jimmy chagra daughters

He said he would meet her at home in a couple of hours. October 2022 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? Some in the legal community thought he was too special, too outspoken. The case against Stricklin appeared to be nothing more than a rehash of the long-discredited Tennessee indictment mushed together with evidence from the deal for which Stricklin was serving time. As Boyd must have realized, Kerr and Lee Chagra were natural enemies. The verdict in the Tucson trial had been sublime: in a highly publicized, multicount bank fraud indictment, Lee had walked his man on every count. When Joe and Lee had drawn up their partnership, the arrangement was that they would share all revenues and losses, but Joe hadnt counted on sharing Lees gambling losses. [2][22][6] He was the first federal judge to die by assassination in over a century. Instead, this flimsy, highly prejudicial document was destined to dog both Lee Chagra and his nemesis, Judge John Wood, to their graves. One of his key tactics was to source the details of a model of the apartment complex where Wood was shot, built for $11 million by the prosecution. Lee had been involved with Jimmy in his drug smuggling and the killers took $450,000 that was owed to Joe Bonanno for a drug deal. Oscar Goodman and Joe Chagra were Jimmys attorneys. On five minutes notice, Caesars would dispatch a Learjet to fetch one or both of the Chagras. Some speculated that they omitted Lee Chagra because he was from El Paso and had a Spanish surname. At the intersection of Broadway a mint-green van blocked his route. Patsy, the second, was the miracle baby, born against all odds and medical opinions; on the morning of her birth Abdou walked barefoot to the summit of Sierra del Cristo Rey and dropped to his knees and thanked the Virgin. The consensus had always been that Jimmy Chagra would never amount to much. All the drawers were open and papers were scattered on the floor. They checked out of the hotel that same night and moved to the Aladdin, where Lee had a $250,000 line of credit. On August 31, 1977, Lee Chagra appeared in Judge Woods court to file a motion of discovery, asking that the judge turn over DEA reports, customs reports, grand jury probes, any material that would reveal when Stricklin was supposed to have engaged in continuing criminal activity. 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. A few years ago, the director of El Paso customs acknowledged: If we stopped all smuggling activity right now, the economies of two cities would fall flat on their faces., Millions of dollars worth of goods are smuggled daily across the three main bridges connecting Jurez and El Paso. He liked to mainline speed and supported his habit by organizing a small-time burglary-robbery ring using young black soldiers from Fort Bliss. And, of course, Jimmy Chagra. Would you ask Kerr to take a lie detector test if someone tried to kill me? he demanded. It took almost a year for all the money to work its way back to Jimmy and his partners. The door was partially open, but the office appeared empty. One day while Vivian was there, they delivered a dozen red roses to the room. 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. Lee and Joe began to consider filing a harassment suit against Wood, Kerr, and various federal agents. At the same time a swell of excitement seemed to rumble from the floor, and people pushed to get a look at the action. When Clark arrived downstairs with his luggage, he saw Lee at one of the blackjack tables, arguing with a Teamster guy who was apparently in charge of credit for the casino. When Lee was murdered sixteen years later, Charles Alan Wright, one of the countrys leading authorities on constitutional law, called him one of the few students who stand out in my memory., There was never any doubt that when Lee passed the state bar exam he would join Jo Annies brother, Sib Abraham, who had finished law school the previous year and had already set up his practice in El Paso. Uncle Lou, who had recently been paroled in California, had a drug habit of long standing. It was not the kind of clutter Lee Chagra would leave. 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. Lee turned the channel selector to the camera over the alley entrance. He worked his way through the University of Texas law school, graduating fourth in his class in 1962. Jimmy had ruined it. Lee referred to it as the mansion that Jack built. It was 6500 square feet, with pool and stables, electronically operated gates, and closed-circuit television monitors. It looked as though Lee had struck gold, but quicksand might have been closer to the truth. Hughes knew that it would be several hours before Lee worked himself into the proper frenzy. Lee counted out $75,000, slipped it into his coat pocket, and headed for his clandestine appointment. [7][13] He had dealings with the Patriarca crime family and Joseph Bonanno, the retired head of the Bonanno crime family. [10][4], Jimmy got into drug smuggling in 1969 and became one of the largest smugglers in the United States, trafficking drugs from Mexico and Colombia by plane and boat. For some unexplained reason, the three assailants (apparently there was a third behind the wheel) raced from the scene without bothering to walk five or six feet and make sure that Kerr was dead. He wanted to indict De La Torre on five counts of perjury in an attempt to add another 25 years to the sentencein effect, requiring him