transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 4:
[00:56] Between 1968 and 1971, when Frank Lucas was experiencing his meteoric rise up the ranks of the criminal underworld in Harlem, there were plenty of gangsters who wanted to challenge his ascension. Prior to July of 1968, Frank had been a relatively small-time thief, a part-time heroin dealer, and then a low-level member of Bumpy Johnson's organization. But after Frank developed a heroin pipeline to Thailand and built a distribution network in record time, he achieved incredible wealth and power nearly overnight. One of the first gangsters who wanted to challenge him was a guy called Tango. Tango stood six foot five and weighed close to 270 pounds. He was bald and aggressive, and he wore what Frank called those mafia undershirts, the classic white tank top style undershirt. Frank heard that everyone on the street was afraid of Tango, and Frank wanted to give him a test. Frank told one of his crew to approach Tango with a deal. Would Tango be willing to sell maybe $5,000 worth of heroin for Frank's operation? Tango eagerly agreed and took the product without a second thought. He sold the heroin, but a week later, Frank heard that Tango wasn't handing over the money. That was what Frank had expected. He thought Tango was unreliable, and now he'd proved it. Frank found Tango on a street corner. Calmly, Frank asked when he would get his money. Tango launched into a tough guy routine. He cursed at Frank and tried to intimidate Frank the same way he intimidated everyone else. Tango was essentially showing off, and as he continued to rant, he had an audience for his performance. People on the street stopped to watch the confrontation, which appeared one-sided. When Tango paused his tirade, Frank asked if he was done, and Tango charged at Frank. But not fast enough. Frank pulled out a gun and put four bullets in Tango's chest and head right there on the street in broad daylight. Then Frank stepped into his car and drove away. That story became one of the most infamous chapters in the career of Frank Lucas. It wasn't about the money. $5,000 didn't matter to a business of Frank's scale. It was about the witnesses. Most criminals wouldn't dream of committing murder on a busy street in broad daylight, but that was what Frank wanted. He wanted to show Harlem that nobody would ever be as bad as Frank Lucas. Not surprisingly, Harlem received the message, and Frank's business soared. But it wasn't without setbacks and, of course, investigations that Frank didn't know about in the early 1970s. When Frank attended the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971, he revealed himself to federal drug agents. Agents and NYPD detectives became suspicious of the man who showed up at the fight wearing a $100,000 coat made from chinchilla fur. The man was seen making bets with known cocaine trafficker Frank Matthews. Investigators knew about a crew of Harlem gangsters known as the Country Boys, and they knew about a potent brand of heroin called Blue Magic, but they didn't know that Frank Lucas ran the gang and created Blue Magic. They would learn all of that information and much more in due time, as Frank's career was a roller coaster in the early 1970s. From the wealth and power of success to an assassination attempt, to financing a Hollywood movie, to the fear and anxiety of an investigation that was closing in around him. From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season, we're telling the story of Frank Lucas, one of the godfathers of crime in Harlem, New York, the man whose life was the inspiration for the film American Gangster. This is episode four, Superfly. The Ali-Frasier fight, also known as the Fight of the Century, lived up to the hype. It was the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world. It was arguably the biggest boxing match of all time, and it went all 15 rounds. At the end of the match, Smoke and Joe Frazier won by unanimous decision. At the end of the night, Frank Lucas thought he was winning, but he was just losing more slowly than the other gangsters in attendance. The fight was his introduction to the main stage, where he stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight. It didn't happen all at once. Federal agents didn't take a look at him and immediately say, there he is, there's our guy, there's the leader of that gang in Harlem. But Frank's flashy appearance and his association with known gangster, Frank Matthews at the fight made federal agents want to know more about him. Meanwhile, Frank Lucas knew nothing of the idea that he had been living comfortably in the background as an anonymous puppet master for a huge heroin operation, but had now shoved himself into the foreground. And for a brief moment in the days following the fight, it didn't look like the investigation would matter, at least not for Frank. He was scheduled to have a meeting with his number two man, a man whom he called Doc Holliday. Frank's driver took him to Midtown for the meeting. The driver parked and Doc Holliday approached the car. Frank opened the door and started to get out. When Doc Holliday pulled his gun and shouted at Frank to get down. As the car drove past, unknown men in the car opened fire. Bullets ricocheted all around Frank and Doc as they took cover. Doc and Frank returned fire, but the car quickly sped off and vanished around a corner. Frank and Doc were left crouching among the