Sergeant Smack, page 21
At this point, Ike had plenty of money and he could have quit the drug trade. After all, the heat was intensifying and the law enforcement pressure mounting. But he was not going to let go of his drug ring without first getting all the money he could squeeze out of it. The U.S. heroin market was still booming and his network of dealers still clamoring for the ultra pure white snow he sold, the China White. Besides, the adventure was in his blood; he still loved living on the edge.
IKE TOLD ONE informant he wanted to buy large quantities of heroin, but he did not have many suppliers because Jack and his brother Andrew Price, who bought the heroin for the Atkinson-Jackson ring from the suppliers, were now both imprisoned. Papa San, Nitaya Jackson’s uncle, was one of Ike’s main suppliers, but Ike did not know him well. In fact, he had only met him once. One day, while he was in Bangkok, Ike got a call from Nitaya.” “Ike, you must come quickly. Papa San wants to see you. He is very sick.”
Ike rushed to Chinatown. When he got to Papa San’s place and entered his bedroom, Ike was surprised to see a frail, gentle old man, with a long wisp of beard, propped up in the bed, smoking a cigarette and looking like the paragon of perfect health. Ike and Papa San made small talk and then Papa San began sounding as if he was saying good-bye for good. “I always respected you and I wish you well,” was Papa San’s message; Ike left the meeting not sure if he would see the old man again. The next day, Ike heard the shocking news from Nitaya. Papa San was dead.
No longer having a reliable contact to the source of supply, Ike knew that his days as a big-time drug kingpin would soon come to an end. Rather than simply using couriers and the postal system, which were reliable but only moved small amounts of heroin, Ike decided he needed to find a way to smuggle bigger loads.
Ike loved teakwood, bamboo and the other exotic woods of Southeast Asia, but especially teak wood. Whenever he was in Bangkok, Ike would ship small quantities of the wood to Goldsboro, which he used to panel his home. One day, Ike ran into his old friend, Leon Ellis, a master of woodworking, and hired him to do the paneling. Leon had just got out of prison, and, as Ike recalled, he “could carve a walking cane out of a tree limb.” Watching Leon re-panel his home, Ike realized he had the craftsman who could turn his teak wood smuggling scheme into reality.
He convinced Leon that he should come to Bangkok to help him build the false bottoms in teak wood furniture that he wanted to use for his heroin shipments to the U.S. Ike attracted the trim, handsome Leon with the allure that “Thailand was a Blackman’s paradise” and helped him get a passport and Thai visa. After Leon tied up loose ends at home, they were on their way to Bangkok. Ike helped Leon obtain some basic woodworking tools from Bangkok wood workers, and Leon made some special tools for his teakwood assignment. The “Teakwood Connection” was born.
WITH THE TEAKWOOD furniture scheme in place and the postal orders still flowing to the U.S., Ike did not have to depend as much on the human element, which, with time, was becoming more and more a pain in the ass. Rudolph Jennings, Ike’s life-long friend from Goldsboro had done a masterful job of fitting and re-stitching the AWOL bags so they could hold kilos of heroin in their false bottoms. Nobody in Ike’s drug ring had ever been caught because Jennings had done shoddy craftsmanship, but he had a big personal problem. Jennings could not keep his pecker in his pants. He was another one of the band of brothers who had gone loco in paradise. He viewed Thailand as a sexual Dairy Queen, and like a glutton, greedily wanted to taste every flavor in the store. Jennings sexual addiction got so bad he did not need a Dr. Phil to recognize that he had a sexual problem.
One day Jennings told Ike that he planned to check himself into a Buddhist monastery where he hoped the solitude, the fasting and the monks’ spiritual guidance would help him break his fixation on pussy. Ike knew his old friend had a sexual problem and he gave his blessing, but wondered if reaching out for nirvana could cure a healthy Westerner living in Thailand of his lusty demons. Ike did not hear from Jennings for several days. Then one morning, while Ike was in Bangkok and at Jack’s American Star Bar, two Buddhist monks, clad in robes, heads shaven, wearing sandals, eyes downcast and looking humble, came to see him. They were from the monastery were Jennings was supposed to be undergoing therapy, Buddhist style.
“Mr. ‘Udolph (sic) escape,” one of monks told Ike in broken English.
“What do you mean, Mr. Rudolph escaped?” Ike asked.
