I’ve been a hard news guy from the get-go. Murderers, dope dealers, Mafiosi, Libyan terrorists, con men—they were my bread and butter in the news business for years.
Society has always been fascinated by crime and mayhem. From Jesse James to James Bond, people are entranced by the eternal battle between good and evil.
Telling the world about a famous disappearance
My first national crime story was in July, 1975, when I broke the news that former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had disappeared.
Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, a powerful New Jersey Teamsters boss and Mafia leader, was suspected from the beginning as the mobster who ordered the hit on Hoffa. I took this photo when Provenzano was called before a federal grand jury in Detroit that was investigating the Hoffa disappearance. Two pairs of brothers, Salvatore and Gabriel Briguglio and Thomas and Stephen Andretta, were suspected of killing Hoffa and disposing of his body on orders from Provenzano. There have been many crazy theories about the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa’s remains; he’s under a freeway, he’s in the end zone of a football stadium, he’s in a garbage dump in New Jersey, he’s in a drum in the Florida everglades. And several underworld characters have claimed they killed Hoffa. One of them, Frank Sheeran, a top Teamsters associate of Hoffa, claimed on his death bed that he did it and his tale has been made in to a movie with an all-star cast. The three FBI agents who worked the case from Day One focused on the New Jersey hoods as the likely killers. After months of work on the Hoffa disappearance, my money is on the New Jersey gangsters as the likely hit men.
Something’s up
Later that same year, while making my rounds at Detroit Police headquarters one day, I got wind something unusual was going on in the Narcotics section. When I asked what’s up, I was told I would have to ask the lieutenant. The lieutenant told me I’d have to ask the Inspector who told me I’d had to ask the Commander who told me I’d have to ask the Deputy Chief who told me I’d had to ask the Chief of Police. Whew. That was a lot of shoe leather for one morning and a lot of confirmation that something big was in the works.
I went to the office of Police Chief Philip G. Tannian and insisted I had to see him. After he finished a meeting, one of his aides told him I had to see him for a minute. I confronted the chief and said everyone under him was passing the buck about some big caper and I demanded to know what the hell was going on. Chief Tannian stared at me for quite a few seconds, then said, “Come to my house tonight about 9 o’clock.”
The day passed slowly and when I arrived at the chief’s house he showed me an array of maps and criminal organization flow charts on easels. Tannian told me that through luck and good police work, his narcs had worked their way up to the top of a large Mexican heroin ring. “I want this story told right,” Tannian told me. He said if my station would sit on the story for several days he would allow me to accompany some of his key narcs who were going to the Texas and hopefully Mexico to wrap up the investigation.
A night flight to parts unknown
At about two o’clock the next morning I was on a red-eye flight to Texas with my camera crew and several top officials of the police department. One of them had a briefcase filled with cash—money they figured they might need to wrap up the investigation.
Through a combination of guile and luck a Detroit Police narc, Tommy Caramagno, had persuaded some Mexican heroin smugglers that he was the son of a Detroit Mafia boss and he was out to make his “bones” with a big dope deal. The narc insisted as a matter of family honor he had to meet the leaders of the smuggling ring—in Mexico. The gambit led to identities, addresses, and arrests in Durango, Mexico of the operators of the heroin smuggling operation. Agents from the DEA and Mexican federal police made the arrests.
The Durango lab was a crude operation but productive, producing kilos of heroin that found their way to the streets of Detroit and the veins of Detroit addicts.
The DEA didn’t want a local police department tromping around Mexico, making cases and making friends in local law enforcement. They refused to help us beyond making the arrests.
I, on the other hand, wanted to tell the story on the Mexican side of the border. I contacted the Associated Press bureau chief in Mexico City and explained our dilemma. He put me in touch with Alejandro Junco De La Vega, a politically powerful, University of Texas-educated newspaper publisher in Monterrey, Mexico, who arranged for the Detroit Police to meet the attorney general for Northern Mexico and for me and my camera crew to accompany them. We did a middle-of-the-night drive from McAllen, Texas to Monterrey, Mexico, the steel industry “Pittsburgh” of that country and the base for the regional attorney general.
