Two of their five children were with her. He loved the streets and the people who plied themwhores, gamblers, smugglers, cops. On the trials 40th anniversary, Goodman and Chagras eldest daughter, Catherine, will look back at the case and what it meant for Goodman and the Chagra family.A book signing of Catherine Chagras Chagra: The King of Dope Drugs, Deceit and Dirty Darlings will follow this program.Member and Donor Exclusive: Enjoy a meet-and-greet with Oscar Goodman and Catherine Chagra at 6 p.m. prior to the program. Lee Chagra grossed more than $250,000 in 1972. To mark the 40th anniversary of the trial of drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, who was accused of paying a hitman $250,000 to kill a federal judge John Wood, Oscar His two older brothers were so much alike it scared him. Catherine published a book about her life in 2015 titled Chagra: The King of Dope Drugs, Deceit and Dirty Darlings. She will be signing copies after the panel discussion. Youve got it wrong, Lee replied. Kay McCulloch died, and with her death the raw material for the book went to the attic. He would attach his belt to the giant solid-gold buckle with the thick crust of diamonds, and draw on his black alligator cowboy boots. Then Kerr observed that the request for reportsis an overt act on the part of the defense attorneyto obtain government reports and documents concerning him. That is, concerning Lee Chagra. His eyes were open, but he was obviously dying. He gambled in Vegas and wrote bad checks and was constantly calling Lee to bail him out. None of the missing $450,000 was ever recovered. Lees success in trying drug cases soon led him to meet Jack Stricklin, who had sent the Pitts case his way. The 38-year-old prosecutor had given up his apartment in El Paso and moved back to San Antonio, where he felt more comfortable. Boyd believed that one way or another Jimmy would take him to Lee. Sandy was to count out $20,000 from the stash under the bathroom sink and have it ready when the woman arrived. Clark was dog tired and went straight to bed. Jimmy had given her a couple of kids and a lasting pain in the ass. He helped develop Operation Intercept, a massive media event in which millions of U.S. citizens were stopped and searched at the border. Some people though Lee Chagra didnt know how to quit, but that wasnt quite true. The first thing he noticed was his filing cabinet. [15] The FBI conducted more than 30,000 interviews related to the case and in total collected more than 500,000 pieces of information. [6], Chagra was accused of (and was acquitted of, although he later confessed to conspiracy in a deal to help his wife) hiring hitman Charles Harrelson (actor Woody Harrelson's father) to kill Wood for $250,000; on May 29, 1979, Judge Wood was murdered outside his home by a shot in the back. Lee cried a lot in those days. It was fitting in a way that Lee should end up championing the drug dealers rights; his brother Jimmy was destined to join their ranks. Jimmys Florida operation, far from being an immediate disaster, disbanded after successfully offloading fifty tons of grass from a Colombian freighter in March. Even as Lee was working to salvage what he could from the ruins, Jimmy was plotting a new deal. Visions of the 1973 fiasco in Nashville that had almost ruined his law career danced through his mind. A month later, Jack Stricklin was standing before Maximum John Wood, contemplating life without parole. On June 20 a team of narcotics agents appeared at his law office with a warrant for his arrest and hauled him away in handcuffs. Many a night, the Chagra brothers would play all six spots on a blackjack table, for anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 a hand. Lee Chagra lived in the border underworld of El Paso, a place where drugs were the game and even the good guys didnt play by the rules. Thats the way Lee wanted it. Though neither knew it, this was the last time the two old friends would ever go to Vegas together. Chagra had little use for public servants, especially prosecutors, and Kerr was a classic bureaucrat, squeaking with authority and wedded to the book. It wasnt just in hard-drug cases; Wood appeared to make no distinctions. His older brother Lee was a very prominent defense attorney Jimmy was the middle son, and the younger son, Joe, was also an attorney.. Boyd was wrong. All rights reserved. No charges were filed, but it was apparent that the crash was another of Jimmys scams gone up in smoke. Borrowing heavily from Kerrs own wording, Wood totally agreed: This request appears to be primarily an effort by the defense attorney to obtain reports of an investigation pertaining to him. Lee couldnt hold a grudge, but Jimmy was the kind who would get you by the balls and never let go, said Jimmy Salome, a longtime family friend. Lee Chagras funeral was a microcosm of all the extremes in his life. Here he is with Joe Namath. Lee had never let his name be linked to an illegal enterprise before the fact. They learned later that Jimmy left town with about $50,000. As Boyd must have realized, Kerr and Lee Chagra were natural enemies. The language was vague and ambiguous, but essentially it said that a person was a kingpin if he (1) committed a continuing series of violations of the drug act, in concert with five or more other persons with respect to whom such person occupies a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management and (2) obtained substantial income or resources from those violations. Over the years lawyers encountered scores of cases in which citizens had been lured into crimes by what amounted to federal bounty