“He no longer with us, no longer be better, Mr. Ike,” the monk explained. “Mr. ‘Udolph go pong-pong.”
Ike was puzzled. “Pong-pong? What do you mean ‘pong-pong’?”
One of the monks responded in their broken English while using hand gestures. Ike figured out that the monks had fitted “Mr. Udolph” with a chastity belt to curb his sexual appetite, but he had broken the belt and fled the monastery in lusty pursuit of carnal pleasure.
“You can’t find Rudolph?’ Ike asked, laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
The monks shook their heads. Ike suggested a couple of places that Jennings might be. The monks hurried off in search of their “patient.” They eventually found “Mr. “Udolph” on the infamous bar, nightclub and massage strip, Patpong Road (not “Pong-Pong”) and talked him into coming back to continue his “therapy.” After a couple of weeks, Jennings returned to the bar and to his job of fixing AWOL bags for heroin shipments. He seemed normal, but given the opportunities for sexual pleasure in Bangkok, Ike was never sure that his friend had cured himself of his addiction.
IKE’S OPERATION WAS undergoing some tough times, but Ike thought he had found his dream operative when he re-established contact with Freddie Thornton in 1974. Thornton would become the man Ike designated to take Smedley’s place as overseer of the Bangkok end of his drug smuggling operation in all its many forms. Ike liked Thornton the first time he saw him in Jack’s American Star Bar in 1967 and they had a brief chat about Thornton’s assignment in Thailand and life in Bangkok. Ike hoped that someday he could find a spot for Thornton in his organization. Trim and bespectacled, with short cropped hair and a military bearing, the airman carried himself well, was articulate and appeared to be the kind of military man who could undertake an assignment and complete it with efficiency.
Thornton was born in September 1935 in Alabama but called Detroit home. He was a career airman who was first assigned to Thailand at U-Tapao Air Force Base in July 1967. He eventually served three tours of duty in Thailand, rising to the rank of tech sergeant and position of crew chief responsible for the maintenance of KC-135 aircraft, a tanker-like plane that belongs to the Strategic Air Command and other aircraft while they are airborne.
Ike’s first encounter with Thornton had been friendly and purely social, but that changed three years later when Ike told Jack to ask Thornton if he would be interested in smuggling some heroin into the U.S. at the end of his tour of duty. Thornton agreed to do so, but then law enforcement picked up the trail of the Jackson-Atkinson drug ring, and Jack cancelled the plans because, as he explained to Thornton, “the heat is on me.” Then sometime in 1971, before his bust in Denver, Jack approached Thornton again at Jack’s American Star Bar and asked him to smuggle some heroin to the U.S.
That same month, Jack gave Thornton, who was being re-assigned to the U.S., an AWOL bag containing heroin that he delivered to a Black male he did not know and who was based at Travis Air Force Base in California. Jack had told Thornton that he would pay him when he returned to Thailand the following June. Thornton had no problem with that arrangement. He was eager to show he could be valuable to the Jackson-Atkinson operation. But when he returned, Jack claimed he could not pay him for his “services.” The heroin that Thornton had delivered to the contact at Travis turned out to be “bad” and was destroyed,” Jack explained. “Thornton was pissed and did not know whether to believe the story, but he was one of those guys who seemed in constant need of money. So he agreed to make another heroin delivery. In July 1971, Thornton picked up a shoebox and a cheese box from Andrew Price, each of which contained heroin, and delivered the contraband to another Black mule at Travis Air Force Base who he did not know. Jackson paid Thornton that time for the delivery.
In December 1971, Thornton returned to U-Tapao for a one-year tour of duty. He was still interested in making some easy money as a drug courier, but then heard that Jackson and Price got busted in Denver and decided against getting involved. After his tour ended in December, 1972, Thornton returned to the U.S., got married in Fairfield, California, and moved to Indiana where he was stationed at Grissom Joint Reserve Base, a military airport located about 60 miles from Indianapolis.
THORNTON WAS SCHEDULED to retire, but he re-enlisted in the Air Force and returned to U-Tapao for another tour of duty in February 1974. About a month later, Ike and Smedley met with Thornton at the NCO club in U-Tapao after driving the 100 or so miles from Bangkok.
