0:15

Pushkin Previously

0:23

on deep cover. In Michigan.

0:26

In the early nineteen eighties, an FBI

0:28

agent named Ned Timmins followed

0:30

a hunch. He believed that a drug

0:32

ring was smuggling massive amounts of pot

0:34

into America, and he thought

0:37

the local biker gangs were involved in

0:39

some way. So Ned

0:41

went undercover, using a new name, Ed

0:44

Thomas. He grew a fu mancher

0:47

mustache, wrote to Harley Davidson,

0:49

and started hanging out in roadside

0:51

honky talks all the while gathering

0:54

intel war ahead sources

0:57

up in northern Michigan bikers, and they

1:00

would talk about the bikers

1:02

would get their supply of weed when

1:04

these big shipments would come in, you know, which is fifty

1:07

thousand pounds, one hundred thousand pounds or whatever

1:09

would come into the Detroit warehouse. Ned

1:12

kept hearing chatter there's

1:15

this huge deal out there and

1:17

involved shrimp boats and barges and

1:20

airplanes, and

1:22

so I told my bosses about it, you know, and they kind

1:24

of said, yeah, you know, right, Tim,

1:26

is what he's smoking. Ned

1:29

heard that this pot might be headed to a

1:31

storage facility somewhere in Detroit,

1:34

the El Dorado of stash houses

1:37

over at the FBI. Ned's bosses

1:39

had their doubts, but Ned stayed

1:41

on the trail vintel, hanging out

1:43

with his informants. Whenever

1:46

I walked into a house or one of their

1:48

houses or hotel or where

1:51

they were, I always headed

1:53

in my head, Okay, what if this happens? What if this happened?

1:55

And I would go through a checklist of

1:58

what I would do. You

2:01

know, I had a gun,

2:03

obviously, and here

2:05

I was looking half the time. I turned

2:07

around, and those guys had guns and they're not

2:09

supposed to. Ned's main informant

2:12

was still Toby Anderson, the

2:14

violent, erratic biker slash

2:16

country western singer. Toby

2:18

was a hand garnade with a pin onw He just

2:22

just a matter of time till he's self destructed

2:24

or just died

2:26

in a hail of bullets or something. You

2:28

just you just couldn't control him. He's just crazy.

2:33

He was difficult to manage, yes, but he

2:35

was also giving that just enough,

2:38

you know, crumbs. He connect

2:40

him with other bikers. He'd helped him set up

2:42

drug busts enough so that Ned

2:44

could tell his bosses, look, I'm making

2:46

progress. Like At one point,

2:49

Toby introduces him to another criminal,

2:51

and together the three of them set up a

2:53

sting out in California. Their

2:55

plan was to get meth from some dealers

2:58

way out in the sticks. There's

3:01

a big field and there's mountains up each side,

3:04

and there's

3:07

some hail billy there

3:09

at the gate. And he

3:12

meets us and gets us through this gate

3:14

and it's you know, it's just a two track sage

3:16

brush cactus and just high

3:18

mountain desert. And

3:22

we get near the barn and outcomes

3:25

this freaking five hundred

3:27

pound pig, I mean

3:29

a big pig. And

3:32

I said, what the fuck is it you? Oh, that's the guard

3:34

hog's woman. He

3:36

said, well, he smells people if they're you

3:39

know, and the mountains are trying to survey us or whatever

3:41

hills. And that's true. A pig. He has one of

3:43

the best noses in the world. What

3:46

really surprised NED is what these hillbuildings

3:48

are feeding their prized guard pig. They'd

3:51

soak a bug onion sweet

3:53

onion in math and throw

3:55

it to the pig. The pig loved it. I mean, he's like,

3:58

you know, he wanted he wanted a fucking onion. And

4:02

you know, I didn't really trust him because he's really

4:04

fucking big, and he's got tossling shit and

4:06

this was Ned's life now and

4:09

passed a drugged up pig. Slide

4:12

open the burned door and it's all Hey, pull

4:14

out a bail in the middle, and you can crawl through the

4:17

You crawl through the tunnel, through the hay bales,

4:19

and you come into a big room. There's

4:22

thirty stations set up for when Nick cook, Ned

4:25

said it was the biggest meth lab he'd ever seen.

