35):
hammerhead shark and he he has it installed in the
den of our home. And so he'd put the baby
up there, up on top of the shark, like as
if he's riding the shark, and take a picture, you know.
I mean, he just couldn't get enough of our oldest son,
you know, even if his parents would volunteer to you know, Oh,
(28:57):
leave the baby here and we'll take care of him
now now he's gone with us. Wow. Yeah, did that
make you feel hopeful about Yes? I feel and so yes,
I felt very very hopeful and good, good about things.
And I felt that, you know, whatever work he was
(29:19):
going to wrap up then on Matt and then that
would be the end of that case and he'd move
on to the next set of cases. I'm like, oh,
thank god, back to normal life. But it did never
go back to normal life. As it turns out Ned's case,
it wasn't over, not really. Mister beach Club and the
(29:41):
gentleman smuggler would have their day in court, so there'd
be a trial, but that wasn't all far to the south,
down in Central America, the silent partner, the General Manuel Noriega.
He was still at large, operating with impunity, but that
was about to change. Word was getting out about what
(30:02):
the General had been up to, and in Washington, DC,
a political shit storm was brewing. Next time on deep Cover,
(30:26):
I just knew that the information that I could divulge
about Noriega and his activities were a bombshell. There's no
doubt in my mind that there's ramifications that go all
the way to the top. But I mean literally from
Reagan on down. Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith
(31:05):
and edited by Karen Shakerjee. Our story edit is Jack
hit original music, and our theme was composed by Luis
Gara and Flawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by
Amy Gaines. Mia Lobell is Pushkin's executive producer, and Ned's
novel is read by Walton Goggins. Special thanks to Julia Barton,
(31:27):
Heather Fain, Carl mcgliori, Lee, Tom Mullad Maya Kanig, Eric Sandler,
Aggie Taylor, Kadija Holland, Zoe Gwenn, and Jacob Weisberg at
Pushkin Industries. Special thanks also to Jeff Singer at Stowaway Entertainment.
I'm Jake Albern
Pushkin, previously on deep cover. By the late spring of
nineteen eighty five, Ned Timmins was deep into his investigation
of the drug smugglers. One of the three major players,
the Gentleman Smuggler, was now behind bars, but Ned was
(00:38):
still on a mission to get Mike Vogel, the grocery guy.
I had it in such a way, did I really
control the marijuana industry in Michigan. His other target was
Lee Rich mister beach club. I'm the boss, Okay. I
called the shots. If they wanted to load, or if
I was going to load something, I could secure the boat,
(01:00):
playing whatever. But for now Ned couldn't do much about
the case because in the fall of that year, his
cover was blown and there'd been a threat on his life.
So the FBI sent Ned and his wife Kathy off
to northern Michigan to hide together. They had to sit
quietly and wait it out. This is not any kind
(01:22):
of a life that I want to lead. This isn't
what any of us signed up for. For Kathy Timmins,
going into hiding wasn't just scary. She had her own work,
her own career at the FBI that she now had
to put on hold. She was tired of Ned's undercover
(01:43):
persona Ed Thomas, messing everything up. Oh. I was very angry.
I was very upset. I was scared, you know. And
then I just had to let it be, let it go,
just be up there and sit and wait to make
matters worse. She didn't feel well. I thought I was
sick or something, or maybe just really really tired, because
(02:03):
I just kept falling asleep. And then I started feeling
the queasiness and everything, and I thought, oh, maybe I
got pregnant. After being in hiding for about three weeks,
the FBI calls and tells Nedd and Kathy the coast
is clear. They had caught the bikers who had planned
to kill Ned. So Ned and Cathy come out of hiding.
They go home. Kathy, who's still not feeling well, visits
(02:25):
the doctor and learns she is pregnant. In a way,
the timing wasn't ideal. Their lives had just been turned
upside down, and yet Kathy took this as a sign
like God meant it to be, because we had been
married for how many years by then, and I had
never gotten pregnant, and I never did anything not to
(02:46):
get pregnant. So I just thought, oh, okay. You know
I'm Catholic. You know, it's like, okay, this is meant
to be. Now. All she had to do was tell Ned.
