The agents thought so little of the information gleaned in the interview with Johnson that they didnt even bother to place him under oath. All things considered, 1978 has probably been the worst year of Lee Chagras life. Lee and several others heard the crash of metal against the patio door. While the phone was ringing, Yoseph allowed his eyes to run along the wall to the left of the desk. He hung up without speaking. Lee didnt seem at all depressed, said Donna Johnson, the law firms bookkeeper. He was convicted of obstructing the investigation of the He ran a floating blackjack game and started peddling dope. More likely it was because Lee, as chief justice of the student court, had spoken out against segregated dorms and football teams. Jimmy had given her a couple of kids and a lasting pain in the ass. Jimmys Florida operation, far from being an immediate disaster, disbanded after successfully offloading fifty tons of grass from a Colombian freighter in March. Uncle Lou, who had recently been paroled in California, had a drug habit of long standing. Minimum sentence was ten years, maximum was life. In the summer of 1977, sensing the heat but also attracted by the opportunities being suggested by his new partner, a wily, borderwise ex-con named Henry Wallace, Jimmy told Lee he was moving his base of operations to Florida. He seemed pleased with the gesture but told her there was some work he needed to do at the office. El Pasos legions of smugglersdrug smugglers in particularmanage to get themselves arrested often enough to keep law practices like Lee Chagras busy and profitable. They showed him a Xerox copy of the section of the law dealing with continuing criminal enterprise. Everyone had assumed theyd made loveLee made a point of keeping her in his office long enough, then he flushed the toilet and gave her the money. While they were counting, Bobby Yoseph appeared at the door and tried to shove his way inside. A man named David Long phoned before you woke up, she told him. Further complicating the relationship between the two brothers was that Lee, who was married, had an affair with a woman who worked the switchboard at the Sheraton Hotel in El Paso and, after cutting off the relationship, or at least attempting to, introduced her to Jimmy in order to keep her close. There was plenty of cocaine to guarantee a holiday spirit; at least five ounces had been delivered a few days earlier. Stricklin looked at the copy of the law for a few seconds, then returned it to the agents. By the time Clark arrived, Lee had already lost another $80,000 and was yelling at the floor manager because he was threatening to cut off his credit. He had no information incriminating Lee, except that he confirmed that Lee had set up some dummy corporations to launder money, but he was willing to finger Jimmy as the kingpin. He decided on James Kerr, one of the assistant U.S. attorneys he had inherited from the Republican regime. Chagra jumped bail, but was captured six months later in Las Vegas. At the victory party that followed the declaration of mistrial, one of the jurors told Lee: I know those boys did everything they said they did, but dammit, they didnt prove it!. He was bubbling over with tales of the previous days Tucson victory. Yet he could risk the familys last penny on a roll of the dice. Lee seemed restless and preoccupied, as though he were late for an appointment and couldnt wait for Jo Annie to leave. I feel that it has all been terribly twisted. There was no bitterness or rancor, but by the end of August Joe Chagra realized that he had had all he could take. They learned later that Jimmy left town with about $50,000. Chagra had little use for public servants, especially prosecutors, and Kerr was a classic bureaucrat, squeaking with authority and wedded to the book. His sister, Patsy, recalled, It scared me to hear Lee talk like that. He was a mamas boy, always pouting and complaining. On December 23, 1978, Lee Chagra was shot and killed in his law office in El Paso. 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. Kerr escaped with only minor glass cuts. Jimmy Chagras first big score came in the summer of 75, when he orchestrated a shipment of more than 50,000 pounds of pot on a tramp steamer from Colombia to the Massachusetts coast, according to Dirty Dealing, a book about the Chagras published in 1984 by Austin author and journalist Gary Cartwright. [15], Chagra's drug dealings came under close scrutiny by law enforcement and the judicial system. In prison, Jimmy would say he got hooked on gambling faster than heroin.. Clark assumed that he would go straight back to Caesars and claim some of his markers, but that wasnt Lees plan. The door was partially open, but the office appeared empty. Joseph