4:27

He handed off the intel and a few

4:29

weeks later the authorities busted the place,

4:32

and it also clarified something for Ned.

4:35

Yeah, he was a full time undercover FBI

4:37

agent trying to figure out if the rumors

4:39

he'd been hearing were true. But he

4:42

also had another, maybe equally

4:44

important job title now babysitter.

4:51

We're driving someplace and all of

4:53

a sudden, Toby's in the back seat and pulls out a gun.

4:56

Well, he could have just easily popped one in the back

4:58

of my head, but I

5:01

was so pissed at him the way you pulled over, took

5:03

the gun away from and threw it off the cliff. I

5:07

mean, he knew he had he had his between his legs.

5:09

You know he knew he got spanked. I'm

5:17

Jake Halbern and this is deep Cover

5:21

Episode two. What will

5:23

the neighbors think? Ned

5:52

kept pushing Toby for intel, and sometimes,

5:55

apparently Toby would just lose it

5:57

on Ned, saying that he was scared their

5:59

cover would be blown, that word

6:01

might get out among Detroit's biker gangs

6:03

that Toby was an informant and that they were

6:05

working together. In

6:08

ned noir novel, he depicts

6:10

one of Toby's panicked rants. Toby

6:13

tells him they'll kill us, Bros. We

6:15

fuck up and they'll kill us. You understand,

6:19

no one will even find the bodies, Just

6:21

shoot us and stuck us in a Vada ascid

6:23

or some shit. You have any idea

6:25

how fucking dangerous this shit is? Ned

6:28

nodded, but Toby grabbed him by the arm,

6:30

leaned in close, close enough he could

6:33

smell the ether, the cigarettes, and the bo

6:36

do you bros, you fucking butter

6:38

because it's me and you out there dangling right

6:41

over the goddamn edge. The

6:45

dialogue may sound a bit stilted, but Ned

6:47

insists the essence is accurate, and

6:50

that in a way, the distrust was mutual.

6:53

Ned was keenly aware of how dangerous,

6:56

how precarious their relationship was becoming.

6:59

You don't just go out in an

7:01

hour and do something and get a fugitive

7:03

or whatever. We work for days.

7:05

Sometimes we're staying at hotels, we're traveling,

7:07

we're flying together, we're dry together. You

7:11

know, if you don't trust that guy, you

7:14

get a problem. Because my

7:17

neck is at risk and his neck

7:19

is at risk, and both of us are at risk.

7:22

So I better trust

7:24

him and he'd better trust me. For the stuff we

7:26

were doing. Despite the risks,

7:29

Ned was increasingly comfortable in his new

7:31

habitat not just that he

7:33

kind of liked it, liked being ed.

7:35

Thomas liked riding as

7:37

Harley, staying out late in the bars,

7:40

gathering intel. I must

7:42

though, because I was doing it. There's a lot of

7:44

adrenal into it. You're out

7:47

there on the edge, you know, hanging

7:49

on to the edge of the cliff with your fingernails all

7:52

the time. No

7:56

one at the office was exactly telling

7:58

Ned to go to these lengths, but he

8:01

felt that he needed to be on duty all

8:03

the time to do his job right. You

8:05

know, we did a zillion other drug

8:07

deals, so we always had something going

8:09

on? What does this due to your home life?

8:12

Just trays it. You

8:14

live it. You live at twenty four to seven, your

8:17

eyes waiting for the next call, whether they wreck

8:20

a car, steal a car, break into

8:22

a house, shoot somebody,

8:24

stab somebody. It's

8:26

it's analysts. It's like taking care

8:29

of juvenile delinquents

8:31

that are adult killers.

