transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:00] Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2:
[00:03] Zaron.
Speaker 3:
[00:04] Elizabeth.
Speaker 2:
[00:05] Zaron, how are you?
Speaker 3:
[00:06] I'm doing pretty well. Just been in here waiting for you. I'm all excited to see you, and you walk in with a big smile.
Speaker 2:
[00:11] So good to see you.
Speaker 3:
[00:12] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[00:12] You know, I'm hoping things are gonna look up.
Speaker 3:
[00:15] Oh, same. I'm trying to be positive these days.
Speaker 2:
[00:17] Trying to be hopeful and positive.
Speaker 3:
[00:18] Yeah, I'm trying to be optimistic, and being like, I've been watching a lot of stuff about Vietnam.
Speaker 2:
[00:24] Well, that helps to be-
Speaker 3:
[00:25] For me, it provides perspective. To go from like 60, like early 60s, I actually started at the end of World War II, the coverage. And then by the time you get to 68, and everything's just mad revolution, you're like, okay, I can kind of see how these things break and change.
Speaker 2:
[00:40] Sure.
Speaker 3:
[00:41] So it was just giving me a little like, okay, we've gotten through crazy.
Speaker 2:
[00:43] Can you feel better? That's true. Listen, aside from you binge watching Vietnam documentaries, you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3:
[00:52] Oh my God, do I, Elizabeth? I saw this and I had to tell you about it. There was this woman named Marcia Morgan. She was 48 years old at the time. And she did what I have occasionally done, which is you look at your window and you see someone is parked in front of your place. You're like, what the hell are they doing to my parking spot, right?
Speaker 2:
[01:11] On the public street?
Speaker 3:
[01:12] On the public street. But you still look at it as like your parking space, because they're right in front of your place.
Speaker 2:
[01:17] Right.
Speaker 3:
[01:17] I admit it makes no sense. It's not one of my best qualities. But I have gotten upset when I'm like, what are they doing parking there? So she did something I can totally understand. She went out and tried to do something about it. She wasn't violent. She wasn't mad destructive. She just took a bunch of toilet paper and she toilet papered the car that was parked in what she conceived of as her space. Now what I've left out was that when she did this, she was dressed as a hot dog. She had gotten home and decided not to take off her hot dog costume. Instead, she just had a couple of drinks. She got tossed. Then she decided, I need to go settle up with that car out front. When she was arrested, she was still in the hot dog costume.
Speaker 2:
[02:03] This is a costume she had to wear for work?
Speaker 3:
[02:05] I don't know. I'm assuming. Maybe she did it for leisure. She was like, I'm going to put on something comfortable.
Speaker 2:
[02:13] I feel like if I had to go home in a hot dog costume, the first thing I do is take off the hot dog costume.
Speaker 3:
[02:19] One would think.
Speaker 2:
[02:19] And then can we also talk about how expensive it is to toilet paper a car?
Speaker 3:
[02:24] Oh, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:
[02:26] You don't even egg things anymore. That's too expensive.
Speaker 3:
[02:29] No one's wasting that. This was a couple of years ago. This was in like, well, it was 2025. It wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 2:
[02:36] It was one year ago.
Speaker 3:
[02:37] The toilet paper was still expensive.
Speaker 2:
[02:39] Right. Everything's expensive.
Speaker 3:
[02:41] She got a $550 fine on top of her lost toilet paper. I guess the cops weren't impressed with that hot dog costume. Now, I don't think I should have to tell you this, but this did occur in St. Petersburg, Florida. No. Yeah. Also, by the way, when I was reading other stories of the news about crime, there's a neighborhood called Madera in Florida, which is in the St. Petersburg area. Oh man, did that one come up a lot in the stories.
Speaker 2:
[03:04] Is that a hot bed?
Speaker 3:
[03:05] Yeah, if you go to read the Smoking Gun, which is what I happened to be just cruising through, so it's a little light reading, and it was just Madera, Madera, Madera. I'd never heard of it before. Now I know all about it. Apparently, it's a rough spot.
Speaker 2:
[03:19] Interesting.
Speaker 3:
[03:19] A lot of people hitting each other with a slice of pizza, throwing nachos at your mom.
Speaker 2:
[03:24] People dressed as hot dogs.
Speaker 3:
[03:26] One person stole a taco.
Speaker 2:
[03:28] There's a lot of food-based.
Speaker 3:
[03:29] A lot of food-based, and then also offenses. Meth and alcohol-based crimes.
Speaker 2:
[03:33] Oh yeah, it's all in one big place.
Speaker 3:
[03:34] Sometimes it's like I got drunk and I threw the pizza at my mother.
Speaker 2:
[03:37] I like it, okay.
Speaker 3:
[03:38] So there you go.
Speaker 2:
[03:38] But Derek.
Speaker 3:
[03:39] Ridiculous, right?
Speaker 2:
[03:40] You know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3:
[03:41] No.