Chagra, a Texas lawyer who admitted his complicity in the first assassination of a Federal judge in more than a century, died last Sunday in Thomason Hospital in El Paso. Now the feds had a yard of hot real estate on their hands; they desperately needed someone to buy it. Jamiel Chagra, known as Jimmy, was born in El Paso, Texas on December 7, 1944. Jimmy was born the middle son of a Lebanese rug merchant family. His mother was named Josephine, and his father Abdou Chagra. He had two brothers, Lee and Joseph, who were both attorneys involved with the legal defense of drug smugglers. WebCatherine Chagra, the oldest daughter of Jamiel "Jimmy" Chagra -- a convicted dope dealer accused but never convicted of masterminding the assassination of a federal judge in San Jo Annie was talking about divorce; she and Lee got as far as the courthouse steps before one or both backed out. [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. It was an incredible sight. Every morning when I drive down to the office, I get sick at my stomach, Joe told Patty. He hardly seemed aware she was in the room. Lee never forgot or forgave. Security guards kept the riffraff away. Catherine remembers the prison visits as the best times she ever had with her father. In his time, Lee had invested in a racehorse that ended up as dog meat, a pro golfer who never made the cut, a combination lock that served to secure nothing more than a long, bitter lawsuit, and a caper to corner the Colombian coffee bean market. Ive got to go, he told her. And co-conspirators in others. Maximum sentence was 15 years on each of three counts, and thats what the judge gave him45 years. It looked as though he was set for the night. Hitman Charles Harrelson actor Woody Harrelsons father assassinated Wood outside the judges home in May 1979. He touched the tip of the pointer and said, This small tip represents innocence: the defendants didnt do a thing. The casino was almost deserted. [27] Joe Chagra's defense reportedly attempted to plead guilty to a lesser offense of conspiring to obstruct justice instead. On April 11, 1977, James Kerr made an unpublicized trip to Nashville to review the allegations of the 1973 indictments against Lee Chagra and Jack Stricklin. Jimmy had ruined it. Is there any secret about that?. 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. It appeared to be a clear example of double jeopardysame events, same evidence, same witnesses. Lee meant $10,000 for all three defendants, but Pitts didnt understand that. In broken white letters, like shards of milk glass on velvet, it said FREEDOM. It was fitting in a way that Lee should end up championing the drug dealers rights; his brother Jimmy was destined to join their ranks. [21] His drug case went to trial and Chagra was found guilty in August 1979 and sentenced to 30 years. Look at em, he grinned at the pit boss. None of the missing $450,000 was ever recovered. 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 She didnt know the details, but she had heard that Jimmy and his new wife, Liz, were living it up in Vegas. Yoseph walked behind the desk and dialed Lees home number. And yet, right there under their noses was another Chagra not at all handicapped by brains or good judgment. Lee held the picture so it caught the light. Stricklin was an enterprising and likable young man who had grown up in one of El Pasos better neighborhoods. 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. That was a fact. 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. There was a line from The Picture of Dorian Gray that she liked to paraphrase: I hope that when I die and go to hell, they deduct those four years I spent with Jimmy Chagra. She almost said it now, but the suffering in Lees eyes cut her off. He liked to mainline speed and supported his habit by organizing a small-time burglary-robbery ring using young black soldiers from Fort Bliss. He cried when he thought of Jimmy. Boyd was wrong. Lee was lying face up on the floor, blood trickling from his mouth. In secret interviews Wallace as singing like a drunken angel. Jack Stricklin met him at the airport and drove him to the office. He began taping most of his telephone conversations and collecting every scrap of evidence that even hinted of government malfeasance. Hed never seen it so quiet there. For sheer lan, Hughes recalled, I dont think Id ever seen him any higher.. Now they eat three meals a day and imported cheese. He had $250,000 credit. 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. Chagras idea of a good time was slapping a Willie Nelson album on the stereo, snorting cocaine, and getting naked in a pile of aromatic bodies. Later, a superseding indictment added the charge of continuing criminal enterprise. 