I thought that he would be thrilled and that this
would really help to bring a closure to all of
this craziness with this undercover work. I asked, Ned, what
(03:10):
were your thoughts about having kids? Given the nature of
your work, it wasn't time. Did you think you ever
wanted to have kids? You know, I really didn't give
it much thought, you know, I was just consumed by
work and what we were doing. So when you get
back from this trip to northern Michigan and she's like,
(03:32):
I'm pregnant, what is your reaction? Well, yeah, it's just well,
I guess we're gonna roll with it. You know. I'm
Jake Halper and this is Deep Cover Episode seven. The
(03:54):
honeymoon is over. After he comes out of hiding, Ned
(04:25):
is back working on his case against Lee rich Mister
Beach Club, but for the time being, there was no
easy way for Ned or the FBI to apprehend Lee.
Extraditions from the Caymans were rare, plus, Ned says down
on the Caymans. Lee was kind of a robin Hood figure,
a beloved outlaw. Lee was the robin Hood who had
(04:48):
taken care of all the bankers and all the people
on the island and buried friends and relatives and paid
for everybody's expenses. He had a big heart, and he
took care of a lot of people, and it would
have been probably impossible to get him extradited out of there.
So on the one hand, Ned was frustrated that he
(05:09):
couldn't apprehend Lee, but he also knew that Lee was
kind of trapped, and he knew this because of a
conversation that they'd had when they were in the Caymans together.
We had always talked alone a lot, and I just
turned him one day. We're probably having a drink or something.
I said, Lee, why don't you get the hell out
of us? Just quit And Lee said I can't. They'll
(05:33):
kill me. And I believe he meant the Columbians would
kill him. Lee was on the hook for a million
pounds of marijuana that he'd ordered from the Colombians. And that,
by the way, is he shitload of marijuana. Look, this
isn't an exact science, but I talked to was a
(05:55):
smuggler who once saw this much weed down in Colombia
and he described it as a quote fucking mountain end quote.
He actually built a small fort up on top of
it and slept there. So you get the idea. Lee
was under pressure to move that much marijuana. And remember
(06:16):
Lee's go to guy, Stephen Kaylish, the Gentleman's smuggler. He
was in custody at this point, so Lee pushed ahead
without his star smuggler, tried to move at least some
of it. He arranged for a tug boat to to
a barge with one hundred and sixty five thousand pounds
of pot on it up to Virginia. The boat was
intercepted by the US Coastguard and the cargo was confiscated.
(06:40):
It was a total disaster. It's all scrapped. It was done.
You know, at this point, Lee is finally feeling ready
to just get out of the business. You know, I
was just I was tired of it. I didn't need it,
And I blame a lot of that on myself for
not being strong enough to tell people I don't want
to do this, I'm done. It was a moment of
(07:04):
reckoning for Lee. Remember from the very start. Lie says
he'd gotten into the marijuana business so he could chill
with his buddies, non violent beach guys, you know, lived
on the beach to surf and fish and never hurt anybody. Okay.
Even as his business grew and he became really wealthy,
(07:27):
this was still his credo. He had the yacht which
the queen borrowed, and the beach club, but the funny
parrot and the cool house that rock stars came to visit.
It had been fun for a long time until suddenly,
well it really wasn't anymore. And then, as if this
(07:48):
weren't already perfectly clear, Alvin Connor came knocking. I know
Lee rich. For years Alvin was the chief Inspector of
narcotics for the Cayman Island Police Force back in the eighties.
Were used to search all his private plea and you
come in eer week two three time were all these girls?
(08:11):
Pretty girls used to bring. Alvin says he had suspected
for a while that Lee might be involved in the
drug trade. Nothing solid, just chatter, which isn't surprising this
was a small island. Inevitably people talked. Alvin says, he
searched Lee's private plane and number of times, but never
found any drugs. But then one day in January of
(08:34):
nineteen eighty six, about six months after Ned had left
the island, Alvin says he got a tip which led
him to believe that Lee might have some drugs at
his house. This was all that Alvin needed, just a lead,
a whiff of something, because on the island, Alvin had
a reputation for chasing assent. If can't you see me
(08:57):
come in to see the dog is here? You called
me the dog? Wait? Why do they call you the dog?
Mar Juanna, I smell it. They say that I smell it.
If day I'm gonna find it. They called me the
dog to see the dog? Come, no, and the dog.