pockmarked cars. As the adrenaline wore off, Frank's hand slid down to his left side. It was covered in blood. He had been hit, and there was no exit wound. His men insisted that he get to a hospital, but Frank refused. He wouldn't give the shooters the satisfaction of knowing they'd sent him to the hospital. They went to a phone, called a local doctor, and drove to the man's office. The doctor removed the bullet, but Frank was lucky to survive the ambush. There were plenty of people who wanted Frank dead. Rival gang leaders, hot shots looking to make names for themselves, the mob, take your pick. Frank never found out who tried to kill him, but he started traveling with bodyguards everywhere he went. In addition to extra security, he needed what every big time drug trafficker needed, money laundering capabilities. He needed legitimate businesses to act as cover for the millions of dollars that his heroin operation was earning. When he started out, drug dealers usually paid anonymous couriers to drop money off at banks. The couriers were known as smurfs. Eventually, banks became suspicious and concerned about large, anonymous deposits. Specifically, the bank that handled Frank's cash faced possible legal action from the feds because of his deposits. So, Frank needed at least a minimal paper trail to show where some of the money came from, and he needed to find other ways to use it. Like nearly all crime bosses, he started investing in real estate, and some of those investments did double duty. They were great ways to use money, and he and his large family could start living comfortably, some of them for the first time in their lives. In the early 1970s, as Frank's hair when business took off like a rocket, he bought a modest house in Teaneck, New Jersey. It was a gift for his mother, but it also had rooms for his wife Julia and his son, Frank Lucas Jr. They were one of the only black families in the neighborhood, which was part of the appeal. Frank wanted to seem like a spotless businessman with a respectable family life who was far removed from the heroin trade on the streets of Harlem. Good clothes, decent cars and modest houses in family neighborhoods worked for part of the equation. But he also needed real businesses in order to support the image. It's springtime in America, which means we're on a weather rollercoaster. At the world headquarters of Black Barrel Media in Phoenix, Arizona, we broke national heat records. You're welcome, everyone. That means it's t-shirts and shorts weather already, which makes it essential to have a flow-knit, breeze performance t-shirt from Quince. The material is soft, breathable and quick-drying. It's anti-microbial, anti-odor fabric, because the last thing anyone needs is a shirt that traps heat. And the best part is the price. A shirt like that could cost 50 to 60% more from other brands. But Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen to deliver a premium product at a better price. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/infamousamerica for free shipping and 365 day returns. 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Speaker 5:
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Speaker 4:
[12:09] Frank began his effort to start real businesses by taking over a gas station on 151st Street from someone who owed him money. On 114th Street, he opened a supermarket. He bought a dry cleaner in midtown Manhattan called Ned King's. When his brothers came up from North Carolina, many of them opened their own small shops and businesses which could help launder dirty heroin money. But Frank said his most successful investment was in a nightclub called The Turntable, which was owned by early R&B legend Lloyd Price. In 1952, Price helped introduce the nation to New Orleans style fusion of jazz and blues with his massive hit song, Laudie Miss Claudia. Ten years later, he created the record label that launched the career of Wilson Pickett. In 1967, he and a partner bought an old jazz club on Broadway in midtown Manhattan and turned it into a happening nightclub called The Turntable. According to Frank, he and an associate from Bumpy Johnson's old crew invested in the club in the early 1970s. Frank was making big strides toward improving his image as a legitimate businessman. Ironically, he was about to be plagued by a man who had a legitimate job but wanted to make illegal money. One day, as Frank was driving up to his house in Phoenix after a trip in New York, he saw an unmarked police car loitering near his property. The cop car pulled Frank over before he reached his house. Frank remained calm and kept both hands on the steering wheel as the officer walked up to the driver's side window. The officer was NYPD and he was out of his jurisdiction. His name was Robert Lucci, though Frank and others called him Babyface. When Frank asked what he wanted, Lucci told him that he wanted $10,000 a month to not search Frank's house or car. Frank was furious. He was no stranger to paying off cops, but he had never paid that much for a single officer. For the moment, Frank had no choice but to start paying. His heroin empire was still fairly new. He was fending off challengers and trying to build legitimate businesses. His wife was pregnant again, and he had recently decided on an aggressive new investment. Frank was going to Hollywood, so he decided to start paying Lucci and figured it was the lesser of all evils. In Hollywood, Frank's friend Lloyd