8:35

Back home, Ned's wife Kathy was

8:37

discovering that her husband's alter ego

8:40

was taking over ed Thomas

8:43

now needed his own room.

8:45

We had three bedrooms. One

8:48

was more like a guest room, and I

8:50

think we had a desk in there and stuff like that.

8:52

I recall that he said, Hey, yeah, they're

8:54

going to put in an undercover phone

8:56

here at the house. You know, so if it rings, you know, you're I'm

8:59

gonna you know, here's your name, and

9:01

just you know, answer it and be cool, you

9:03

know, act like you're my girlfriend. I go, why do I have to act

9:05

like me your girlfriend? Why can't I just be your

9:07

wife? Kathy

9:10

was an FBI agent in Detroit too,

9:12

and she'd also gone undercover just

9:15

once. I did one undercover

9:17

thing one time, and I was

9:19

not at all comfortable with it. I felt like everybody

9:21

can look at me and see that I'm a cop. Kathy

9:23

had spent the night at a gambling joint run

9:26

by the mob, getting to know the criminals.

9:28

Then the cops busted in. Everyone

9:30

hands up against the wall. Then they

9:32

told Kathy you're good, you can put your hands

9:34

down now. But I was I

9:37

just was like, no, I don't. I'm so embarrassed

9:39

now in front of these people who have been so nice

9:42

to me all night, and I just found it out

9:44

of there. I was just like, yeah, don't ever make

9:46

me do something like that again. That's not me. I'm not comfortable

9:48

in that situation. I feel like a

9:50

big fat liar is written like all across

9:53

my forehead. Her husband, Ned, he

9:55

didn't seem to have that problem. He seemed

9:57

comfortable with the pressure and the deception.

10:00

Or maybe he was more than

10:02

that. I think Ned always

10:05

was what one of his supervisors

10:09

gcribed Neda as an edge worker. Ned

10:12

was always right at the edge of

10:15

going off to the criminal side.

10:19

And then one day he did the unthinkable.

10:23

He brought the criminals home with him

10:25

to his leafy, upscale suburban house.

10:27

Just shows up with Toby and one of his

10:29

sidekicks. They all just sauntered

10:31

up the driveway together. Well,

10:34

they looked just

10:37

like motorcycle guys.

10:40

The hair, the

10:42

the you know, instead of having a belt having

10:45

belts that are like chains or whatever.

10:48

Their jeans are not like fashionable.

10:50

Their jeans are just you know, beat

10:53

up jeans, and

10:55

and you know they've got flu Manchu

10:57

mustaches and long hair. They're

11:00

not trying to give an appearance of like

11:04

good looking. I

11:06

thought, oh my god, what will my name

11:09

think. I hope they didn't see them come

11:12

in because they look like really

11:14

rough characters. And my

11:18

neighbors belonged to Oakland Hills

11:20

Country Club. No

11:24

one and I truly

11:26

mean no one here would ever mistake

11:29

Toby or any of his buddies for golfers.

11:34

This was like the ultimate intrusion

11:37

into my life, into our life. It

11:39

just is unheard

11:41

of, you know, it

11:44

just was. It was not appropriate,

11:46

and it was it was I felt

11:48

it was dangerous. People could

11:51

could have you know, followed them

11:53

or seen them, or you know, now they

11:55

know where we live. Okay,

11:57

so that's Kathy the homemaker worrying.

12:00

But here's Kathy the FBI agent,

12:03

and she's also worried. I had

12:05

a lot of my own informants, and they would

12:08

never have come

12:10

to my home or I never even

12:12

would have like lunch with them or something.

12:16

I mean, I'm an FBI agent, I'm

12:18

a law enforcement person. Why would they even want

12:20

to sit down any place and be seen

12:22

with me. You've just compromised

12:25

that confidential relationship.