Speaker 2:
[03:42] Getting them smugglers blues. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always, always 99% murder free and 100% ridiculous.
Speaker 3:
[04:18] Oh, you damn right.
Speaker 2:
[04:20] I am so right.
Speaker 3:
[04:21] Always right.
Speaker 2:
[04:22] Zaron.
Speaker 3:
[04:23] So right, you're like rain.
Speaker 2:
[04:25] You love a good tale of adventure on the high seas.
Speaker 3:
[04:28] I love a good tale of adventure on the high seas.
Speaker 2:
[04:32] You love pirates.
Speaker 3:
[04:33] I'm a huge fan of pirates. If I could have a job occupation of choice, it would be a pirate.
Speaker 2:
[04:39] You love Vikings.
Speaker 3:
[04:40] Basically a pirate of the ancient.
Speaker 2:
[04:42] Yes. And you love tales of dirtbags with feathered hair, loading up boats with pounds of weed and running their goods to the land of apple pie, baseball, in-sync garbage disposals, red solo cups and medical bankruptcy.
Speaker 3:
[04:59] Yes. I do love 60s and 70s in particular. And up to the 80s, drug smuggling in the Florida Keys.
Speaker 2:
[05:06] Into the USA. Yeah. Drugs smugglers. Okay. So they make amazing, ridiculous criminals.
Speaker 3:
[05:11] Totally. Just amazing.
Speaker 2:
[05:12] And it's in part because of the way they spend their ill-gotten gains. Like they do a ridiculous job. They buy ridiculous things.
Speaker 3:
[05:19] Yes. It's just a circle of ridiculousness.
Speaker 2:
[05:21] And it may be because they dip into their own supply. I mean, it's an explanation.
Speaker 3:
[05:25] Possibly.
Speaker 2:
[05:27] So I've got this guy for you today. A lot of the parts of his story sound a little familiar because we've heard them in other stories here. Like they're the tropes, these required elements, the basics of 70s and 80s drug smuggling.
Speaker 3:
[05:40] Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
[05:41] Let's be real, it never gets old.
Speaker 3:
[05:43] No, go fast boat, low flying planes.
Speaker 2:
[05:45] Exactly. So today, Randy Lanier.
Speaker 3:
[05:50] Oh.
Speaker 2:
[05:51] He's an all-timer, Mr. Burnett. I'm guessing you've heard of him.
Speaker 3:
[05:55] My friend Derek actually recommended I look into his story. I'm glad you got this.
Speaker 2:
[05:59] Well, Derek, I've stole it out from under you. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. 1954 was the year. His dad was a draftsman. His mom was a caretaker at a mental hospital. They're just hard working folks. He was close to his grandparents and he loved countrying it up at their place on the James River. He was a good old country boy.
Speaker 3:
[06:22] Good southern boy, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[06:23] When he was 14, he and his family moved to Hollywood, Florida, which is not too far from Fort Lauderdale. The vibe in the late 60s was mellow, like long haired beach hippies, cool music, cool tunes, drugs. So Randy, he started working construction.
Speaker 3:
[06:44] OK, I respect.
Speaker 2:
[06:45] He was like a typical teen for the time and the place. He had a ponytail. He wanted to make a little cache.
Speaker 3:
[06:50] Been there, brother.
Speaker 2:
[06:51] Swing a hammer.
Speaker 3:
[06:52] Except for the ponytail.
Speaker 2:
[06:53] Well, the ponytail got him a reputation that basically manifested what was to come.
Speaker 3:
[06:58] Oh, no.
Speaker 2:
[06:59] Because he had the ponytail, shows up. Guys on the crew thought that he'd be able to hook him up with pot.
Speaker 3:
[07:06] Because I guess I used to have dreadlocks.
Speaker 2:
[07:08] Well, that's the thing, like, not to even sell, but like, do you know where you could find him? And I thought, I bet you could relate to that because you had long dreadlocks when you were working construction.
Speaker 3:
[07:16] And they always expected me to have pot on me. Like, oh, we're going to go take a break. Z, you want to come with us?
Speaker 2:
[07:22] Yeah, or know where you could get it.
Speaker 3:
[07:23] Oh, yeah, definitely hook him up.
Speaker 2:
[07:25] Yeah, so I think you were probably able to accommodate the requests, maybe. So this kid, though, he's just a kid with a ponytail. But if people ask, you're like, well, all right, let's make this happen. So Randy started selling pot.
Speaker 3:
[07:39] There you go.
Speaker 2:
[07:40] He was readying himself for another summer of construction site drug deals. And then his dad was like, you got to cut your hair. No way, man. As Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young saying, almost cut my hair. It happened just the other day. It was getting kind of long. I could have said it was in my way, but I didn't. And I wonder why. I feel like letting my freak flag fly. Yeah. So he wanted to let his freak flag fly.
Speaker 1:
[08:07] Nice deep pull.
Speaker 2:
[08:08] And how, thank you. So you know what he did? He got out of town.