Price was interested in making a film called The Rip Off, starring Price himself alongside actual gangsters. Price thought Frank would be a great pick for the villain of the film. Frank put some money into the film, about $70,000 to $80,000. He had a healthy ego, and he liked the idea of himself as a movie star, even as he was simultaneously playing the role of a simple businessman. They actually started filming the movie, which Frank recalled as Shaft Before Shaft, though that was probably revisionist history since the original Shaft film was released in June 1971, three months after Frank attended the big Ali Frazier fight. Either way, Frank Lucas wasn't a good actor. He enjoyed filming chase scenes on the freeway, but he struggled to remember his lines. In later recollections, he tried to inflate his role in the story by claiming he was the lead of the film rather than Price. Frank said he walked off the set because the director was trying to get him to do a sex scene he didn't want to do. It seems likely that a conflict with the director is what caused him to abandon the film, but not over a sex scene. Apparently, during the editing of the film, Frank came to blows with the director on how to edit a scene. Frank threatened the director with a knife, and that was that. Ultimately, the film was never finished, and Frank went back to his string of semi-legitimate businesses and tried to figure out what he was going to do about the crooked cop Robert Lucci. A single rogue police officer was the least of the worries of Frank's colleagues in the drug business. In the early 1970s, while Frank's operation was peaking and he was just beginning to draw scrutiny, other dealers were starting to fall. In late 1971, a low-level trafficker named Melvin Combs was arrested and charged with possession of heroin. Shortly thereafter, one of his dealers, Willie Abraham, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to distribute $5 million worth of heroin per year in Harlem, the Bronx and the greater Westchester County area. On January 26th, 1972, while Melvin Combs waited for his case to go to trial, he met with someone off of Central Park West. Melvin was found the next day, sitting in his car, dead from a gunshot to the head. Word on the street was that the mafia thought Melvin was a rat, and they'd killed him to shut him up. Frank Lucas, who knew Melvin Combs, did not believe Melvin was a rat. Regardless, the deed was done, and Melvin's three-year-old son, Sean, grew up in poverty. 20 years later, Sean Combs, who called himself Puff Daddy at the time, was working in the music business in New York, and he founded a company called Bad Boy Records. His rise to fame and fortune was nearly as meteoric as that of Frank Lucas, and he built a business empire worth an estimated $1 billion, until he was convicted on charges related to prostitution in 2025 and sentenced to four years in prison. Back in 1973, a year after Sean's father Melvin was killed, other prominent gangsters in Frank Lucas' orbit fell hard and fast. On February 24th, Willie Abraham and nine others were found guilty of conspiracy to distribute heroin. A little over three months later, in July 1973, Frank Matthews was scheduled to appear in court. Frank ran a cocaine trafficking empire which was so successful, he was called Black Caesar. But he had been arrested in Las Vegas at the end of 1972 and charged with possession of cocaine. Now, on July 2nd, 1973, he was supposed to be in court for trial, but he failed to appear. It's suspected that Frank Matthews fled with $15 to $20 million in cash. The FBI put out a $20,000 bounty for information about the fugitive, but no leads turned up. Frank Matthews and his girlfriend were never seen again. Sometime within a couple of years of Frank Matthews' disappearance, Frank Lucas' friend, Zach Robinson, disappeared. Like Matthews, Robinson was under indictment and facing a probable trial and prison sentence. Frank Lucas claimed Robinson had been intending to flee, but Frank heard conflicting rumors about what actually happened. Maybe Robinson escaped and stayed on the run like Frank Matthews. Or maybe Robinson ended up dead like Melvin Combs, but his body was never found. Whatever happened, the result of the crackdown in the early and mid-1970s was that Frank Lucas was one of the few dealers of his size who was still standing. Though that didn't mean he was winning. According to Frank, Robert Lucci, the NYPD officer who was shaking him down for $10,000 a month, raised the price. Lucci now wanted a kilo of heroin as well as the $10,000 cash. Frank hated the deal even more than before, but he agreed to do it. In the grand scheme of things, the price was nothing. Frank's heroin operation could make a million dollars in a few hours. At the moment, it was better to pay Lucci than to do anything drastic. And since Lucci was still the only real problem with law enforcement that Frank was facing, Frank lived large when he wasn't representing as a straight-laced businessman. He bought property all over New York. He bought his first yacht and named it Mr. New York. He wanted to buy a private jet, but his wife Julie stepped up her warnings about extravagant displays of wealth. Frequently, she told Frank that he needed to leave the drug business. He needed to build up legitimate businesses and focus on those, and get out of the drug game. The problem was, one by one, Frank's legitimate businesses started to fail.