12:28

I spoke to a number of Ned's former colleagues,

12:30

and they pretty much all agreed

12:33

with Kathy. No one brought an informant

12:35

home with them. It was too risky.

12:38

Oddly enough, the one person I spoke with from

12:40

Ned's FBI days who had also done

12:43

this was his direct supervisor.

12:45

He told me that he and Ned were quote unquote

12:48

rebels. For his part, Ned

12:50

defends himself, saying it was a judgment

12:52

call, the decision to bring Toby home. It

12:55

was calculated. Well, it depends on

12:57

how much trust you having your sources, and

13:00

that also builds trusts with the sources,

13:03

the sources that can get you killed any second.

13:06

Well, I'm curious, did you do it just out of kind

13:08

of professional relationship building

13:10

or did you do it because these were your friends

13:13

and this was your wife. I

13:16

think to build a bond with the

13:18

sources you depend on those

13:20

guys not to stand up and say, hey, he's a fucking

13:22

FBI agent and

13:25

you have to build this bond. So

13:28

whatever I was doing seemed

13:30

to work. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. I

13:32

can't teach it. I can't say that's what to do.

13:35

But that's what I did. Kathy

13:38

she didn't like it, but she didn't

13:40

confront Ned or overrule him. And

13:43

Ned never really asked for permission

13:45

either. Oh no, no,

13:48

no, no, you know no. See, Ned never

13:50

checked in with me first on anything. Our

13:54

marriage was more like, hey, look, we're

13:56

going to move to a new house. Come here, I'll

13:59

take you and you will look at it. My

14:01

marriage was more traditional

14:04

in that regard that, you know, he said what

14:06

we were going to do back then.

14:09

I'm going to blame this on the times a lot, but

14:11

probably also the way I was raised. It

14:13

just did not occur to me to object

14:17

to my husband. He has

14:19

this, he's got this, It'll be fine.

14:21

But this wasn't a one off occasion. Ned

14:24

brought Toby home with him multiple times.

14:27

Kathy remembers them all hanging out on

14:29

the backdeck Cookenburger's

14:32

Super Casual. It

14:34

was kind of the opposite of the whole undercover

14:36

stick, you know, like in Donnie Brasco,

14:39

where the FBI agent has two completely

14:42

separate lives, one as a gangster and

14:44

one is a suburban dad with a teflon

14:47

firewall separating them.

14:49

It was almost as if Ned Timmins

14:52

and Ed Thomas were morphing

14:54

into a single being. Perhaps

14:57

this was inevitable given Ned's strategy

14:59

of building trust, but this

15:01

isn't how Kathy sees it. You

15:03

know, you don't have to choose that path. You don't

15:05

have to choose to work

15:07

a case in that way, you don't have to

15:10

choose to go deep cover. You

15:12

know, it all evolves. And

15:15

but I know for him, he felt like

15:18

it was just spinning into the

15:20

next, into the next, into the next, And he

15:23

told me that he felt like he didn't

15:25

know how he was ever going to get out of it. In

15:28

the midst of all of this, Ned's game

15:30

plan paid off big time

15:33

when he gets the break you've been waiting for, and

15:35

it involved, of all people, Toby's

15:38

little brother, a guy who

15:40

went by the nickname Shine.

15:54

One day Ned got would seem like a big

15:57

lead from Toby, though on its face

15:59

it seemed a bit far fetched

16:02

Toby says, Hey, I gotta tell my brother

16:05

is into something really big, but

16:09

he won't let us near it because he's afraid. Now, Robert,

16:13

so what is it? He says. It has to do with

16:15

airplanes and boats and chapter

16:17

trailer loads of dope coming to Detroit. And

16:20

Toby knew he was into something big. Ned

16:23

didn't know exactly what to make of this. Planes,

16:27

boats, tractor trailers

16:29

all filled with weed. Was

16:31

it possible that Toby the Walking

16:33

hand Grenade really had a brother

16:36

who was a big time criminal orchestrating

16:38

all of this? If this was true,

16:41

how had Ned not picked up on this sooner. Toby's

16:49

brother went by the name Shine. His

16:51

real name was Clinton Anderson. He

16:54

died in the late nineties, so I had

16:56

to kind of piece together a picture of who

16:58

he was. I don't have the

17:00

background as to why they called him Shine.