Speaker 3:
[08:11] Oh, he was like, forget the scissors, give me the car keys.
Speaker 2:
[08:14] So he hitchhiked to Canada.
Speaker 3:
[08:16] From Hollywood, Florida?
Speaker 2:
[08:18] Yeah. With a bag of pot. Four hits of acid and $5.
Speaker 3:
[08:22] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[08:23] You know, just like that sweet heroin cherub, David Crosby sang in the same song, when I finally get myself together, I'm going to get down in some of that sweet summer weather. I'm going to find a space inside to laugh, separate the wheat from the chaff.
Speaker 3:
[08:38] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[08:39] So it was a great summer. It was.
Speaker 3:
[08:42] Great song too.
Speaker 2:
[08:43] He decided to ride the high. So he dropped out of school and became a full-time weed dealer.
Speaker 3:
[08:48] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[08:49] He did all the late 60s, early 70s weed dealer stuff.
Speaker 3:
[08:54] Like how so?
Speaker 2:
[08:54] So according to Rolling Stone magazine, he quote, at one point, packed the air vents of a Volkswagen Beetle with marijuana and headed off to Aspen to meditate with a guru.
Speaker 3:
[09:05] Yes, except for the air-cooled engine part.
Speaker 2:
[09:08] Except for a little problem there, a little problem there. So by the time he was 19, he'd earned enough as a local dealer to buy a 27-foot Magnum Sport powerboat.
Speaker 3:
[09:18] Damn, son.
Speaker 2:
[09:19] He was making cash. And there's nothing like a young weed dealer with a go-fast boat. Like what could go wrong, Zaron?
Speaker 3:
[09:27] He've stepped up in class.
Speaker 2:
[09:28] As Randy tells it, quote, about six months later, a buddy asked me if I was interested in going to the Bahamas and putting some grass on my boat. It seemed like an adventure, so I did it.
Speaker 3:
[09:39] Oh man, I love when people used to call it grass.
Speaker 2:
[09:41] I was just going to say, that is my favorite.
Speaker 3:
[09:44] Of all the weed terms?
Speaker 2:
[09:45] I think so, because it's so like, it's so time specific. Anyway, they skadoodled on down to the Bahamas. They loaded 750 pounds of that sticky Icky into the boat. Then they cruise back up to Fort Lauderdale, super easy. And it made him five grand. So five grand in 1973 is just over $37,000 today. That's not bad.
Speaker 3:
[10:11] For basically a day and a half flit work.
Speaker 2:
[10:13] Yeah, exactly. So Randy, he did some math in his head. Beboobaboo beep, right?
Speaker 3:
[10:18] Heavy on the beep.
Speaker 2:
[10:19] If one boat can land him 5K, no problem. What about two? Well, heck, what about three?
Speaker 3:
[10:26] Hate him, man.
Speaker 2:
[10:26] He bought two more speed boats to go with the first. And he had it made. He married his high school sweetheart, like things are on the uptick. It was just all so easy. You slip down to the island, you pick up the cargo, head back to Florida.
Speaker 3:
[10:39] Who doesn't want to go to Nassau?
Speaker 2:
[10:40] Everybody slide into the canals under cover of darkness.
Speaker 3:
[10:44] There's plenty of them on the Florida coast. So many inlets.
Speaker 2:
[10:47] Randy said, quote, It was a smuggler's paradise. It was like the pirate days. You want a time machine to go back to them, don't you?
Speaker 3:
[10:55] I would be satisfied with the late 70s. I would just literally be fine with that.
Speaker 2:
[10:59] And so like South Florida weed dealers started hiring him. And he'd make the pickups, and they'd cut him in for 30% of the load. So fast forward a couple of years, and as Rolling Stone wrote, quote, Lanier had three stash houses humming in the bucolic horse country west of Fort Lauderdale, and was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. So he had to have some cover for all of this. Like, how do you explain this? He started a business. So 1970s Fort Lauderdale, like, what's a happening successful business for that time and place?
Speaker 3:
[11:34] Car repair show?
Speaker 2:
[11:35] Well, no, if you had said jet ski rental, you would be today's winner.
Speaker 3:
[11:39] Jet ski rental. Why did I miss that?
Speaker 2:
[11:41] I mean, come on.
Speaker 3:
[11:42] It's right there.
Speaker 2:
[11:43] It's right there, Burnett. So, you know, a man has to have hobbies, of course. Randy, like you, liked to go fast. Boats, jet skis.
Speaker 3:
[11:52] Yeah, my man.
Speaker 2:
[11:52] And it was in 1978 that he went to a Miami car show.
Speaker 3:
[11:56] Oh, no.
Speaker 2:
[11:57] A 1978 Miami car show.
Speaker 3:
[11:59] You know, that's all the way wild.
Speaker 2:
[12:00] Oh, yeah. So there he saw a car club booth and he, like, chatted with them all. Hey, Kiki, what's up? Checked out a brochure and then signed up for a racing class.