He was coming for Lee. He didn't know about Ned
(09:19):
Timmins or the FBI investigation. He just wanted to bust
Lee rich. So he heads over to Lee's house. I say,
we're here to look for drogs. Alvin says. He searches
the room and finds about an ounce of cocaine. He
arrestedly on the spot for drug possession. Lee says the
(09:41):
whole thing was a setup. They planted a two or
three grams or coke in my house and came in
and raided the house. My mother's in the house, and
I think I had about eight people staying in the
house at that time. So it was a big scene
when they took Lee away in handcuffs. The whole thing
was upsetting for Lee, in part because his mom was there.
(10:03):
She started making a fuss, and Alvin confronted her. I say,
if I'll shut your mouth, I rescue you and jadge
rob structing police officer saw. I rescue you and charge
you and charge you for the school keen too. The
message to Lee seemed to be clear, I'm not afraid
of you. I'll mess with your mom if need be.
(10:31):
Alvin took Lee down to the police station, booked him,
locked him up, but soon Lee got out on bail
around five thousand dollars. That's the amount that Alvin recalls anyway,
which was nothing to Lee. Yeah, you were like a king,
big shot, like a big shot, and nobody could touch him.
He tells Lee, if the judge you won't let you
(10:53):
go down, he based that boy, gonna do my job
for Lee. The biggest fallout from all of this was
that he had to give up his passport. The police
claimed that he was a flight risk, so they insisted
that he'd leave his passport with them at the station,
so he'd have to go and ask for a back
if you ever wanted to leave the island. Lee was
(11:13):
beginning to feel trapped. Around the same time, he was
hanging out at a local bar on Grand Cayman when
he bumps into a guy he knows who works for
Scotland Yard. Lee buys him a drink and he goes rich.
He goes, I'm I'm gonna tell you something. Goes. Don't
take your boat out past twelve miles, don't go out
on the bank fish, and don't leave the island. They're
(11:37):
trying to get you on a coastguard cutter or something
off a Cayman, he said. And I'm just telling you
that because you're a decent guy. It seemed like the
walls were really closing in on Lee. Now his business partner,
the gentleman smuggler, was in jail and quite possibly talking
to US authorities. The dog was pursuing him on the island,
(11:58):
and now the Scotland Yard guy was telling him don't
take your boat too far off shore. So I knew
then from what he told me that night, They're really
onto my ass. Okay, and I started making arrangements. I
was going to leave, and I was going to Europe,
to Portugal. Actually, Lee's grandfather was Portuguese, and he figured
(12:21):
if he could get there, he might use that familial
connection to get his status as a resident. He thought
he'd be safe there. So in May of nineteen eighty six,
a full year after Ned first visited Lee in the Caymans,
Lee got ready to make his escape, and then this
chance would have it, Lee got a visit from a
friend which derailed everything. And that friend was Tommy Lee Base,
(12:49):
you know, from Motley Crue. Lee Rich was about to
flee the Cayman Islands, but he had a scheduling conflict.
(13:11):
A buddy was coming to town, Tommy Lee Basse, founding
member of the band Motley Crue. In the mid nineteen eighties,
Tommy Lee and his bandmate Nicki six were the bad
boys at the heavy metal world. I remember you feel
for the last time you motherfucker's liked the party? Is
that true? Well, if you're a perverse fuck yeah, I
(13:38):
fucking knew it. I just knew it. Tommy Lee and
his bandmates had come to visit the Caymans a few
times before. Turns out the band's manager, Doc McGee, was
one of Lee's investors. They all got along famously. Tommy
even wrote about the first time that he'd met Lee
in Motley Crue's memoir The Dirt. Here's a clip from
(13:59):
the audio book and just a heads up. For some reason,
the narrator calls Lee Leigh. Anyway, Lay walked into the
doc's rental house with a Natashak case. The first words
we spoke to him were gimme, gimme, gimme, because we
knew what was in that fucking attache case. Mountains of
white powder to stuff up our noses. Lay opened the
(14:20):
case and gave us a little rock. In the memoir,
Lee then shuts his briefcase, locks it, winks and tells
them if they can open the combination lock, Tommy can
have the rest of it. We were so coked out
that we actually thought we were coming up with every
single permutation of three numbers. Finally, I went into the kitchen,
(14:41):
grabbed a butcher knife and cut the top of lace
thousand dollars leather briefcase, glittering inside like white gold were
fucking dozens of huge plastic bags filled with coke. So
there you have it. An epic drug dealer, an epic
rock star who loved drugs. It was a friendship made
in heaven. Tommy wasn't traveling to the Caymans alone. He
(15:07):
was coming with the latest love of his life life,
the actress Heather Locklear. She'd started in a few hit
TV shows like Dynasty and t J. Hooker, where she
played a rookie cop who once even goes under cover
herself as a call girl. Yeah, hook where are she
supposed to wear? Her water and my trick bag? An
alcol girl never parts with her trick bag. Don't get
(15:28):
any ideas about helping me on with it. It's fine,
just where it is. Heather and Tommy. They'd met backstage
in an Ario Speedwagon concert. Their relationship would become fodder
for e Hollywood. The bad boy of rock had found
his princess. Tommy was now living the life he had famed,
fortune and love. The happy couple left for a three
week honeymoon in the Cayman Islands. Tommy was coming to
(15:51):
visit to spend his honeymoon on the Cayman Islands, seeing
his good buddy, Lee, the guy with the magic suitcase.