Freddie and Ike had a mutual friend named Eugene Evans who lived near U-Tapao, and they decided to go and say “Hi” to him. While they were visiting Evans, Ike asked Thornton if he was broke. “Hell, yes,” Thornton acknowledged. Ike gave $500 to Thornton who thanked Ike and told him he was planning to retire at the end of his current Thailand tour of duty. Ike and Thornton agreed to meet in Bangkok in two weekends.
They met at Smedley’s house where Thornton asked Ike if he could have a job in Ike’s organization once he got out of the service at the end of February (1974). By job, of course, Thornton meant work as a drug smuggler. Thornton was eager to please and to show his potential value, so he explained to Ike that he was looking for a good way to smuggle dope back to the U.S. “If you find a way, contact Smedley,” Ike said. “I’ll make sure you get what you want.”
Thornton asked Ike, “How long has Jimmy (Smedley) been working for you?” Instead of giving a direct answer, Ike lamented Jack’s demise in Denver. Smedley was doing okay, Ike said, but with Jackson incarcerated he needed somebody to take care of his business in Thailand. Thornton left the meeting with the hope that Ike would find a lucrative place for him in his organization. In the following weeks, Thornton traveled to Bangkok several times and met with Smedley at the NCO club in the Luxury Hotel. Smedley and Thornton drank, played pool and shot the breeze, but to Thornton’s disappointment, there was no talk of smuggling dope.
Then one day in the summer of 1974, Smedley asked Thornton how he was doing? “Pretty good,” Thornton said, as he sipped on the drink Smedley had bought for him.
“You want to make some money?” Smedley asked
Thornton perked up. Maybe the time had come. “Yes, what do I have to do?”
“All you have to do is take some leave in the States,” Smedley replied.
“Take some leave?” Thornton said. “ I sure can do that. There is a school back in the states that offers courses on quality control for inspectors. Let me check it out. Once I get a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ I’ll let you know.”
The following week, Thornton got approval from his superiors at U-Tapao to attend the school at Castle Air Force Base in California, but a date was not set. Thornton told Smedley that once that happened, he would give him a call. Thornton decided to level with Smedley. “You know, man. I am no longer a crew chief. I don’t have any control over hiding stuff on the plane. I’ve been looking for a way to move some stuff.”
Smedley patted Thornton on the shoulder. “Well, don’t worry about that. It’s all taken care of.”
“What do you mean?” Freddie asked with surprise.
“All you have to do is put all your clothes in an AWOL bag that we give you and take them back to the States.”
Thornton smiled. “Well that’s good if it’s taken care of. I’ll give you a call and tell you the time when you can get it to me. I’ll give you plenty of time. Once I get the date I’ll be ready to leave.” Thornton left the meeting excited but wondering what kind of luggage he would be using for the trip.
Thornton learned that the school at Castle Air Force Base would start August 30, 1974. He booked a flight to the U.S. for August 27 and went directly to Smedley’s house. “I need a $1,000 advance,” Thornton told Smedley. “I need it to move across the country once I hit the States.”
“Are you broke now?” Smedley asked.
Thornton nodded “Yes” and Jimmy gave Thornton $1,000, reminding him that he had advanced him $100 a couple of months ago. After the conversation, Smedley and Thornton went downstairs and looked under the stairwell where two AWOL bags were stashed. Smedley pulled them out and gave them to Thornton. They sat around and had another drink before Thornton went home and packed his clothes in the two AWOL bags. The next morning he was on a flight to the U.S.
THORNTON AND TWO kilos of heroin landed at March Joint Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California. Established in 1918, March, one of the oldest airfields operated by the U.S. military, is home to the Air Force Reserve Command, the largest air mobility wing of the 4th Air Force. Thornton cleared Customs and immediately flew cross-country to North Carolina where, as Smedley instructed, he left the two AWOL bags at a trailer court in Dudley, North Carolina, a small town located about nine miles south of Goldsboro. Hearing that Ike was in town, Thornton paid him a visit at his home on Neuse Circle. Excited by the ease with which he got the AWOL bags into the U.S. and by the prospect of making some real money, Thornton told Ike about his heroin smuggling plan that used the crew chiefs with whom he worked at U-Tapao.
“How can you do that?” Ike asked. Thornton explained that the aircraft with crew chiefs aboard were sent regularly from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base to U-Tapao for a period of about 60 to 90 days. “When they (the crew chiefs) are ready to return,” Thornton explained, “I’ll go up to the guy and say, ‘Hey, I got a buddy at Seymour Johnson (Air Force Base). I was home on leave and borrowed two pieces of luggage from him. Would you drop them off for me when you get back? You can use them yourself, you know. You can put your clothes in them.’”