Speaker 3:
[12:13] Oh, smart. Is it like Bob Bondurat style?
Speaker 2:
[12:15] Yeah. Randy later said, quote, I didn't have a clue. I just drove.
Speaker 3:
[12:21] Yes, my man.
Speaker 2:
[12:23] And drove he did, Zaron. So he worked the grassroots circuit for a while, just like gunning and funnin. Then came the 1982 24 hours of Daytona race.
Speaker 3:
[12:34] Oh, yeah. Driving on the sand real fast.
Speaker 2:
[12:37] A friend of his worked for Janet Guthrie, and she was one of the first women to compete in professional racing. And his buddy was like, hey, you want to hear some hot gossip? And Randy's like, yeah. He's like, Janet's sick. He's like, sick, sick? No, she just has like an upset stomach. Oh. And he's like, that doesn't qualify as hot gossip. He's like, you should spend some time around the track. This is about as good as I can get. So they were looking for someone to take her place at 24 hours of Daytona.
Speaker 3:
[13:08] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[13:08] And Randy was like, look no further.
Speaker 3:
[13:11] I drive fast.
Speaker 2:
[13:11] I'm your guy. So according to Rolling Stone, climbing into the Ferrari 512, Lanier drove several practice laps fast enough to impress the team. He and two other drivers kept the car in third place for 18 hours before Lanier destroyed the Ferrari's gearbox.
Speaker 3:
[13:28] Oh.
Speaker 2:
[13:30] So he was shining on the track.
Speaker 3:
[13:33] Apparently.
Speaker 2:
[13:33] And he was also shining back at the office. Not the jet ski rental office, but the drug smuggling office.
Speaker 3:
[13:38] Okay. I didn't know which one.
Speaker 2:
[13:39] No. Yeah. That one. And so he had expanded and he had a business partner, a fellow by the name of Ben Kramer.
Speaker 3:
[13:46] Ben Kramer.
Speaker 2:
[13:47] They went to high school together and they had similar interests. See, Ben had just gotten out of prison for selling weed. So they were simpatico. And with Ben, Randy could really upscale, upsize his efforts.
Speaker 3:
[14:00] Yeah. He's graduated from the Iron Bar University.
Speaker 2:
[14:02] Exactly. So faster boats, bigger boats.
Speaker 3:
[14:06] More boats.
Speaker 2:
[14:07] I'm talking 65 foot wooden trawler.
Speaker 3:
[14:11] Wow.
Speaker 2:
[14:12] And then a whole fleet of tugboats. He just went nuts.
Speaker 3:
[14:18] So he's like, they're going to look past those.
Speaker 2:
[14:19] Yeah. So then he gets bigger contracts. He got, we're talking Columbia.
Speaker 3:
[14:26] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[14:27] So they weren't middlemen anymore. They went to the source.
Speaker 3:
[14:30] Now they're smugglers dealing with cartels.
Speaker 2:
[14:32] More money for them. So Randy bought a Norwegian fishing trawler called Ursa Major. And he took it down to Columbia and he came back with 15,000 pounds of Colombian gold. Can I tell you about this particular strain?
Speaker 3:
[14:46] And tons of Colombian gold.
Speaker 2:
[14:49] Colombian gold is a legendary pure Sativa cannabis strain originating from the Santa Marta mountains in Colombia, renowned for its energetic uplifting effects and high THC levels around 18 to 20%. It is popular for daytime use to combat stress and depression featuring a distinct skunky lime forward aroma. It is relatively easy to grow tall plant.
Speaker 3:
[15:14] I bet it would drive Cheech and Chong absolutely sideways with desire.
Speaker 2:
[15:20] It just cracks me up when people talk about weed the way they talk about wine.
Speaker 3:
[15:23] Yeah, with the terroir and all the limonene.
Speaker 2:
[15:25] But it makes sense, it makes sense.
Speaker 3:
[15:27] The terpenes in this are fantastic. The top note is something of an alfalfa.
Speaker 2:
[15:33] Well, you go from wine moms to weed moms.
Speaker 3:
[15:35] That's true.
Speaker 2:
[15:35] That's the whole thing. So there's Randy with his boat just crammed with Colombian gold marijuana. He pulled off the coast of Florida, and his crew motored up in a bunch of big zodiac rafts. They filled the zodiacs with 50 pound bales of weed.
Speaker 3:
[15:52] Bales just wrapped, okay.
Speaker 2:
[15:54] And then the zodiacs made their way to a beach where a strobe light was flickering to signal them.
Speaker 3:
[16:00] This is like the old rum runners approach.
Speaker 2:
[16:03] Yes.
Speaker 3:
[16:04] Like your boy, the real McCoy.
Speaker 2:
[16:05] Right. So they would run the boats up onto the beach, because there's zodiacs, it's flat right there. And then there was a human chain of unloaders who ran the bales from the boats to a bunch of vans waiting in a parking lot. And then the vans would drive to one of Randy's stash houses. Randy sold it all the next day. His take, $4.5 million. It's like $15 million today, one night.