17:03

About my uncle Clint.

17:05

In my memories of him, he

17:08

was a ted. This

17:11

is Jesse Anderson, Toby's son. Shine

17:13

was his uncle, and Jesse loved

17:15

his uncle, adored him.

17:18

I talked to a bunch of people who knew Shine

17:20

well, and they all described

17:22

him pretty much as this big, lovable

17:24

guy. One person said he would have made a

17:26

perfect Santa Clause. Another

17:28

said he looked like Wilfred Grimley, you

17:31

know, the grandfather of the actor who started

17:33

all the Quaker Oats commercials. When

17:35

things got rough at home for Jesse, he

17:38

actually went to live with his uncle Clint

17:40

for a while. He loved being there. Geez,

17:43

just like anywhere else, right, kids running

17:45

around playing football in the front yard, you

17:48

know, watching football, watching

17:50

baseball, you know, life

17:53

in the seventies and early eighties,

17:55

gambling, playing dart, shooting pool, you

17:58

know, normal way of life. Little Jesse

18:01

had never seen a dad who could be depended on

18:03

before. I guess I wanted that for

18:05

my dad. And that's that's what I always appreciated

18:07

about my uncle Clint was you know, he was

18:10

I recall him always being there, and

18:13

I recall him always um,

18:16

you know, never having to worry m

18:18

like I did with my dad and my immediate

18:21

you know, a line of sight and what I recall.

18:23

And maybe I was blinded by that because

18:25

I was just so happy to be with my you know, have a

18:28

family, have a bad wake up, go to school,

18:30

not necessarily have to worry about anything, right. It

18:33

was. It was great. Jesse says

18:35

the men and his family tended to be hard

18:37

and have a short fuse. But I

18:39

don't remember my uncle Clinton like that at all.

18:41

I mean, again, for me, you

18:44

know the way that I look at my uncle Clint was

18:46

it was much like it was much like a savior.

18:51

Shine had a son named Adam.

18:54

He was Jesse's older cousin. It

18:56

took me a long time to track him down.

18:58

One night he finally agreed to speak

19:01

by phone. All right, Jake, give

19:04

me a second here. He says that Shine

19:06

was a jack of all trades, a salesman

19:09

and sold cars and boats too.

19:11

Though Shin didn't talk about his work

19:13

a ton, you

19:16

know, his work and his

19:19

family's subarate. He was a good

19:21

guy, but he

19:25

had an edge. Shine was a striver.

19:27

He was always looking for something beyond

19:29

the working class suburb where they started out,

19:32

a place called Melvindale, a town

19:34

dominated by the nearby Ford, GM

19:37

and Chrysler plants. Melvindale

19:40

was I fall it a factory

19:42

town. Pretty much everybody there worked

19:45

and worked for the Big three and was

19:47

working class, good people. But

19:50

he was kind of like taking me

19:52

out of that environment, showing me that there was more

19:55

like you know, you can't achieve more.

19:57

No, no, you don't have to just be a line worker

20:00

all your life. Adam had a lot

20:02

of memories from that time, like when his dad

20:04

came home with a new gadget, a mysterious

20:06

briefcase filled with meters and electrical

20:09

wires. The device was known

20:11

as a p SE, which

20:13

stood for Psychological Stress

20:15

evaluator. It

20:18

was an alternative to the traditional lie detector,

20:21

and it could be used discreetly, so

20:23

it didn't require hooking the subject up to any

20:25

wires or anything. Supposedly,

20:27

a skilled operator could use it to pick

20:30

up on micro tremors in your

20:32

voice. I spoke to a lot

20:34

of people who knew Shine and remembered

20:37

vividly him showing up with

20:39

his briefcase and testing them.