to defend his story to a second jury. The greatest job of bullshit advocacy Ive ever seen, Clark Hughes said of Lees performance. Catherine Chagra was the daughter of Jimmy Chagra, a Las Vegas high-roller and drug trafficking kingpin once named the Pablo Escobar of weed. After her father For the time being, the Jerry Johnson episode played itself out in obscurity, but the Chagra name burst into the headlines in the opening days of 1977. Whatever the maximum penalty was, that was generally what he gave. Lee didnt appear to like Lou Esper, but he was one of the few people in town who tolerated him. If she realized how pressed he had been for money in recent months, she didnt show it. This wasnt an unusual request: just a week before, Lee had given Sandy $50,000 to carry around in her tote bag, ostensibly for safekeeping. Lee was lying face up on the floor, blood trickling from his mouth. Where do you get off? Now the government was trying to prove that Johnson had helped smuggle a pound of heroin out of Mexico. Coming as it did in the midst of his misery, Lees brilliant defense of the Ardmore bunch had to be his most satisfying victory. Lee was the first college graduate in his family, and the first professional. Joe Chagra also went to prison for his role in the assassination. Although Jo Annie appeared at the federal courthouse with $50,000 in bail money, Lee was obliged to spend the night with Georgie Taylor, Jack Stricklin, and virtually the entire hierarchy of El Paso drug trafficking. Lee was preoccupied this morning. Over the years lawyers encountered scores of cases in which citizens had been lured into crimes by what amounted to federal bounty hunters. Boyds strategy was to indict Jimmy on multiple counts and wait for him to break. Whats more, Kerr and Wood and the entire apparatus of the federal government were breathing down his neck. When Patsy, who at one time weighed 180 pounds, finally worked up the courage to wear a swimsuit in public, Jimmy humiliated her mercilessly. Visions of the 1973 fiasco in Nashville that had almost ruined his law career danced through his mind. Any craps! she shouted, throwing a $5 chip on the table. Lee flew to Florida and set up a dummy corporation for Jimmy. No Mafia figures were ever indicted. [36][37] However, his sister Patsy stated that he was not in the witness protection program at the time of his death. He was living in a trailer camp in Mesa, Arizona. Heres What We Want at the Park. Chagra: The King of Dope Drugs, Deceit and Dirty Darlings, WATCH: Indiana father arrested on live TV after toddler is seen with gun. He decided on James Kerr, one of the assistant U.S. attorneys he had inherited from the Republican regime. He was later tried and acquitted in the assassination but received an additional sentence for obstruction of justice. He and Clark went back to the suite for a while. Now it was the judge who was having difficulty. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. A major law firm that always invited the top six UT law graduates to a spring gala invited only five in 1962. By New Years Day it was the top story in town, and the defendants were being called the El Paso Ten. Written by Catherine Chagra, An electronic current unbolted the door. Hitman Charles Harrelson actor Woody Harrelsons father assassinated Wood outside the judges home in May 1979. The model just had the bare branches., Catherine Chagra's 2015 book. As Lee reached for the dice, he recited a spiel that was also part of his ritual. As his friend Clark Hughes warned him, One of the problems with being a criminal attorney is that all your clients are crooks. Fortunately the glass was shatter-proof. He was not very good at suffering alone, and friends and family visited him almost constantly. Jurors heard hours worth of tape recordings and more than 500 pages of documents were presented. Its riddled with ethnic stereotyping of Lebanese men as reckless womanizers and Lebanese women as subservient slaves to their men. Kerr was maneuvering his car around the obstacle when the rear doors of the van opened and two gunmen started firing. Death came in Mesa, Ariz., on July 25, 2008. Then, in a fashion that was typical of his relationship with Lee, Jimmy decided to take it one step farther. And yet by the end of the trial, a majority of the jurors refused to find the defendants guilty. The Mafia! [21] His drug case went to trial and Chagra was found guilty in August 1979 and sentenced to 30 years. The agent had wormed his way into the confidence of one of Lees protgs, a singer and part-time actor named Joe Renteria who was hot to start his own smuggling ring. Jimmy became involved in marijuana trafficking, with ties to a New England crime organization. Two of Chagras daughters, Christa and Catherine, now live in Smithville. It is like I am reading about a third person.. The investigation cost more than $11 million. Drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, accused of paying a hitman $250,000 to kill a federal judge, retained Las Vegas attorney Oscar Goodman to defend him. Lee adopted a wardrobe suitable to his imagea black cowboy hat, fancy handmade boots, and an assortment of expensive jewelry, including a gold bracelet that spelled the word freedom. 