Speaker 3:
[16:31] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[16:32] So Randy and his wife Pam, they're living it up. Like they got this new five bedroom house with a private lake, got a couple of Rottweilers patrolling, Rockwilers patrolling the grounds.
Speaker 3:
[16:44] So she fully knows what he does for a living.
Speaker 2:
[16:46] Oh yeah. A Porsche, a Benzo. It's not bad for the owner of a chain of jet ski rental shops.
Speaker 3:
[16:53] Yeah, he lived in large.
Speaker 2:
[16:54] But hey, it's Fort Lauderdale. Things were big, but they were about to get bigger.
Speaker 3:
[16:59] I love bigger.
Speaker 2:
[16:59] Let's take a break.
Speaker 3:
[17:00] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[17:01] When we come back, I'll tell you about Randy's next seriously audacious plan. Randy Lanier. No, you're Zaron Burnett. But I want to tell you about Randy Lanier.
Speaker 3:
[17:31] You can call me Randy today.
Speaker 2:
[17:32] Okay, he'll be Randy. Weed smuggler extraordinaire. So here we are in 1982. What a time.
Speaker 3:
[17:41] What a year.
Speaker 2:
[17:42] Randy had a bunch of weed distributors, and one of them introduced Randy and his partner, Ben Kramer, to Tip O'Neill, who then became a tugboat captain for them.
Speaker 3:
[17:56] He's in the Miami area.
Speaker 2:
[17:57] I'll just keep running with him. And then the estate of Tip O'Neill can come after me. Anyway, so he introduces Ben and Randy to this other smuggler, George Brock. Now, Brock had a vision. See, he knew this other guy, Eugene Fisher. Fisher owned a shipyard. He also owned an ocean-going barge.
Speaker 3:
[18:19] Oh, you put a lot of weed on there.
Speaker 2:
[18:21] Like, the flat decked kind, big as a football field. So Brock, he did some calculations.
Speaker 1:
[18:27] Beboobaboo beep.
Speaker 3:
[18:28] He's like, we can put all the weed in this.
Speaker 2:
[18:30] Yeah. He was like, a barge could hold more than a hundred tons of marijuana. And that's like more than 200,000 pounds of weed. So according to Rolling Stone, quote, the scheme was simple, but ingenious. Welders sealed the bales under steel plates. The secret compartments were then filled with sea water so that a curious customs official would find only brine. In early 1983, the barge sailed up New York's East River and docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Speaker 3:
[19:01] Damn, son, living large.
Speaker 2:
[19:03] Pulling 200,000 pounds, so it's like winds up being a little bit less than that, of weed up into Brooklyn.
Speaker 3:
[19:10] Right into New York's harbor.
Speaker 2:
[19:12] This is insane. So they get to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Randy's guys used welding torches to cut through the ballast tanks. Inside, 130,000 pounds of Colombian gold.
Speaker 3:
[19:25] That's, oh, by the way, a lot of work to cut through with welders' torches.
Speaker 2:
[19:29] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[19:29] That's like the place you would get caught after all that work. What are you guys still welding down there?
Speaker 2:
[19:34] Yeah. So the tanks are opened. Another crew comes, moves the bales of weed into tractor trailers, like big rigs.
Speaker 3:
[19:41] Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:
[19:42] And so now Randy is rich, rich.
Speaker 3:
[19:44] Oh, big time.
Speaker 2:
[19:46] Doing the math from the Ursa Minor job, that run had to be worth $39 million, which is $124 million today. But you figure he's got to cut all these other folks in and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 3:
[19:57] Yeah, it's not all profit, but that's a big time job.
Speaker 2:
[20:00] So that money immediately began burning a hole in his pocket.
Speaker 3:
[20:03] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[20:04] He put a lot of it into putting together a professional racing team.
Speaker 3:
[20:08] Like race car?
Speaker 2:
[20:09] Yeah, he bought two race cars. Bought a warehouse to use as the home base. He hired an ex Formula One crew chief and a team of mechanics.
Speaker 3:
[20:20] What class is he racing?
Speaker 1:
[20:21] Formula One.
Speaker 3:
[20:22] Not NASCAR, Formula One.
Speaker 2:
[20:23] Yeah, he graduated.
Speaker 3:
[20:25] Yes, go fast, son.
Speaker 2:
[20:27] He called his new racing team Blue Thunder.
Speaker 3:
[20:30] Why not?
Speaker 2:
[20:31] So good.
Speaker 3:
[20:33] This is like early 80s, so the TV show and movie Blue Thunder would probably come out. He's imitating possibly the helicopter.
Speaker 2:
[20:42] Right, right. So just like in most professional sports, if you have money, you can buy success.
Speaker 3:
[20:49] Totally.
Speaker 2:
[20:49] And so at the end of the 1984 season.
Speaker 3:
[20:52] Look at the Dodgers.