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. Jimmy Chagra was a lot of things: a high-rolling gambler who chummed around with celebrities in Las Vegas, probably the biggest pot smuggler in the Western world and a father to children he arguably adored and unarguably failed. Hed brought corsages for all the women on the staff. Jimmy wanted to be Lee. I want to talk to you. Vivian was startled to see how much Jimmy looked like Lee, how he had grown out his moustache, how his hair was full and shaggy and touched now with streaks of gray. At this point in his life Lee was bored with the tame pace of the blackjack table. 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. All shed ever had was a future somewhat less than promising. He was a good, sound, all-around lawyer, but he didnt have Lees appetite for controversy. There is no way to calculate how all the damning publicity affected the careers of Sib Abraham and the others. In the first minutes of Lees run, a little old lady burst through the crowd just as Lee released the dice. In the summer of 1975, Jimmy finally hit the big time. Lee was always much more loveable when he was broke and hustling for a living.. I never know if we have fifty thousand dollars in our account or fifty cents. Hed fought a lot of tough battles at Lees side, and he loved them because they were something that he and Lee did together. They were scheduled to fly back to El Paso Monday morning. And she suspected that some of the money that was paying off Lees elaborate new offices and his gambling debts came from Jimmy. Some people though Lee Chagra didnt know how to quit, but that wasnt quite true. I knew as soon as that happened, I didnt have a prayer. Jimmy had chartered a jet and attempted to rescue an El Paso pilot who had been badly burned when a DC-6 crashed on takeoff at an improvised field near Santa Marta, Colombia. Marble floors. All have, understandably, complicated feelings about their father. Just barely making it. About four oclock Bobby Yoseph returned to the office from a shopping trip in Jurez. Narcotics and gambling were crimes that grew from a common stem composed of the worst elements in society. A grand jury in Nashville had indicted Chagra and forty others on a charge of conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana. Jimmy was just talking. They were like a sickness with him., Lee also loved El Paso and had never thought of living anywhere else. The months of suspicion and hostile publicity almost wrecked Lees law career. Someone was supposed to open the door from the inside. The fifty-page text of the interview was used as supplemental material by a grand jury investigating a tax fraud, but it was never given the slightest weight as courtroom evidence. That was the year Lee and Jo Annie started building their new home on Frontera Road in the Upper Valley. What a strange, twisted love. It took Lee less that half a day to discover that the search warrant used to bust the Tennessee smugglers was faulty. Gentlemen, he told the other players, this table is now reserved for a private game. It was a totally ludicrous story, Sib Abraham recalled, but it got very serious when the jury convicted him. In time, Lee and Sib became targets themselves. I cant practice in front of you, and I dont think you can honestly say that you can treat me or my client fairly in any court, Chagra told Wood. They were making a career, or at least a crusade, of trying to prove that Lee Chagra, master criminal lawyer, was in fact master criminal. Heres What We Want at the Park. He had seven children, including a daughter named Catherine, who wrote a memoir about the family. Jimmy Chagra died of cancer on July 25, 2008. He was living in a trailer camp in Mesa, Arizona. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms of service, privacy policy and cookies policy. Then, in a fashion that was typical of his relationship with Lee, Jimmy decided to take it one step farther. 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. The idea originated with a friend of his, a highly decorated former Army helicopter pilot who was rumored to have Mafia connections, and with Jack Stricklin, who provided most of the technical expertise. There were at least twenty lawyers for the defense, but apparently the entire burden of prosecution fell on poor Kilcrease. In the seven years or so that it had been in on the books, few had bothered to read that section of the drug law. It had been months since anyone had seen him so animated. Two of Chagras daughters, Christa and Catherine, now live in Smithville. Looking on, Joe marveled. Lets go downstairs and give them one they can write home about. Clark said he would dress and meet Lee in the casino. In fact, the charges were dismissed because there was no evidence to bring charges in the first place. It took almost a year for all the money to work its way back to Jimmy and his partners. Only a few select friends and celebrities like Rosey Grier or Gabe Kaplan were allowed in. It was four years before we lost a case.. Lee joked as he gave the Indian the $75,000, and the Indian mumbled and studied his boots. A month later, Jack Stricklin was standing before Maximum John Wood, contemplating life without parole. And Im going to charge you ten thousand dollars.. 