Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. Gary Starts a six-part series documenting the life and crimes of the marijuana smuggler kingpin Jimmy Chagra. In this first episode, Gary starts a story that will eventually end with the 1979 murder of Texas Western District Court of Texas Judge John Wood, aka Maximum John. This investigation became the FBI’s most expensive operation since the JFK assassination. The Bureau collected 500,000 pieces of information, conducted 30,000 interviews, and had hundreds of hours of recorded conversations. In the end, the government convicted Woody Harrelson’s father, Charles Harrelson, of being the trigger puller, Harrelson’s wife for obtaining the murder weapon, a lawyer named Joe Chagra for conspiracy, and Elizabeth Chagra, the wife of marijuana smuggler Jimmy Chagra for delivering the payment to the wife of the hitman, Harrelson. The government charged the mastermind behind this plot, a marijuana smuggler named Jimmy Chagra. Jimmy Chagra hired famous Las Vegas mob lawyer Oscar Goodman, and in Goodman’s biggest win ever, the jury found him not guilty. Folks, get ready for a ride because I am taking you down many twists and turns through the seamy underbelly of the southwest Texas underworld.

To give you an idea of where we are going, let’s start back to the 1960s.

The 1960s counterculture demanded Marijuana, and the descendant of a Lebanese Immigrant started smuggling marijuana and made millions. His brothers, Joe and Lee Chagra went to law school and practiced criminal law in El Paso. Lee Chagra became the go-to lawyer for drug smugglers along the border. Richard Nixon started the war on drugs. An attorney named James Kerr went from private practice into the U.S. attorney’s office, and he is assigned to a court overseen by a hanging judge named John Wood, aka Maximum John, because of the draconian sentence he hands down. Jimmy Chagra is bubbling to the top of the DEA hit list because of his larger-than-life persona and gambling habits in Las Vegas. A tip to all you big-time criminals, keep a low profile.

This story contains the attempted murder of AUSA James Kerr outside his home, the murder of Lee Chagra shortly after, the arrest of Jimmy Chagra, and the murder of Judge John Wood. The investigation of these events was the most extensive and expensive FBI investigation since the JFK case in 1963. They will conduct over 30,000 interviews, gather 5000,000 pieces of information, and record hundreds of hours on hidden microphones and wiretaps.

I will start with El Paso because that city is just as much a character in this story as the individuals.

El Paso has long had the reputation as a wild west kind of town. El Paso earned this reputation over its long checkered history. It is an old town, and the Spanish built a mission here in 1659. El Paso del Rio Grande del Norte, or the Pass of the Great River of the North, became an important trading center on the south bank and will be renamed Ciudad Juarez. After Sam Houston and other settlers fought off Mexican troops, they formed the nation of Texas. Missouri merchants split off from the Sana Fe trail to carry trade goods to Juarez and south to Chihuahua City. Smugglers, bounty hunters for Comanche and Apache scalps, gamblers, and adventurers found a home in El Paso. Of all the old west cities, only El Paso maintains the reputation of being a wild city in modern times. At one time, the Director of U.S. Customs said that if he stopped all smuggling through El Paso, the economy of both sides of the border would collapse. DEA made El Paso the center of all their nationwide intelligence gathering about the international narcotics smuggling trade.

The 1970s Drug scene

During the 1970s, under President Richard Nixon, the United States started the never-ending war on drugs and promoted draconian laws to deal with drug organizations called Kingpin laws.