Speaker 2:
[20:54] Randy was named Camel GT Champion, as well as Most Improved Driver.
Speaker 3:
[20:59] Really?
Speaker 2:
[20:59] Most Improved Driver is like the best, worst award I can think of getting. Most Improved. So the smuggling had never stopped. He had a team to fund now, and so they did another barge run. I love this. This one had 75 tons of Colombian gold in it. He was making tens of millions of dollars. His lifestyle reflected it. He had expensive cars, vacation homes.
Speaker 3:
[21:27] The most feathered hair you've ever seen feathered.
Speaker 2:
[21:29] I feel like he and his crew probably all walked around in those football jerseys that are cut off like half shirt, let's say Hawaii 84 or whatever.
Speaker 3:
[21:38] The short, short, cut off jean shorts with the fraying at the bottom, a little bit of white pocket. Exactly.
Speaker 2:
[21:44] The pocket's longer than the inseam. So all this money has to be laundered, of course.
Speaker 3:
[21:50] Naturally.
Speaker 2:
[21:51] And so Randy and Ben, they had a bunch of foreign bank accounts, shell companies. One of these companies funded the construction of a 100,000 square foot casino called the Bell Gardens Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens, California. It's now called Park West Bicycle Casino, and it's still like a poker card room. The whole thing was funded by a variety of drug smugglers. It was like a cooperative. Yeah, it was as a means to launder money. And it's like both during construction and in the operation. And it was actually Ben's dad who was the guy behind the whole card room plan. Anyway, the laundering operation was huge. There were tons of fake corporations.
Speaker 3:
[22:34] I wonder how much crack money went into this because it's the early 80s.
Speaker 2:
[22:37] Yeah, I don't know. I think, yeah, Bell Gardens. One of their fake companies was called G. Reedy Holding Company. G.
Speaker 3:
[22:43] Reedy. Get ready.
Speaker 2:
[22:45] Greedy.
Speaker 3:
[22:45] Greedy. Oh, right. Even better. G. Reedy, I didn't even catch that.
Speaker 2:
[22:49] They used banks in England, Panama, Hong Kong, British Virgin Islands, other places.
Speaker 3:
[22:55] All the best money laundering spots.
Speaker 2:
[22:56] And what was Randy up to right now?
Speaker 3:
[22:59] What was Randy up to right now, Elizabeth?
Speaker 2:
[23:01] So glad that I made you ask that. He was training for the Indianapolis 500.
Speaker 3:
[23:07] Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:
[23:08] The number one race in America. So, Randy had the money to go full in on training. In May 1986, a week before the race, he learned that his distributor in Louisiana had been arrested.
Speaker 3:
[23:22] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[23:23] And was cooperating with the FBI.
Speaker 3:
[23:26] Oh, no.
Speaker 2:
[23:26] And the FBI was surveilling Randy.
Speaker 3:
[23:29] Oh, no.
Speaker 2:
[23:30] Yeah. This is a week before the Indy 500. And so there was another shipment on its way in as he heard all of this. 83 tons of weed on its way to Louisiana on the barge.
Speaker 3:
[23:44] Okay. So like going to New Orleans, basically, or thereabouts.
Speaker 2:
[23:47] Randy got in touch with the captain of the ship and was like, redirect, redirect, don't go to Louisiana. He tells him, head south.
Speaker 3:
[23:54] Go to Brownsville.
Speaker 2:
[23:55] Go through the Panama Canal.
Speaker 3:
[23:57] Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:
[23:57] Then head north in the Pacific to California. Go to Long Beach or something. All of this is right when he's getting ready for the Indy 500. Like, this is stressful.
Speaker 3:
[24:09] I gotta focus. I got the mandretties.
Speaker 2:
[24:11] Years later, Dale Earnhardt Jr. would marvel at these circumstances on his podcast while interviewing Randy.
Speaker 3:
[24:18] Dale Earnhardt Jr., yes.
Speaker 2:
[24:19] Dale Jr. Intimidator Jr. But Randy races, and he still managed to come in just nine cars behind.
Speaker 3:
[24:27] What?
Speaker 2:
[24:27] That's not bad.
Speaker 3:
[24:28] Not bad at all.
Speaker 2:
[24:29] Randy was actually the only rookie driver to finish that year.
Speaker 3:
[24:32] Really?
Speaker 2:
[24:32] And he clocked the fastest speed in history during pre-qualifying laps, breaking Michael Andretti's previous record.
Speaker 3:
[24:40] What? See, Andretti's sure been proud. I'm moving past that crowd.
Speaker 2:
[24:45] There's an awards banquet after the race, and Randy was presented with the Indy 500's Rookie of the Year award.
Speaker 3:
[24:52] Get it, son.
Speaker 2:
[24:53] Randy. So he's like floating on air at this point. Like, what a life. He's racing in the Indy 500. He's driving exotic cars, living in palatial homes, smuggling tons of weed.
Speaker 3:
[25:04] He is living the early 80s dream. Right now, he gets the 80s citadel dream.