Speaker 2:
[20:50] No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet, so Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now Hank says, I'll line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at m365copilot.com/work.

Speaker 6:
[21:21] Half Man, the new HBO original limited series from baby reindeer creator Richard Gad, examines the tumultuous relationship between two estranged brothers, tracking the highs and lows of the pair over the course of 40 years. Starring Emmy Award winner Richard Gad and BAFTA Award winner Jamie Bell. Half Man premieres April 23rd on HBO Max.

Speaker 4:
[21:52] The problems started with the first oil crisis of the 1970s, which hit in 1973. Frank's gas station struggled to make money. Then his supermarket started causing him trouble. Someone was stealing money from the shop. An independent auditor looked at the books and determined that $2,000 was missing. Like the payoff money to offer Sir Lucci, $2,000 was nothing to Frank Lucas at that point in his life. He could spend that on dinner without even thinking about it. But it was the principle that mattered. Frank was outraged that someone was stealing. He fired everyone except the butchers and the manager, and he ordered the manager to hire a whole new team. And his dry cleaning business, he fully abandoned it. The place called Ned King's ran smoothly for most of the time, Frank owned it. But one day, a fairly simple yet eye-opening problem happened. Both of the primary employees got sick at the same time. Without them, the business was in disarray. Frank went by to check on the situation. Clothing started to pile up, and customers angrily demanded faster work. Frank ended up jumping in to help. He found that working as a dry cleaner for one hour was too stressful, and he walked away from the business. And on top of the issues with his legitimate businesses, it was becoming harder to run his real money maker. The number of American combat troops in Vietnam had been declining since 1969, which meant the number of military flights between Southeast Asia and the US was declining. By 1973, Frank was becoming increasingly desperate to find ways to keep the pipeline flowing. According to Frank, he traveled to Thailand to check in with his suppliers. He learned for the first time that his contacts could not secure a US military plane for the latest shipment of 500 kilos. After a few hours of strategizing, Frank claimed he came up with an insane plan. According to Frank, this is how they managed to get their shipment to the US military plane. There was a US government official who was visiting the region for humanitarian reasons. His plane would not be searched as thoroughly as other military planes. If the smugglers could bribe the right people, they could get a few hundred kilos onto the plane. The government official in question was Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor to President Richard Nixon and the man who was formalizing a peace agreement with North Vietnam at that very moment. Of all of Frank's stories, that one is the most unlikely. There's very little chance that Frank Lucas smuggled 500 kilos of heroin onto the plane of Henry Kissinger. The next plan is a close second in terms of believability. Frank said that he and his allies realized that combat troops and officers and supply personnel were not the only ones on the planes back to America. They were also planes dedicated to the transportation of the bodies of dead soldiers. Those planes would not be searched as intensely as the troop transports or the cargo planes. Frank claimed that he and his suppliers paid a carpenter to build coffins with false bottoms. Then the smugglers packed the extra spaces with kilos of heroin. No one would think to search the caskets, and it was unlikely that anyone would notice the extra weight. Frank did make a point of explaining in later years that the coffins were empty. He said they never used caskets which held the bodies of soldiers. But the concept was still grim enough to become one of the most infamous images of the Frank Lucas story. And again, Ike Atkinson, Frank's supplier in Thailand, categorically denied that Frank smuggled heroin in any way related to coffins or bodies of dead soldiers. But however Frank managed it, he kept the heroin flowing into Harlem for another two years. Though by 1975, his heroin business, like his legitimate businesses in 1973, started suffering serious setbacks. The empire was developing cracks and it was threatening to crumble. By late 1974, Frank Lucas was extremely worried. In the world of federal drug investigation, there had been a five-year transition between the old Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which closed