Listall remembers just how excited Tommy was heaves head over
heels on this girl. He said, I really want to
come back here and spend my honey, and I said,
don't worry, I'll take care of you. You know, Lee
(16:12):
could have told him, no, the timing's bad, man, My
drug empire is falling apart. I may soon be imprisoned.
But that was just not mister Beach Club's style. His
buddy was coming to town, so his escape plan to
Portugal would just have to wait. Lee arrange for a
nice condo on the beach for Tommy and Heather, and
(16:33):
I got a call the next day after leaving him
there that night from the manager of the condo asked
me to remove them from the property, both of them,
because they were up all night running up and down
in the parking out high on whatever. Not a huge surprise.
From the Motley Crewe memoir, you get a sense for
how Tommy partied. Gimme, gimme, gimme, so Lee, he moves
(16:56):
the couple to another condo, but the situation doesn't get
any better. It was one big headache for Lee. So
they decide, let's go to Jamaica. It'll be better over there.
Lee books them some villas, makes all the arrangements, and
he decides that this trip to Jamaica will be the
(17:16):
perfect excuse to run for it. So he goes to
the Cayman Police and somehow or another manages to get
his passport back. Lee says he's just flying with some
friends to Jamaica for a mini vacation, but his real
plan is to keep going to London and then onto Portugal.
So he packs a briefcase with some pocket money thirty
(17:36):
thousand in cash, and boards a plane with Tommy and
Heather from Montego Bay, Jamaica. That night, when we flew
to Mobay. When I come off the airplane, one of
the girls from the counter, does she call me by
my name? She goes Lee. I looked at her two
(17:57):
agents waiting on you inside the customs area. There two
agents and like that, Lee understood had to be the FEDS.
Somehow they'd been tipped off. What Lee didn't know at
the time was that the FBI had a source who
knew about his trip and ratted him out, and now
here he was on the ground at the Montego Bay Airport,
(18:20):
walking right into a trap. Here's Tommy's got up one
of these boomboxes. Okay, up on his shoulder, and he's
jagging at around holler and he's dragging this Heather with him. Okay,
going ahead of me, and so I went behind him,
went into customs, and sure enough those agents came up
(18:43):
to me. Tommy made us started confronting him too. You know, hey,
what he hadn't done anything, you know, and so they've
threatened to arrest him, and that was the end of that.
Tommy and Heather went one way, and the two FBI
agents escorted Lee out of the airport and into a
car where a Jamaican police officer was waiting for them.
(19:09):
They then all head to the hotel where the FBI
agents were staying so they could grab their stuff. We
go to the hotel and the two agents get out
of the car and we're sitting in the parking lot.
I'm in there with this cop and the cop that
was in the front seat driving us. He was one
of the cops I used to pay off. And I said, listen,
(19:31):
you don't you remember who I am? You know who
I am? So he goes I can't help you, Rich,
I said, I'll never forget it. So you know, I
was kind of threatening him, and I said, all I
gotta do is let me run. He goes, I can't
do it, so he wouldn't let me out, and that
was it. The two FBI agents got back in the car.