Speaker 2:
[25:10] But then, don't forget, there's that barge that he had to redirect. So just a few months after his turn in the Indy 500, finds himself sitting in a rented car in a parking lot near a harbor on the San Francisco Bay.
Speaker 3:
[25:25] Oh, he made it all the way up there.
Speaker 2:
[25:26] Waiting on that boat that was originally headed for Louisiana.
Speaker 3:
[25:30] Where do they plan on docking on San Francisco Bay?
Speaker 2:
[25:32] They kept saying near San Francisco, and I'm thinking like South City, some of those, or it could have been Oakland.
Speaker 3:
[25:38] Could have been Oakland, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[25:40] But here's the thing, though, is that the Oakland, like all those port slips are so union controlled.
Speaker 3:
[25:46] That's my concern.
Speaker 2:
[25:46] I don't think you can just roll up. That's why I think it's going to be like Hunter's Point, Bayview kind of south side of the city.
Speaker 3:
[25:53] Yeah, that's a little bit more loose.
Speaker 2:
[25:55] Yeah, anyway.
Speaker 3:
[25:56] I would have gone to Long Beach where you can actually bribe people.
Speaker 2:
[25:59] Yeah, I guess, but it's also a union stronghold.
Speaker 3:
[26:01] Yeah, but it's a little bit bigger. There's enough to get lost in in Long Beach.
Speaker 2:
[26:05] Yeah, that's true. Could have gone to Richmond.
Speaker 3:
[26:08] That's where you're with all the metal salvage. People are definitely looking past that. And it's a lot of Asians travel, so they thought of like, I don't know where this is coming from.
Speaker 2:
[26:17] But I'm just trying to think of the size of this barge, where would it go?
Speaker 3:
[26:21] It could go to Richmond. It could totally go to Richmond.
Speaker 2:
[26:23] This must be fascinating for people who have no idea about the layout of the San Francisco Bay. Anyway.
Speaker 3:
[26:28] New cargo options.
Speaker 2:
[26:30] Exactly. So he's sitting in a parking lot near a harbor on the bay, waiting for the boat. He gets a message on his radio.
Speaker 3:
[26:38] And he's still under FBI investigation, and he knows it.
Speaker 2:
[26:41] And he knows it. There's trouble with the cargo.
Speaker 3:
[26:43] Oh no.
Speaker 2:
[26:44] Water got into one of the sealed compartments full of weed, and the marijuana was rotting and putting off methane. And when the crew went to use torches to cut open the compartments, explosion and fire.
Speaker 3:
[26:58] Oh, cause of methane, of course.
Speaker 2:
[26:59] Two of the guys died. So moment of silence for 1%. So the remaining crew, they're worried that the whole thing is gonna go, right? So they salvaged what they could without opening the other compartments.
Speaker 3:
[27:13] How'd they do that?
Speaker 2:
[27:13] I don't know. And they shipped off what they could in trucks. And then the barge was set out into the ocean and scuttled, went to the briny deep, holding the two expired welders too. There are many tragic tales in Davy Jones' locker.
Speaker 3:
[27:28] I'm telling you.
Speaker 2:
[27:29] So Randy...
Speaker 3:
[27:30] The sea holds secrets.
Speaker 2:
[27:31] Yeah, this I feel like was like a turning point for Randy. He went back to Florida a changed man. The whole thing rattled him. And he knew the feds were sniffing around. So he started to get super paranoid. One of his fans...
Speaker 3:
[27:44] And his racing career is going well. So he's now got something to lose.
Speaker 2:
[27:48] Sure, sure. But it's like he's kind of crossed a line with this.
Speaker 3:
[27:51] Yeah, no, definitely at this point.
Speaker 2:
[27:52] He moved out of his fancy house and into a condo that he rented under a fake name.
Speaker 3:
[27:57] Huh. So he's basically like low key on the run.
Speaker 2:
[27:59] Oh, yeah. He always used pay phones to make calls, never landlines, and certainly no early cell phones. He went in and out of the back doors of stores and restaurants and businesses. He was like Henry Hill. Good fellas driving around looking at the sky. Exactly. Then his shoe dropped. In October of 1986, the DEA pressed charges on 11 people for engaging in a major drug and money laundering organization. Three of those people were at the center of it all, Randy, Ben, and Ben's dad, Jack Kramer. Remember, Jack was the casino one. By the way, Jack Kramer was married to Meyer Lansky's niece.
Speaker 3:
[28:40] Oh, he deep.
Speaker 2:
[28:41] Yes. So the charges detailed their efforts to smuggle more than 100,000 pounds of marijuana into South Florida between September of 1983 and June of 1986.
Speaker 3:
[28:53] And now he's in a new race, which is who's going to flip on who first.
Speaker 2:
[28:57] But he's not even talking about the feds aren't talking about New York, California. This is just the South Florida.
Speaker 3:
[29:03] Yeah, just the Florida stuff they know about down there.