20:43

Oh yes, everybody took

20:45

a test. Everybody. There

20:47

was a guy that always carried

20:49

around this sort of big boxy briefcase.

20:52

As I recall, Oh yeah, he could scarely

20:54

on it. Sure he was a good bullshitter, you know it

20:56

all a little nervous spot taking this Dagone

20:58

thing he asked your questions. I

21:01

guess it works. Ask you what your

21:03

name is and you tell him. Then you

21:05

tell him a lie and so it

21:07

gives him was a distinction of between

21:10

the truth and lie,

21:13

whether it works or now, I'd scare the shit out of you.

21:15

So I imagine it would keep people straight. And

21:18

I'm sure he was one of the most valuable tools

21:20

they had, you know, in doing US.

21:27

Shine had graduated from a special course

21:30

and now he was a trained PSC

21:32

operator. He took it seriously,

21:35

and Adam, like any kid, was curious.

21:38

So there was something different. It was interesting. I

21:40

didn't know why he's doing it on cool.

21:42

Dad got a new job, you know, and

21:45

the job came with perks like

21:47

this. One time his dad took him on a business

21:49

trip. They flew down to Houston, Texas.

21:52

Together. They stayed at this cool hotel

21:54

that was connected to a big shopping mall,

21:56

and at some point Shine tells his son,

21:59

He's like, hey, I gotta go out for

22:01

a little while, you know, don't

22:04

don't leave the room, don't answer the door. Alone

22:07

in his hotel room, Adam watched TV. Minutes

22:10

turned to hours, and he began to think about

22:12

what his dad had said. Don't answer

22:15

at the door. Why not? Who

22:18

was it that might come knocking. Adam

22:20

wasn't worried exactly, but he began

22:22

to wonder what was his dad

22:25

up to. But I think maybe

22:28

whoever he was working with, they had another

22:30

room in the same hotel, so they could

22:32

have been just down the hall. I

22:35

don't believe he left. I think he just grabbed

22:38

his machine and you know, went

22:40

to another room. Adam

22:42

didn't ask any questions, and he didn't give

22:44

it too much thought at the time, but eventually

22:47

he started to think back to moments like this

22:49

and wonder maybe what his father

22:51

did was not entirely on the op and up. I

22:54

mean, who was paying him to carry around that briefcase

22:56

anyway. In fact, clues

22:58

began to surface that Shine was much more

23:01

than just a suburban dad with a mysterious

23:03

job. One of these clues

23:06

turned up a thousand miles to the South

23:08

Way down in Louisiana and

23:10

a lonely by you very far

23:13

from Detroit. As

23:36

Ned continued to investigate the bikers

23:38

in Detroit, detectives in

23:40

Louisiana, we're looking into a big

23:42

smuggling job. It all began

23:45

with a guy named Dave Ware. Yeah,

23:47

I was a helicopter pilot on

23:49

the sign to Louisiana State Police in

23:52

our region too southwest

23:54

Louisiana. One day, Dave

23:56

gets a tip about an abandoned barge, so

23:59

he goes looking for it. Flies up a lonely

24:01

stretch of a Vermilion River, a seventy

24:03

mile long by you in southern Louisiana.

24:06

It's flat, You've got agriculture

24:08

fields and then area. It's

24:10

a heavy marsh and thick

24:13

jungle type area. So

24:16

they were just choppering along. We

24:19

looked down and we see this huge barge

24:21

tied off with some rope next to some trees.

24:24

And we're like, well, that's odd. And

24:27

we were kind of scratching our heads what to

24:30

do. And I said, well, I'll just land on the barge.