“What happens when the crew chiefs get to Seymour Johnson?” Ike asked.
“My buddy Gil (Charles Murphy Gillis) will pick the bags up,” Thornton revealed.
Thornton first met the quiet, easy-going Gillis, who held the rank of master sergeant, in December 1966 during his first tour of duty in Thailand and they became good friends. By 1974 Gillis had served nearly 14 years in the military and was planning to make the military his career and retire with a pension. He had come to Seymour Johnson in 1969 to work as an aircraft mechanic. Thornton had actually worked under Gillis. “I thought he (Thornton) was a good person, outgoing and in good physical shape,” Gillis recalled. “We were close friends and drank and socialized together. He always liked to be in control, but in working with him I saw that he got things done.” Still, on this smuggling trip, when Gillis met Thornton at first upon his arrival in Goldsboro, Thornton did not tell his friend about his smuggling plan.
When Thornton did tell him, Gillis saw an opportunity to make some money. “It was amazing what you could do with those AWOL bags,” Gillis said. “You could buy two or three of them in the PX for just $5 or $6 each. There was little security and no X-Ray machines in those days. When they opened the bag all they could see was the personal items. They had no way of checking the bags to see if there was a false bottom where someone could hide stuff. Customs would have to tear up hundreds of bags a day to find that out, with no guarantee that they would find something.”
When Thornton talked to Ike about his smuggling plan, Ike revealed that his drug ring was now paying $8,000 for smuggling a kilo of heroin to the U.S. Thornton did some calculation and realized that Smedley had shorted him $3,000 for his first delivery. Thornton made a mental note to ask Smedley about it when he returned to Bangkok. After Ike gave him $1,000 for this trip, Thornton left for Detroit and then headed cross-country again to Castle Air Force Base to begin school as planned.
AFTER THE COURSE ended, Thornton returned to Thailand on or about the 22nd or 23rd of September. The night of his arrival, he bumped into Smedley at the NCO club at the Luxury Hotel and told him he would come by his house the next day. Ike was there, and he told Smedley that Thornton had a good way of moving heroin to the U.S. and that he should give Thornton what he needs. Smedley agreed, but Thornton was still angry about being shorted $3,000 by Smedley and he jumped on him about it. But Smedley denied it and snapped, “I ain’t been paying nobody (sic) $8,000.”
“Well, I’m not going to take your dope until I’m ready to move it,” Thornton warned.
Smedley just shrugged and grumbled, ”Okay.”
Ike did not like the way the meeting had ended, but he was committed to making Thornton his main man in Thailand.
Thornton returned to U-Tapao and began checking the airplane schedule to find out when and to where they were heading. He chose the dates he thought would be best and gave them to Smedley. They agreed on a date in October. Smedley, however, had arranged to have some money sent to him so he could buy the heroin for the shipment. But the money arrived too late for the October date they chose. Thornton was broke and anxious to make the shipment. Ike gave Thornton $1,000 to tide him over until that happened.
In November 1974, Thornton made his first delivery of the two AWOL bags secretly containing one kilogram of heroin each, using an unsuspecting crew chief. Later, Thornton noted in court that since there was no Black crew chiefs at U-Tapao at the time, he chose a “thin White guy about my height (5’11)” to be his courier. Thornton went by the crew chief’s room at night and gave him the two AWOL bags and told him that a man named Charles Gillis would pick them up. The crew chief knew Gillis and said “no problem.” Thornton wrote Gillis and told him the date the plane was leaving Thailand for Seymour Johnson and gave him the name of the crew chief who would give him the AWOL bags. Thornton instructed Gillis to give the bags to Ike.
The operation went smoothly, and Ike thought the use of unsuspecting crew chiefs was a great new way to smuggle dope. In December, Thornton was ready to use another crew chief who would travel from U-Tapao to Travis Air Force Base with two AWOL bags. Thornton’s good friend Hosea Brooks was based at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, which is just 45 miles from Travis. Brooks was a tech sergeant whom Thornton had known since 1966. Brooks agreed to hold on to the AWOL bags until Thornton could come to the U.S. sometime in February 1975 and pick them up.