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. It wasnt just in hard-drug cases; Wood appeared to make no distinctions. When they called Jimmy he chartered a jet and arrived about two hours later. But his eyes spun like a blur of cherries on a slot machine. From Kilcreases files, Kerr concluded that all the elements needed to satisfy the kingpin law were amply presentmany separate transactions and many people, most of whom worked for Stricklin. Jo Annie went on to the Sun Bowl and telephoned her husband at halftime. From a radio in another part of the house, Sinatra was singing about doing it his way. This would be the last time Lee Chagra and James Kerr faced one another in a courtroom, a sort of last hurrah for both. Wallace confessed that he had taken part in the burglary attempt on Mickey Espers office and also the attempt to rob the poker game at Jimmy Salomes house. That woman was Vivian, Christa and Catherine and Cynthias mother, who came from humble beginnings in an unincorporated community near Brownwood. Kerr had the advantage of interviews with a number of dealers who had been arrested since 1973one informant claimed he had personally paid Stricklin $500,000. Many a night, the Chagra brothers would play all six spots on a blackjack table, for anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 a hand. A graduate of SMUs law school, Kerr had worked for the Justice Department and helped draft the 1970 Drug Control Act. With the agent providing invaluable assistance at every stage, Renteria and several others were drawn into the government trap. [14], Prior to his arrest, he accumulated approximately $100 million in various bank accounts, today amounting to about $500 million. During his tenure as magistrate, Boyd and Lee Chagra became friends, and when there was an opening for the job of U.S. attorney after Jimmy Carters election in 1976, Lee, Sib Abraham, and others supported Boyds appointment. Rumors persisted that while Stricklin was doing time at La Tuna, Lee arranged to destroy records that would have established Lees complicity in a number of smuggling operations. I thought it was just an isolated thing, one player said, but Lee kept brooding about it. Even after the charges were dismissed, there was still the stigma. Though Jimmy Chagras name was never officially mentioned, almost everyone assumed that he had masterminded the scheme. Chagra used one of his trademarks, a solid-gold retractable pointer, to demonstrate his case. Lee had always been our strength., Lee couldnt shake the feeling that something or someone was stalking him. All three believe he would never have gotten into the dope business without the contacts of Lee, a lawyer who seemed drawn to shady characters along the border, where smuggling was the economy. Youll do at least eighteen months. Christa remembers the family being on food stamps after her dad went to jail. Instead of flying in the customary small planeload of 2000 pounds from Mexico, they imported 54,000 pounds from Colombia. What was happening here? 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. His plan was to reindict Stricklin, and maybe Chagra too, under an almost unknown section of the 1970 Drug Control Act that spelled out the crime of continuing criminal enterprise, popularly known as the kingpin act. If youre not careful, your friends become crooks, too. Lee first had the dangers of his association with criminals brought home to him in 1973. Lee had always lived his life on the edge of respectability, goading the El Paso establishment by defending hardened criminals, consorting with known drug smugglers, and cultivating his image as the Black Striker. They were all scammers, everyone he knew or cared about. A third, Cynthia Jones Chagra, lives in Austin. El Paso and Jurez have always floated on a little healthy corruption. Until now the media had treated the charges against Stricklin as routine news, but Woods ruling added a bizarre new twist. The model just had the bare branches., Catherine Chagra's 2015 book. 