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. Again, Lee sounded as though he had something else on his mind. If Jo Annie was conscious of this, she moved among them without rancor, beautifully composed and self-possessed. Clark was painfully aware that all serious gamblers harbored deep and irrational superstitions: once hed seen Lee go berserk because a Chinaman approached the table. The next morning FBI agents called on Lee Chagra, confiscated his gun collection, and asked him to take a lie detector test. Lees limit was $3000, and he would have played for $10,000 had Caesars Palace allowed it. It would be lost until the October flood, after which widower Jim McCulloch, after going through belongings hed moved into a storage unit, would place a call beginning, Cathy, youre not going to believe what I found., Going through things hed moved into the unit, McCulloch happened upon a box labeled Chagra.. It was almost midnight when the Black Striker made his appearance on the casino floor. 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 Goodman, former mayor and at the time Chagras defense attorney, will join the late mobsters daughter, Catherine, to revisit Chagra could win or lose more in a single session at a Vegas crap table than Kerr made in a year. There wasnt any Mr. Big, Johnson acknowledged, but if the narcs preferred to look at it that way, Lee Chagra was a good a name as any. For the most part, 1978 turned out to be just a continuation of the long slide that had begun in 1977. His cowboy hat was pushed forward until the brim almost touched his nose, and shaggy locks of graying hair spilled over his collar. Lee stared out the limo window at the blur of cold neon. Lee had always been our strength., Lee couldnt shake the feeling that something or someone was stalking him. Stricklin started peddling lids when they were still lidsan ounce of grass in a Prince Albert tin. Whats it all for? he said out loud, and Vivian could see the tears in his eyes and hear the catch in his voice. The next year he paid taxes on $450,000, including $125,000 declared as gambling winnings. But after their father was arrested and his hundred-million dollars had disappeared, they were left penniless, at the mercy of a Texas society that vilified them. Jimmy Chagra, in another conversation recorded in prison and later transcribed, would not go quite as far, although he further muddied the waters. I blocked the door with my body, Donna recalled, but he opened it enough to see the money.. His harsh, unbending policy of sentencing and his blatant pro-prosecution posture astonished lawyers and embarrassed other judges, including those that sat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He needs you to look it over before he mails it back.. Sandy and the others began to realize that this was something truly personal; it was as though Lee were mourning his own impending death. With the agent providing invaluable assistance at every stage, Renteria and several others were drawn into the government trap. He earned a lot of money and became a high roller in Las Vegas, known for his very generous tipping. As far as having Wood killed, no way, he said. In fact, the charges were dismissed because there was no evidence to bring charges in the first place. Jo Annie was talking about divorce; she and Lee got as far as the courthouse steps before one or both backed out. Lees finances were in shambles, but he still had plenty of credit in Las Vegas. Some of them deposited large sums in the lawyers safe, against the inevitable. That was it, the last of the half-million the Black Striker had blown in Vegas the year before. But the mere act of talking on the telephone seemed to boost his confidence. No charges were filed, but it was apparent that the crash was another of Jimmys scams gone up in smoke. Later, a superseding indictment added the charge of continuing criminal enterprise. A shake-up of the entire federal drug enforcement apparatus was under way, ramrodded by Nixons ranking authority on drugs, G. Gordon Liddy. He was arrested without incident in front of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, his second home, where, according to Catherine, hed gone to seek facial reconstructive surgery. In these pictures shes 9 or thereabouts. A grand jury in Nashville had indicted Chagra and forty others on a charge of conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana. He hustled personal injury cases, divorces, wills. Part of it was paranoia, his gut instinct that some malevolent authority was watching and waiting, and part of it was the sort of perverse obstinacy that makes some men walk through a wall rather than open a door. Hughes knew these had been hard times for his friend. Checking himself again in the mirror, he would fuss with the black cowboy hat that had Lee Chagra and Freedom embossed in gold on the inside until he achieved the proper tilt and slope. On the night before he was murdered, Lee Chagra returned home to El Paso flushed with the euphoria a gambler feels when he believes his luck is changing. Liddy came up with one farfetched idea after another. WebOn 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. Lee loved being at the middle of the table, flanked by armed guards and at least one beautiful broad who would act as his lucky piece. Do you love me, do you love me? He knew the answer, but he had to hear it again. People may receive compensation for some links to products and services. All of Lees personal affairs, especially those with women, were conducted behind closed doors. We report on vital issues from politics to education and are the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations. Lee always suffered shamelessly when he was down and Jimmy was up, but this was different. 