in 1968, and the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which happened in 1973. After a year on the job, the DEA and local drug cops in New York were gearing up for another big sweep of drug traffickers. Frank wasn't necessarily worried about prison itself. He had been in and out of prison since he was a teenager. But those were short stints for relatively minor crimes. Now he was the head of an international drug trafficking network. If he got caught, the punishment could be severe. To make matters worse, he received an offer from a man he hated to join an even larger network to run an even wider conspiracy. A Harlem gangster named Nicky Barnes had a big idea, and he wanted Frank to participate. It wasn't an original idea. Nicky was copying the Mafia, but he talked about it in grand fashion. He wanted to organize the biggest operators into a syndicate, which he called the Council. At the moment, it was Nicky plus six other guys, and Nicky wanted Frank to join. Frank couldn't stand Nicky Barnes. Frank thought Nicky was someone with no tact and very little sense. Nicky was loud, flashy, and brought far too much attention to the underworld. He talked to reporters, took photographs, and loved to have a public profile. The way Frank remembered it, Frank had made one major public appearance at the Ali Frazier fight in 1971, and he had regretted it ever since. For what it's worth, Frank's biographers have painted the opposite picture. Their writing implies that Nicky Barnes was the smooth operator, and Frank was the over-the-top show-off. It's certainly possible that Frank was more of an attention seeker than he claimed later in life. Sometime after 1972, when the movie Superfly was released, members of the Gambino crime family at the very least started calling Frank Lucas Superfly. The truth is probably somewhere in between. With the money, egos, and competition of the time, it's doubtful that anyone truly maintained a low profile. Regardless, Nicky and Frank hated each other, but Nicky still knew it was better to have everyone on board with his plan. Nicky was upfront about his desire to create the Mafia of Harlem. The men would divide the territory, they would try to handle disputes quietly, and they would protect each other from the law. In these desperate times, Nicky said, there could be strength in numbers. But Frank Lucas wanted no part of an organization with Nicky Barnes at the head. The other members of the Council received their heroine from the Mafia. Frank had a better product, and he didn't have to share profits with the mob, and he had no intention of sharing with the Council. In the short term, Frank probably made the right move. In the long run, ironically, Nicky Barnes' Council would come back to haunt Frank even though Frank stayed away. But that was the second blow of the one-two punch that Frank was about to absorb. The first was devastating. Frank didn't know it, but the DEA was all over his heroin pipeline to Thailand. On September 2, 1974, Frank's Thai contact was arrested in San Francisco. The DEA had lured the man into a trap and busted him as soon as he set foot on American soil. Four months later, on January 19, 1975, Ike Atkinson was arrested and charged with importing heroin into the United States. The arrest was the culmination of a sprawling operation by the DEA, Interpol and Thai police. They had been watching Frank's suppliers basically the entire time the two men were smuggling heroin for Frank. With the two suppliers caught, there was no question who would be next. Ten days after the DEA arrested Ike Atkinson, they went after Frank Lucas. Next time on Infamous America, a task force targets Frank's operation, his dealers, his wife, his brothers, everyone. Prosecutors are eager to rack up victories, but Frank ends up forming an unlikely bond with the prosecutor in Essex County, New Jersey, a former detective named Richie Roberts. Together, they take the cases in unexpected directions with fallout for unsuspecting people. That's next week on Infamous America. To binge all the episodes of a new season, and to listen to every episode of the podcast with no commercials, subscribe in Apple Podcasts or sign up through the link in the show notes, or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Research for today's episode would not have been possible without The Return of Superfly by Mark Jacobson, Harlem Godfather by Mayme Johnson and Karen E. Quinones Miller, and Original Gangster, The Real Life Story of One of America's Most Notorious Drug Lords by Frank Lucas and Aliya S. King. This series was researched and written by Robert Teamstra. Additional writing by me, Chris Swimmer. Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.