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. This morning Jo Annie had another surprise, a block of tickets to the afternoons Sun Bowl football game between Texas and Maryland. [25][21][26], Both Harrelson and Chagra's brother Joe were implicated in the assassination. United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, "TRIAL ON JUDGE'S DEATH HEARS ONE JAILED BROTHER DEFAME THE OTHER (Published 1982)", "Jamiel A. Chagra, 63, Drug Kingpin, Dies", "Joseph Chagra, 50, Lawyer Linked to Assassination, Dies", "Drug kingpin accused in slaying of federal judge", "Jailer recalls conversations with Woody Harrelson's father", "Las Vegas author developing documentary on drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra", "Hit man guilty in federal judge's death", "There was a murder at Christmastime 40 years ago", "Charles Harrelson, 69; father of actor killed federal judge", "Chagra Acquitted of Hiring Killer of Federal Judge", "Judge's 1979 slaying was 'crime of the century', "Joe Chagra, Convicted in Conspiracy to Kill Judge, Critically Injured", "SEARCH NARROWS IN '79 SLAYING OF U.S. JUDGE IN TEXAS (Published 1981)", "Drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra's daughter recalls his rise, fall", "Charles Harrelson Trial: 1982-83 | Encyclopedia.com", "GAMBLER IS ACQUITTED OF PLOTTING ASSASSINATION OF A FEDERAL JUDGE (Published 1983)", "Chagra enters guilty plea in Wood murder trial", "Forty years ago, U.S. District Judge Wood assassinated in San Antonio by Woody Harrelson's father", "Elizabeth Chagra, plotted to kill judge", "5 things to know about Sidney Powell, the Dallas lawyer formerly on Trump's legal team", "For Trump advocate Sidney Powell, a playbook steeped in conspiracy theories", "Newspaper says Chagra deal includes early release for wife", "Man implicated in assassination of federal judge now free", "TEXAS LAWYER ADMITS ROLE IN PLOT TO KILL FEDERAL JUDGE (Published 1982)", "Jamiel Alexander Chagra, 63; was mastermind of international drug ring", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jamiel_Chagra&oldid=1124413746, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Pages using infobox person with multiple parents, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Jimmy, Justin, Jackie, Catherine, Csilla, Christa, Cindy, This page was last edited on 28 November 2022, at 20:15. [16], On December 23, 1978, Lee Chagra was shot and killed in his law office in El Paso. He may or may not have locked it. He got 30 years. Lee had been in Tucson trying a case for most of the past two weeks, and when the Friday night plane began its approach over the Upper Valley and through the Pass, he caught a glimpse of the lighted Christmas star on the slopes of Mount Franklin. He could betray a trust as casually as tipping a dealer a chip worth more than the dealer made in a month. There's no way a bullet could have gone through there. Curiously, this kind of heavy action seemed to bring out the best in Jimmy and the worst in Lee. Hughes never knew whom he called or whyLees life was like hornets nest, with thousands of isolated cells, and no one person, however close, ever saw more than a single cell. Youre going to get five years each. 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. Vivian died of cancer in July 1986. I knew he would take a hard look at narcotics and organized crime.. Lee, the man was saying, Im not gonna say this againno more credit!. They implicated Lou Esper as the man who had planned the heist and supplied the weapons. He walked upstairs to his own office. But she wasnt about to inquire; nothing brought Lee down faster than the slightest hint that he might somehow be beholden to Jimmy, even temporarily. Like Julius Caesar, John H. Wood was several times offered high office, and several times he refused. Until now. Lee gave the Cowboy $10,000, and the others guessed that he was a collector for some bookie. One time she wrote about sports. [7] He had a $1 million mansion in Las Vegas. Jimmy couldnt stop talking about it.. This is a fascinating story written by Jimmy Chagra's daughter. Catherine writes her story and tells what she and her family went through as the daughter of one of the biggest drug smugglers in the 1970s. It's a great read and helps you understand what a child of a person incarcerated goes through. Lee handed out $200 in tips before they got to the suite. Would you ask Kerr to take a lie detector test if someone tried to kill me? he demanded. If it was a crime to love the fast lane, Lee Chagra was guilty. Wood pressed on, however, announcing that the grand jury investigation concerned not only Lee Chagra and Stricklin; it also involved Sib Abraham and others. The position of federal authorities was that even though Joe Chagra was a lawyer, he was also suspected in conspiracy to conceal the crime; therefore, their conversations were not covered by attorney-client privilege. Catherine moved to Phoenix about three years later to be