24:32

I mean, it's like landing on aircraft carrier. So

24:35

they land on the barge, they get out of the chopper,

24:38

they start poking around. Sure

24:40

enough, they find a sealed hatch

24:43

welded into the deck, hidden beneath

24:45

some coils of rope. And

24:47

so I went to the cargo hole of my aircraft

24:50

and dug it my little two bag I always carred,

24:52

and got a screwdriver and started digging

24:55

at this rubber ceilant and you gotta menage.

24:57

The sun was out and it was hot.

25:00

And when I've popped that

25:02

ceiling, the spew just

25:04

you know, morstar had come up and the smell

25:07

of marijuana. And we looked at each other and smile

25:09

and said bingo. The

25:12

barge itself was quite large and basically

25:15

empty. All that remained with the dregs

25:18

some psyche bales that had somehow gotten a wet

25:20

at the bottom of the boat. Apparently

25:22

the rest of the load, totally a few

25:24

hundred thousand pounds, had all

25:26

been unloaded, successfully dry

25:29

and ready to smoke. A

25:32

narcotics agent named Roy Fruget

25:35

took up the investigation. So

25:37

we walked on the barge and we saw

25:39

marijuana sees all over it. We looked through some

25:42

drawers. We found a Panamanian flag,

25:44

we found a Colombian flag. Well,

25:47

you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize

25:49

that we stumbled up on something that was large

25:51

and scale and that it was international.

25:55

Eventually, the agents figured out that

25:57

a local marine contractor had

25:59

been hired to move the barge up the river,

26:02

and as luck would have it, the contractors

26:04

had a receipt with the customer's

26:06

callback number on it, trace

26:08

the hallback number and it went to a

26:12

small grocery store in a rural

26:14

area in Judice,

26:16

Louisiana, and the name of the store

26:18

was the Country Boy Grocery Store. So

26:21

we went to the Country Boy Grocery

26:24

Store, and I'm talking about a small building.

26:26

It had a couple of gas pumps in front, had

26:28

a small meat market inside. They

26:31

specialized in Cajun food like stuffed

26:33

chickens, buddha and cracklings,

26:35

that sort of thing. So we talked to the owner because

26:37

this guy's first language,

26:39

which Cajun French, and he

26:41

said, with his accent, he

26:43

said, you know, in the last three months, there's

26:46

been a lot of foreigners in my store.

26:49

What do you mean by foreigners? He said, you

26:51

know, he said, out of towner's people with

26:53

blonde hair and blue eyes, and

26:55

ten he said, you know, Florida

26:58

looking people. So

27:00

turns out these Florida looking people

27:03

had rented a couple of houses nearby. The

27:06

agents got search warrants. There

27:08

was a three bedroom, two bath ranch

27:11

style house. It was close to

27:13

the Country Bar grocery store, and

27:15

when we hit it, it had lots and lots

27:17

of bunk beds, lots of beer bottles,

27:20

lots of cans of beer, some'm

27:22

half empty, half eaten sandwiches

27:25

on the floor. I remember one of my guys

27:27

said it looked like a scene from Animal House.

27:30

Roy starts poking around in the living room

27:33

and on the coffee table, I saw a large

27:36

red book and a hard bound

27:38

New York Times World Atlas. I

27:40

opened it up, started looking at it, looking

27:43

actually for the Gulf of Mexico. Saw

27:46

that there was a chart with

27:48

a pen marking

27:51

places through the Gulf of Mexico, and then I backed

27:53

it up and it went down to barn Kill, Columbia.

27:57

It was quite literally

27:59

mapped out in front of them, evidence

28:01

of an international syndicate with rats

28:03

for smoking tons of drugs into the United

28:06

States. But everyone is

28:08

gone. They don't have a single suspect.