They drove to Kingston and caught the next flight back
(19:53):
to the US with Lee in custody. In Motley Crue's memoir,
Tommy Lee Base takes full responsibility for all of this,
saying that he and Heather caused the downfall of one
of the country's biggest drug smugglers, all because they didn't
want to go to Maka alone. Tommy writes, Heather and
I felt terrible. We had no one to show us
(20:14):
around Jamaica. Now that he was in federal custody, Lee
Rich began to mull over where exactly he'd gone wrong,
and he recalled something that his business partner, Mike Vogel,
the grocery guy, had told him. Mike was the distributor
who ran the enormous drug warehouse back in Detroit, and
(20:37):
Lie says Mike he had never really liked Tommy and
Heather thought they were trouble. Lee remembers him saying repeatedly,
stay away from those people. They're going to be your downfall.
Mike Vogel was right, in fact, more right than he knew.
In a way, Tommy and Heather would also be his downfall,
(20:58):
because at the very moment that Lee was being apprehended
in Jamaica, there was another operation targeting Mike Vogel back
in Detroit. When we come back after the break, Ned
Timmins and the FBI make their move on the grocery guy.
(21:29):
Back in Michigan, Ned was itching to arrest Mike Vogel.
The idea was to get both of these guys, Lee
and then Mike, almost at the exact same time, so
neither one of them would tip off the other. Everything
had to be perfectly synchronized this moment, it was the
culmination of almost three years of work on Ned's part.
(21:52):
It had been an epic journey, taking him from a
roadside biker bar in Detroit all the way to the
glitzie beaches of the Caymans. And during this time Ned's
case had steadily grown, merging with other investigations in North Carolina, Louisiana,
and Florida. Other agencies had gotten involved too, like the
d EA, the IRS, the Coastguard, US Customs, and a
(22:15):
slew of state and county investigators. Together, the authorities had
built a strong case against the smugglers, and throughout this
time Ned had kept pretty close tabs on Mike Vogel,
and apparently Mike had picked up on this. That's what
he told me. Anyway, Mike boasted to me that he
had sources within the FBI. He added rather cryptically that
(22:39):
he knew all about Ned. Did I sit down have
lunch or dinner with him? Now? Okay, I just I
was aware of them. I was very aware of them.
I remembin the day that Ned Timmins he ever got
involved with me, I wish I had never heard my name.
(23:01):
So on May twenty third, nineteen eighty six, the same
day League gets arrested, Ned Timmins is staked out at
Mike Vogel's house in Milford. We had the whole swat
team out there laying in Vogle's place all night long
waiting for word that they had Lee and custody. And
once we got word that they had Lee in custody,
then we had Vogle's house, his Ned and his FBI
(23:24):
team are getting ready, something really weird happens. According to NED,
a black panther starts stalking the woods. A black panther
in Michigan. Okay, so there was some sightings of it,
and we're in the swat team moonlightning. We've been laying
out there all night, night vision everything, and this panther
(23:47):
had been released. People had seen it and reported it.
You know, that there's a black panther run around out
here and there some cattle had been killed. And so
we're all laying out there talking on our radios and
you know, waiting for word to hit the house. And
this panther was screaming like this in the night, in
the moonlight, and you know, you know what's out there someplace,
(24:12):
and you're laying in the grass and it was a
bit nerve wracking. Okay, So I was skeptical about this story.
Seemed like another NED tail that would be well impossible
to fact jack and then I found an article from
the Time dispatched from the town where Mike Vogel lived,
(24:32):
confirming that yes, there had been over thirty sightings of
this large predatory cat. Anyway, NED was focused on getting
the job done Meanwhile, Mike is in his house asleep
next to his wife Julie. I had drive away suns,
you know, put you know if anybody's coming on your property. Okay,
(24:53):
and I always beep beep, beep, beep beep. Julie looked
at me and said, what was that? Such of the
fetche I could tell you know, you don't have twenty
beeps going off for one car. It was a whole
group of them that came. They had I RS guys,
I had FBI guys and a few DA guys and
(25:15):
Michigan State Police and of course Ned Timmins was there too.