A pipeline from Mexico to Detroit
The Detroit cops got their intelligence liaison link with the Mexican federales and I got my story.
Detroit Mayor Coleman Young held a news conference to announced the success of the operation.
Revealing a sham company in a Swiss postal box
In December, 1982, a federal drug task force in Los Angeles arrested “maverick” automaker John Z. DeLorean on cocaine charges in a case involving 55 pounds of smuggled drugs. DeLorean had been a fast-rising star at General Motors and was mentioned as a possible contender for president or chairman of GM one day. DeLorean decided to form his own company, instead.
I was assigned to do a special investigative report on the rise and fall of DeLorean. I went to Belfast, Northern Ireland to document the human toll with the collapse of the car company. I interviewed suddenly-unemployed auto workers, and members of the British parliament about the government’s massive investment in the DeLorean car project. I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland and showed that DeLorean’s company was nothing more than a PO box. DeLorean had swindled the British government with a company that existed only on paper. I also covered the DeLorean Los Angeles cocaine trial, which lasted four months. He was acquitted.
My reporting on DeLorean won awards, including the 1st Place prize for Best Local TV News documentary at the San Francisco and New York International Film Festivals.
Exposing a Libyan terrorist in North America
Another big investigative project was launched when I read a story in the Wall Street Journal about Libyan dissidents who had fled the reign of terror of Muammar Qaddafi. They were living in fear for their lives in the U.S. and Canada.
Some of them were living and hiding in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Therein was the nugget of a project that led to an Emmy award for my documentary on Libyan dissidents. With the help of the Libyan underground we were able to track down and expose a Qaddafi terrorist living in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, north of Michigan. The story was a major embarrassment for CSIS—the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, which is that country’s version of the CIA. CSIS had given Abdullah Forjani—real name Abdullah Yahia—clearance to enter Canada. Our report featured surveillance video we shot in Thunder Bay showing Yahia exiting his apartment. That video was in a split screen showing Yahia in police custody in Bonn, Germany before he was expatriated to Libyan in exchange for some Germans held in Libyan custody. Yahia was a Qaddafi leg-buster and torturer, fond of sticking lighted cigarettes in the eyes of captured dissidents in an effort to force them to talk.
News trivia: there has been a long-standing dispute over the spelling of Qaddafi’s name. There is no standard English spelling of the Arabic name. Some spell it Gaddfi, others spell it Kadafi, still others spell it Qadhafi. When Qaddafi was captured and killed, his passport showed he spelled his name Qaddafi for English usage.
A murder investigation tainted by police corruption
In 1988 I spent five months investigating the unsolved shooting death of 13-year old Damion Lucas of Detroit.
The youngster had been killed when members of the Johnny Curry drug gang shot up his uncle’s house in a dispute over drug money. Damion and his 11-year old brother Frankie were home alone at the time of the incident.
I soon learned Detroit Police Homicide investigators had botched the investigation by pursuing an innocent man. They repeatedly ignored tips and pleas from the FBI that they should investigate the Curry gang for the killing. The FBI said they had wiretaps and informant info. But Johnny Curry was married to Mayor Coleman Young’s favorite niece. As I explain in detail in the book, any police investigation involving Young’s family could be a career-ender. There was more to it than job insecurity, though. Johnny Curry later admitted to the FBI he had bribed Inspector Gil Hill, the head of the Homicide Section, to ensure the investigation didn’t get near the Curry drug gang.
An important element I didn’t know in 1988 was the role of Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—in the homicide investigation. Wershe had told his FBI handlers he was present for a conversation in which Wyman Jenkins and Sidney Goodwin (deceased) admitted their roles in the death of Damion Lucas. I knew about Wershe’s involvement in the drug trade and association with the Currys, but it wasn’t until years later that I found out about his extensive work as a paid informant for the FBI. The Damion Lucas killing and White Boy Rick’s role in trying to prosecute the case wound up as the subject of crisis meetings at the very top of the FBI and Justice Department. You can read the full account of this miscarriage of justice and police corruption in Prisoner of War: The Story of White Boy Rick and the War on Drugs.