28:11

Roy and his partner, Harvey Duplantis,

28:14

continued to search the house. We

28:16

found a yellow notepad with lines

28:19

on it like you would use in school, and

28:21

it didn't have any

28:23

writing on it, but it had indentations

28:25

where somebody had written on the page above

28:27

it and then tore the page off. Harvey

28:30

remembered from grade school. He took a number

28:32

two pencil out of his truck and he scratched

28:35

over the indentations and we found

28:37

a note. Of course, we didn't have the whole note,

28:39

just whatever came up that Harvey could scribble out

28:41

there, but it basically said he

28:43

was bringing more people. More people were on the

28:46

way. Harvey

28:48

kneels over the table, carefully rubbing

28:50

a pencil over the pad, deciphering

28:52

this cryptic note word by word,

28:55

the whole thing right out of a Hitchcock

28:57

movie. This is exactly what carry

28:59

Grant does in north By Northwest, and

29:03

it works. At the bottom of the

29:05

pad, there's actually a signature.

29:07

Someone wrote their name as if authorizing

29:10

these orders, and slowly the

29:12

letters of the name appear S

29:15

H, I and E.

29:19

Shine. Back

29:28

in Detroit, Ned had no idea

29:30

what had gone down in Louisiana. He

29:32

was back at the office doing a bit of good

29:34

old fashioned detective work, following

29:37

up on that tip that Toby had given him about

29:39

his brother, and the deeper Ned

29:41

dug into Shine's life, the more

29:43

he found. We're looking at what

29:45

he has, a house and cars and everything, and

29:48

no source of income. And

29:50

then we're pulling phone records, bank records

29:53

and everything, and huge deposits

29:55

of fifty to sixty thousand at a time,

29:58

and we're getting travel records

30:01

from credit cards, and

30:04

Ned says that those travel records were

30:06

suspicious. For instance, Shine

30:08

its spend some time down in the Cayman Islands,

30:11

which was known as a money laundering hub.

30:13

So might Shine be his

30:16

guy, the one Ned had been looking for

30:18

the key to it all. If Ned

30:20

was right, he had found his link to a distant,

30:23

shadowy drug network, But

30:25

it didn't seem like he had quite enough to

30:27

go on. Ned believed if

30:29

he could just sit down with Shine,

30:32

talk to him, man to man, he

30:35

might be able to work him, maybe even flip

30:37

him. He was starting to strategize,

30:39

even though he didn't have much to threaten Shine

30:41

with except maybe his badge.

30:45

It sounds like you were doing some serious

30:47

bullshitting of your own. And also

30:50

you could be barking up the wrong tree. You

30:52

don't know for sure the magnitude or the right

30:54

part of the game. Yeah, the FBI knows

30:56

a lot, but a lot of it is a game

31:00

to try to ferret out the

31:02

information you need. When

31:05

you throw down the FBI badge and credentials,

31:10

it horrifies guilty people. They

31:13

think the FBI knows everything.

31:31

Next time, a deep Cover, Ned

31:34

goes to flip Shine. Shine

31:37

had a family, and it was really a devoted

31:40

family guy. You know, I just I'm gonna

31:42

take every penny they got. I'm gonna

31:44

take the house, I'm gonna take the cars, I'm gonna take the

31:46

bank accounts. Everything's gonna

31:48

be gone. And that struck

31:50

a dagger in them.

32:11

Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith

32:13

and edited by Karen Shakerji. Our

32:15

story editor is Jack Hitt. Original

32:18

music and our theme was composed by Luis

32:21

Gara and Flawn Williams is our engineer.

32:24

Fact checking by Amy Gaines. Mia

32:26

Lobell is Pushkin's executive

32:28

producer. Ned's novel is read

32:30

by Walton Goggins. Special

32:33

thanks to Julia Barton, Heather Faine,

32:35

Carly Mcgliori Lee, Tom Mullad

32:38

Mayakining, Eric Sandler,

32:40

Maggie Taylor, Kadija Holland,

32:42

Zoe Gwenn and Jacob Weisberg

32:45

at Pushkin Industries. Special

32:47

thanks also to Jeff Singer at Stowaway

32:49

Entertainment. I'm Jake Albern