I was released on an appeal bond, went to Washington and knocked on the door of the attorney general, Edwin Meese. Here, he stopped, put his fingers over his eyes and tears slid between them.īarry wiped his eyes and continued. There was also a life sentence waiting in Louisiana. I was found guilty and sentenced to ten years. When it came right down to the five-year statute of limitations, they dropped it on me. That indictment was held over my head for years, but for one reason or another the feds kept putting on prosecuting. “Five years ago, I gave a DEA agent a handful of pills I picked up on San Andreas Island and told him I could buy millions more. “Barry I am not going to say anything, so just tell me why I am here and what have you been doing?” Well, that was a pretty big plane to be doing aerobatics in, but of course I had to say, “Show me what you got…” When we got to 5,000 ft, he leveled off and said, “Let’s check this sweetheart out. He handled the plane like he had been flying it for years, and I saw right off that he was a pro. We went for a flight in my favorite Aero Commander with Barry in the left seat. We met for coffee and then headed over to my hanger to chat and walk around. I told him I was a smuggler and needed some help from time to time. In a few weeks, I called and invited him to Santa Barbara. On the two-hour trip to New Orleans, I learned he had been released from prison that morning, having spent over a year in prison for landing with a hundred kilos of cocaine in his plane… “My name is Barry Seal.” He reached across Miriam, and we shook hands. If I don’t think very clearly and plan very carefully, I am not going to get home to Marie and the children. Warplanes were circling just above the clouds.Īs we hurried along the trail, the thought came to me with crystal clear clarity: We’re 500 miles from the coast and I’m 5,000 miles from home, deep in the southern Colombian jungle. If the soldiers saw us, they would most likely shoot us down rather than arrest us. The guerrillas were kidnapping foreigners at will. We were deep in guerrilla territory with a war raging between leftist rebels and the Colombian army. We were in serious danger over and above the usual. Biting insects covered us so thick that we inhaled them. It was hot and muggy, and our clothes were soon soaked through. The grass along the trail was as high as our heads. I picked up his case and the three of us took turns carrying it. Such a huge strong man completely undone by fear was pathetic. Dan just stood there I saw that he was crying. We could get there before dark if we hurried. There was a village ten or twelve miles to the north. However, they all had one thing in common: they were armed to the teeth with AK-47’s, pistols and shotguns with banana clips, and they were yelling us to get the hell out of there. There were light impressions of tracks in the wiregrass, where other planes had landed but, hey, were barely visible and not recent.Ī dozen irate white Colombians met us. Termite nests stood blood red like 20-foot sentinels along both sides of the track. When I figured we were in the vicinity, I flew a 20-mile grid trying to get out our location.Īround eight o’clock, I found the convergence of two rivers that matched the description, and from there the crop duster directed us on to what one might call a strip, if you used a lot of imagination. The ‘crop duster’ stood between Al and me, and it soon became plain he was as ‘lost as a loon.’ Everything looked the same, and I could only dead-reckon my position. The grey haired gentleman had marked roughly where the strip was located on a chart. And, you have probably never heard of him… till now.Įxclusive Excerpts from Amazon #1 Most Read New Books: Smuggler by Roger Reaves Recently, he has been featured in National Geographic’s TV series, Australia’s Hardest Prison: Lockdown Oz, where he speaks of his current stay at the maximum-security Casuarina Prison.ĭespite it all, Roger still has a twinkle in his eye as he recounts his life story. He escaped from prison on five separate occasions was shot down in both Mexico and Colombia and tortured almost to death in a Mexican prison. He covered six continents, transporting 20 ton ship loads of hash, tons of cocaine, and completed more than 100 sorties across the US border with plane loads of marijuana.įrom Medellin Cartel kingpins Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar to “Mr Nice” Howard Marks and the infamous Barry Seal, who was Rogers close friend and employee, his friends and associates spanned the globe. Roger Reaves grew up a poor farm boy in Georgia and went from making ‘moonshine’ to becoming one of the most prolific smugglers of the 20th century.
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