And in this moment when Ned Timmins g Man shows
up to arrest Mike Vogel, master criminal, it isn't some
kind of tense standoff. They don't stare each other down
or cuss each other out. Mike says that Ned was
pretty friendly, cordial, that was the word he used, like
(25:38):
two boxers after a fight. All the swagger gone and
now just the handshake. He allowed me to go ahead
and take a shower and say goodbye to my wife
and kids. Yeah, we're going to prison. Mike Vogel was
indicted in federal court in Detroit. The indictment alleged that
(26:00):
he and a fellow smugglers were responsible for importing at
least five hundred and sixty six thousand pounds of marijuana.
Investing its estimated that over the years they smuggled as
much as one billion dollars worth of drugs into the US.
Vogel played guilty That same year, he was stripped of
his wealth forfeiting, among other things, a boat, five cars,
(26:24):
and four homes in Michigan. He was sentenced to twenty
five years in prison. Lee was arrested that Vogel was arrested,
and it became was all on the paper and the
whole lay of everything, and the story made big headlines actually,
and for a moment Ned was kind of famous. An
article in the Detroit Free Press chronicled Ned's adventures. An
(26:47):
anonymous source told the paper that Ned quote made the
case end quote. The source went on to say, I've
seen a lot of undercover agents, but this guy special.
He's got ice in his veins, and he's a tough cookie,
one of the new breed. He's a high caliber agent
who has that unique ability to be able to understand
(27:08):
and worked with the people. He's been sent undercover to investigate.
For Ned, it was vindication. He had spent the better
part of three years playing the role of his alter ego.
In a way, he'd built Ed Thomas from the ground up.
His backstory, his demeanor, his friendships, his hard drinking, hardy
riding lifestyle, and Ed Thomas had served his purpose. It
(27:31):
was as if all the risks that Ned had taken,
all the close calls, all the paranoia, all the boundaries
he'd pushed somehow or another, it had all worked out.
So maybe it was finally time to be done with
undercover work. After all, Ned had a big win under
(27:52):
his belt. Plus, at almost the exact same time of
these events, in May of nineteen eighty six, there was
other big news. Ned's son was born, and Ned the
action craving, sometimes reckless, hardy riding undercover guy. He of
his son, Cathy says that the baby was attached to
(28:12):
him at the hip. Oh yeah, no, they were like
freaking frac I mean, as soon as he came in
the door, he'd picked him up. I don't think he
would put him down. Just about every picture I have
he had this shark that he caught while we were
on our honeymoon down in the Keys, and here's this
(28:35):
hammerhead shark and he he has it installed in the
den of our home. And so he'd put the baby
up there, up on top of the shark, like as
if he's riding the shark, and take a picture, you know.
I mean, he just couldn't get enough of our oldest son,
you know, even if his parents would volunteer to you know, Oh,
(28:57):
leave the baby here and we'll take care of him
now now he's gone with us. Wow. Yeah, did that
make you feel hopeful about Yes? I feel and so yes,
I felt very very hopeful and good, good about things.
And I felt that, you know, whatever work he was
(29:19):
going to wrap up then on Matt and then that
would be the end of that case and he'd move
on to the next set of cases. I'm like, oh,
thank god, back to normal life. But it did never
go back to normal life. As it turns out Ned's case,
it wasn't over, not really. Mister beach Club and the
(29:41):
gentleman smuggler would have their day in court, so there'd
be a trial, but that wasn't all far to the south,
down in Central America, the silent partner, the General Manuel Noriega.
He was still at large, operating with impunity, but that
was about to change. Word was getting out about what
(30:02):
the General had been up to, and in Washington, DC,
a political shit storm was brewing. Next time on deep Cover,
(30:26):
I just knew that the information that I could divulge
about Noriega and his activities were a bombshell. There's no
doubt in my mind that there's ramifications that go all
the way to the top. But I mean literally from
Reagan on down. Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith
(31:05):
and edited by Karen Shakerjee. Our story edit is Jack
hit original music, and our theme was composed by Luis
Gara and Flawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by
Amy Gaines. Mia Lobell is Pushkin's executive producer, and Ned's
novel is read by Walton Goggins. Special thanks to Julia Barton,
(31:27):
Heather Fain, Carl mcgliori, Lee, Tom Mullad Maya Kanig, Eric Sandler,
Aggie Taylor, Kadija Holland, Zoe Gwenn, and Jacob Weisberg at
Pushkin Industries. Special thanks also to Jeff Singer at Stowaway Entertainment.
I'm Jake Albern
Host
Jake Halpern
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