hunters. He named two of his chows Kilo and Poker., Look how sweet and dorky and innocent I look, Catherine Chagra said. Emily McCullar is a senior editor covering pop culture, news, and Texas history. In broken white letters, like shards of milk glass on velvet, it said FREEDOM. Lee had seated himself at a table and ordered $5000 in chips, but the dealer refused. But she wasnt about to inquire; nothing brought Lee down faster than the slightest hint that he might somehow be beholden to Jimmy, even temporarily. But more than anything, it was his clothes; Jimmy showed up at the funeral wearing an outfit exactly like Lees Black Striker costume. There was no way to count the number of ex-lovers who crowded the cathedral to say their last farewell, but they were discreetly scattered and only occasionally exchanged glances. Things really fell apart when Jimmy was arrested on trafficking charges. He was bubbling over with tales of the previous days Tucson victory. The weapons existed only in the agents imagination, but at one point the trap got so bizarre that the poor cafe owner believed he was negotiating for a used submarine. He had an affinity for cards and dice, for dope dealers and shady politicians, for cripples and nightclub singers, for dabblers in the black market and exponents of the quick buck. The sisters made mistakes, too, some by failing, in their youth, to realize that a substantial portion of their larger-than-life family history was a cautionary tale, an admonition that for some, life is best lived smaller and more quietly, away from big money and bright lights and celebrities with teeth so white and so impossibly perfect. The bell boy warned me of (Lees) reputation as a gambler, and that he was known to like women, Vivian Chagra would tell her friend and former anthropology professor Kay McCulloch, in an interview for a book project on which the two were collaborating. Before, they ate beans and a little meat. Lee seemed restless and preoccupied, as though he were late for an appointment and couldnt wait for Jo Annie to leave. The feds could never prove he had any part in the operation or even that he knew about it in advance, though he probably did. The other lawyer couldnt appreciate the irony, but until that moment, Lee had always envied him. Oscar Goodman and Joe Chagra were Jimmys attorneys. Friends, relatives, and people that Donna had never seen before paraded through as though the place were a museum. Chagra could win or lose more in a single session at a Vegas crap table than Kerr made in a year. On the cartoon, Clark had written Wood below the eagle and Chagra below the mouse. I think I was about 20 and Lee was 27 or something. [17][10], Chagra's downfall began in February 1979 when he was arrested on trafficking charges. By the time Clark arrived, Lee had already lost another $80,000 and was yelling at the floor manager because he was threatening to cut off his credit. Those tapes, according to Catherine, were doctored and judged inadmissible.). The Indian worked as a collector for several Las Vegas casinos. A third, Cynthia Jones Chagra, lives in Austin. By mid-November the feds had just about made their case against Jimmy Chagra, and rumors of his imminent indictment were rampant. No Mafia figures were ever indicted. That was it, the last of the half-million the Black Striker had blown in Vegas the year before. Patsy heard the bells from St. Patricks Cathedral in the next block and remembered Mom Chagra. Hunter Thompson once described how a casino shot a three-hundred pound bear out of a cannon right in the middle of the floor and no one looked up. Narcotics agents believed that Stricklin and his associates supplied a good part of the South and Southwest with Mexican marijuana. With its confluence of shady border business opportunities, affairs, greed, drugs, gambling and sibling rivalry, the tale seems to have been fated to play out exactly the way it did: with Jimmy, his second or third wife and Jimmys brother Joe all sentenced to federal prison; with a third brother, Lee, murdered in his office days before Christmas 1978; with Vivian and her three daughters in the witness protection program; and with one generation of a family forever splintered by the grave misdeeds of the one preceding it. And yet, right there under their noses was another Chagra not at all handicapped by brains or good judgment. He seemed pleased with the gesture but told her there was some work he needed to do at the office. Lees younger brother Jimmy, who grew up hustling and hanging out with some of Lees more prosperous clients, wanted nothing more than to be recognized as Mr. Big. [1][24], Harrelson was eventually caught and convicted of being the gunman after Chagra discussed the assassination with his brother Joe during Joe's visit to Jimmy in United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, after FBI agents bugged the rooms in which they were speaking. [19][20] Chagra faced a possible life sentence without parole if convicted and reportedly feared he would receive a life sentence, according to prosecutors. If Stricklin cooperated, they would work for his early release. Is his [dope smuggling] operation totally separate [from another smugglers]? Kerr claimed that money didnt matter, that his mission in life was vigorously and, I hope, successfully prosecuting all offenders that his clients could provide, but the mere fact that his adversary put such emphasis on money and the trappings of wealth must have touched some deep reserve of resentment in him. I didnt trust Arabs. No force on earth could stop him. 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