The Life and Crimes of Jimmy Chagra Part 3

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. We last heard the inside story of the enormous Folly Cove marijuana smuggling operation. Gary continues this six-part series in Part 3 where he tells several harrowing stories of Chagra’s bold marijuana smuggling capers.

In the Fall of 1976, we can see the beginning of the end for Jimmy Chagra. At that time, Jimmy made friends with two Las Vegas-based private pilots that often flew him to Vegas on gambling junkets. He recruited Jerry Wilson and Dick Joyce pilots to help fly in loads. Wilson will go on to invent and become fabulously wealthy from inventing the Soloflex. Chagra recruited these two pilots to fly Colombian weed from the Cayman Islands. They were both private pilots in Las Vegas, and Jimmy had used their air service when he flew back and forth between El Paso and Las Vegas on gambling junkets. By 1976, Jerry Wilson was flying a DC-4 and Dick Joyce a Cessna 310. The DEA had put trackers on other planes used by these men, but not the new DC-4 and Cessna. In December 1976, DEA and Customs had information Chagra was expecting shipments from Colombia, and they were probably going to a rural area around Ardmore, Oklahoma. This is a middle size town about halfway between Ok City and Dallas Ft. Worth.

On December 30, 1976, Dick Joyce landed his Cessna 310 in New Orleans, told Customs he was coming in from the Cayman Islands, and headed to Ok City. Agents found no drugs on this plane. They alerted DEA and an army of DEA and Customs agents, and the Air Controllers went on the alert as Joyce took off. They tracked him as he headed north through Texas. At about the same time, other air traffic controllers had a request from a DC-4 for a place in Texas to refuel. A DC 4 is a huge plane with 4 propeller-driven engines. The pilot claimed he was carrying Radioactive waste. Th DC-4 landed, refueled, and took off again before anyone could get there. Next, Ft. Worth air controllers saw blips for two planes traveling parallel heading north. One was a DC-4, and the other was Dick Joyce in his Cessna 310. Customs and the DEA were all over this. Joyce and Wilson were using a known scam called the piggyback formation. A plane with a known destination would fly close to the plane carrying the contraband to appear as one plane. When they reached the destination, the aircraft with the narcotics drops down quickly while the other empty plane continued the planned route. It was New Year’s Eve, but the DEA assembled a large ground crew who drove to Ardmore, OK, and alerted the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigations. This combined force blasted in the early morning hours toward Ardmore. The DC-4 lost one engine, and for unknown reasons, both planes landed at a small airport just south of Ardmore. This gave the agents the exact location. When they arrived, the cops stopped 4 U-Haul trucks and drivers with the marijuana. They caught the pilots and two others driving away from the scene in rental cars. The authorities arrested ten men and recovered 17,000 lbs of pot in 276 burlap bags. The searches on the U-Haul trucks were shaky, and they would have difficulty linking the pilots with the planes. They missed Jimmy Chagra at the scene. Jimmy’s brother, Lee Chagra, will coordinate the legal defense.

Before the El Paso 10 trial, as they became known, another unfortunate event occurred in Colombia. The Colombians fronted the load lost at Ardmore, and Jimmy had to make good. The Colombian supplier was Lionel Gomez, who operated out of Santa Marta, Colombia. This small city on the northeast coast is one of the points nearest to the Caymans and other Caribbean Islands. Chagra sent one of the Ardmore defendants, Jerry Wilson, and another pilot down to get another load. This plane was overloaded, and they crashed on takeoff. Wilson was injured but not badly, while the co-pilot burned over 70% of his body and was taken...