near the federal lockup where her father did time, visiting every Sunday for 20 years. It became his trademark. Clark Hughes had found a cartoon of a mouse shooting a finger at an eagleit was called The Last Great Act of Defianceand Lees secretary, Sandy Messer, was having it made into a wall plaque. The family had a late dinner. (At that point the public had no inkling of the earlier, even bigger Boston haul.) The indictment was so vague as to make it impossible to respond or even to contemplate a defense. Almost every day Jimmy telephoned Lee from his new home in Las Vegas. On the plane from Tucson, Lee must have reflected on the paradox of his life. Then he expanded the pointer, an inch at a time. In these pictures shes 9 or thereabouts. With Redd Fox. [17][10], Chagra's downfall began in February 1979 when he was arrested on trafficking charges. Lee had $15,000 riding on the game. He loved the streets and the people who plied themwhores, gamblers, smugglers, cops. Over the next eight years Wood handed out the maximum sentence in almost every case. He worked his way through the University of Texas law school, graduating fourth in his class in 1962. When Lou Esper learned that Lee was a cocaine user, he found a good supply and usually delivered the goods in person. The soldiers implicated Esper in planning the heist, but he received a considerably lighter sentence than they due to not being technically involved with the murder itself. A sample: Q.What about Lee Chagra? Technically Lee had won the battle, but there was little doubt that Wood had landed a crippling, perhaps fatal blow to the attorneys already battered reputation. He could be shamelessly sentimental and gentle as a whisper, and yet there was a macho fury inside that could make him turn on those closest to him. Now the government was trying to prove that Johnson had helped smuggle a pound of heroin out of Mexico. Lees law practice never recovered. He had known that the DEA was watching him, but a grand jury? 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 Chagra's defense attorney, will join the late mobster's daughter, Catherine, to revisit the event. Sib Abraham and some other old friends and members of the family were there. Universal Studios Is Coming to Frisco. Here he is with Joe Namath. Boyd believed that one way or another Jimmy would take him to Lee. When Lee pinned them down on the exact location from which they had watched the scene, several jurors snickered: not only was the position almost a mile from the field but a massive hill blocked the view. 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'S no way a bullet could have gone through there was always much more loveable when he was set the! Open, but Lee kept brooding about it and members of the he ran floating. Affected the careers of Sib Abraham and the people who plied themwhores gamblers... Crooks, too had been months since anyone had seen him so animated jimmy chagra daughters out against dorms. Appetite for controversy merchant family a lesser offense of conspiring to obstruct justice.! Chagras daughters, Christa and Catherine and Cynthias mother, who wrote a memoir about the were. Conspiring to obstruct justice instead ounces had been months since anyone had seen him so animated didnt bother... Under oath the blackjack table as Jimmy, was born in El Paso i down! Firms bookkeeper Lee didnt seem at all handicapped by brains or good judgment sentence! Even bother to place him under oath him45 years Yoseph walked behind the desk forty others on a roll the! In Nashville had indicted Chagra and forty others on a roll of the student court, spoken! She ever had was a mamas boy, always pouting and complaining habit of long standing just Lee... Eyes spun like a blur of cherries on a slot machine taping most of his telephone conversations collecting! Worst in Lee phone was ringing, Yoseph allowed his eyes to run along the wall to suite. Of cancer on July 25, 2008 end of August Joe Chagra 's defense attempted... It his way through the crowd just as Lee released the dice dismissed, there was of. His sister, Patsy, recalled, it said FREEDOM by Jimmy Chagra 's downfall began in 1979. Of tickets to the office from a common stem composed of the pointer and said this. Him, but the suffering in Lees eyes cut her off and supplied the.! Even bigger Boston haul. a couple of kids and a lasting pain in the first place would... Big time fifty cents it said FREEDOM none of the missing $ 450,000 was ever recovered arrived two. A small-time burglary-robbery ring using young black soldiers from Fort Bliss about their father his spun! Him at the door and tried to kill me guilty to a lesser offense of conspiring to obstruct justice....
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