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. The next morning, a Saturday, was one of those perfect December days in El Paso when the desert air is so crisp you can hear it and the mountains loom out of the blue shadows and change colors before your eyes. Lee Chagras funeral was a microcosm of all the extremes in his life. Instead of flying in the customary small planeload of 2000 pounds from Mexico, they imported 54,000 pounds from Colombia. Chagra's third wife, Elizabeth, was found guilty of delivering $250,000 to Charles Harrelson to kill Wood. The pit boss snapped his fingers and motioned for the guards to bring the velvet ropes. There's no way a bullet could have gone through there. That old watch-me-carry-the-world smile was back on his face. The indictment was so vague as to make it impossible to respond or even to contemplate a defense. Those tapes, according to Catherine, were doctored and judged inadmissible.). A sample: Q.What about Lee Chagra? Federal agents turned up at Lees office the next morning to confiscate his gun collection and question him about the unsuccessful assassination attempt. One client who occupied a good deal of Lees time during the autumn of 1976 was Jerry Edwin Johnson, a local con man and admitted drug smuggler accused of masterminding a scheme to defraud the IRS of a quarter of a million dollars. Most afternoons as Donna and Sandy were crossing the parking lot after work, they saw her, and sometimes two or three other strippers from the Lamplighter, hurrying toward Lees office. Something about a will, about some large estate in California? He got 30 years. Catherine Chagra and her two sisters, Cindy and Christa, were the darling daughters of Jimmy Chagra, the biggest pot dealer in the history of the U.S.A., and one of the kingpins of Las Vegas casinos in the 1970s. 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. He would lend a stranger his last $100, knowing he was kissing it good-bye. Vivian died of cancer in July 1986. 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. I have never found anything, he said pleasantly, in any of these grand jury investigations. He didnt advertise the fact, but Jimmy was helping to pay for the huge cost overrun on Lees new office. Kerr preferred playing Bach fugues in the dim light of the First Presbyterian Church and going to the symphony. In Judge John Woods courtroom Kerr found the perfect forum for his crusade. It took three days for an ingenious pulley apparatus to hoist the 100-pound bales to the top of the cliffs. David Long? Lee said. Jimmys Florida operation, far from being an immediate disaster, disbanded after successfully offloading fifty tons of grass from a Colombian freighter in March. His grandfather had been an ironfisted sheriff of Bexar County when lawmen still fought off Apaches. He called her into the bedroom. They went down there, they took pictures of everything And I was able to take that model and demolish their case. Tom Foster writes about business, innovation, and creative people. The Chagra family was a big, big deal in El Paso, Texas, Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum, explained to Nevada Public Radio ahead of the event (he will be moderating). He named two of his chows Kilo and Poker., Look how sweet and dorky and innocent I look, Catherine Chagra said. The rest of it, he said, his voice sure and unwavering, represents not guilty. When an average high-stakes player sits down at one of the seven places around a blackjack table, his limit might be as high as $1000 a hand. In 1995, he appeared as himself in the movie, Casino.. But Vegas had never seen anything that surpassed the performance of Lee and Jimmy Chagra. He walked to the top of the stairs and looked down at two black men with guns. He still had $150,000 credit, but that night he went through another $70,000. 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. Looking on, Joe marveled. Wood was apparently confusing the fifty-page transcript of the secret interview with actual grand jury testimony. On October 20, 1977, as Chagra stood before the bench objecting to Judge Woods personal attack, arguing that it was totally without evidence or cause and that the resulting publicity had done great damage not only to Stricklin but to Lee himself, the judge interrupted and dropped his bomb. Wallace was sentenced to death, though this was later reduced to life in prison. Vivian did her best to smile. More likely it was because Lee, as chief justice of the student court, had spoken out against segregated dorms and football teams. So Jimmys smuggling operation must be thriving as Lees law practice crumbled. El Pasos legions of smugglersdrug smugglers in particularmanage to get themselves arrested often enough to keep law practices like Lee Chagras busy and profitable. Jo Annies own family, the Abrahams, had considerable wealth, and she continued to collect antiques and preserve an extravagant lifestyle. Though the prosecution recognized there was hardly any chance that Rick would turn on his family, James Kerr did everything in his power to put him away for 40 years. To combat what he perceived as the inroads of organized crime, Boyd needed someone tough and relentless to take over the El Paso docket as federal prosecutor. Were breathing down his neck innovation, and friends and family visited him almost constantly student court had! 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