Speaker 2:
[29:05] Now, Randy had broken his leg in a crash at the Michigan 500.
Speaker 3:
[29:10] Oh.
Speaker 2:
[29:11] And like bad luck is all he knew at this point. So he surrendered to the feds. He posted $100,000 bail and was released.
Speaker 3:
[29:18] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[29:19] Now, remember when I said just moments ago that they weren't even talking about New York or California or anything else?
Speaker 3:
[29:24] Yeah, it wasn't on the radar.
Speaker 2:
[29:25] I take that back.
Speaker 3:
[29:26] Oh.
Speaker 2:
[29:27] A couple months later, FBI comes at him for smuggling 150 tons of marijuana into US ports over a three-year period.
Speaker 3:
[29:35] I have one question, Elizabeth. Why was he still in the country? They had gotten him out. At this point, you got that kind of money? You need to run, son.
Speaker 2:
[29:44] So when you add it all up, Randy and company were busted for bringing more than 600,000 pounds of marijuana into the country. 600,000 pounds with a Z at the end, pounds. In February of 1987, Randy was due in court. So the feds-
Speaker 3:
[30:03] So basically, anybody like our parents' age probably smoked some of the pot that he brought into the country.
Speaker 2:
[30:09] Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:
[30:09] If you were smoking Colombian pot.
Speaker 2:
[30:11] Smoking Colombian gold.
Speaker 3:
[30:12] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[30:13] Yeah. Anywhere on the Eastern seaboard.
Speaker 3:
[30:15] Eastern seaboard in particular.
Speaker 2:
[30:16] And perhaps-
Speaker 3:
[30:16] And perhaps parts of California.
Speaker 2:
[30:17] Places around the bay, yeah. So Randy has to go to court, February 1987. And the feds were like, you have some options. You can face a life sentence, or you can turn state's evidence and get 10 years. Randy's like, I'll take option three.
Speaker 3:
[30:35] Which is?
Speaker 2:
[30:35] Zaron, close your eyes.
Speaker 3:
[30:37] Yes, my eyes closed.
Speaker 2:
[30:39] I want you to picture it. You work at a bagel shop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It's the morning rush, various professionals wait in line for their bagels and coffee. You are working the register. People in suits, construction workers in their gear, doctors and nurses from the hospital down the road, they all wait patiently for their choice of schmear. Above you, a TV shows the local morning news. The volume's low. The owner has it on so the customers can see the weather and traffic while they wait in the morning. And any crazy major news stories. Right now, the screen above you shows a weather radar map. The sky is clear for the foreseeable future. The door chimes as another customer comes in and joins the line. You finish taking an order, ringing them up and then looking at the line to call the next person. Everyone in line is now looking up the TV screen. You turn around and stare up at it. A reporter stands across the street from Grand Gates outside a super fancy home. Behind him, two cops in tactical gear walk by. You see someone in a DEA windbreaker talking to a lady in an FBI windbreaker. Alphabet soup, one of the guys in line cracks. The lady in front of him laughs. You look back at the line and the man, three customers back, looks like he's seen a ghost. He stares at the screen for a little while longer and then ducks out a line and races to the payphone against the wall. He puts in a quarter, pulls a folded up sheet of paper from his back pocket and dials the number he seems to read from the paper. He waits and when it seems like someone has answered, he says, yeah, my wife, Pam Lanier is a patient there. She just had our baby a couple of days ago. Can you connect me to a room? The guy waits in silence staring out the window of the shop. It's funny, no one ever uses the payphone in here. Well, every now and then. It's almost always to call home to ask someone what they wanted or what they would want as a substitution if their first request is sold out. You hear a lot of, honey, did you want onion with the locks? Capers? No? Okay. In fact, that's why the owner had the phone company install the phone inside, instead of out on the sidewalk, more convenient for the customers. He thinks of everything. You expect the guy to ask his wife if she wants poppy seed or an egg bagel, that maybe he couldn't remember. Instead, you hear him say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. The babysitter said, what? Yeah, I know they're at the house. I just saw it on the news. Yes, I am aware. When am I coming to get you? The man stares out the window. A customer walks by him to leave, setting off the door time. Finally, he speaks. I'm leaving. I'm not coming to get you, he says. Then he hangs up the phone and walks out of the shop. You've been so distracted you weren't listening to the lady in front of you as she rattled off her very intricate order. You asked her to repeat herself and she sighed. You look back up at the screen, everything clicking. Hot dog, you just saw a drug kingpin.
Speaker 3:
[33:46] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[33:47] Zaron, let's take a break. And when we return, we'll go find Randy.
Speaker 3:
[33:51] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[34:12] All right, Zaron, before the break, I was telling you about how Randy saw his house getting raided while he was waiting in line to pick up bagels for his wife.
Speaker 3:
[34:20] Very well rendered.
Speaker 2:
[34:21] After she gave birth to their second child.
Speaker 3:
[34:23] So that was real, that wasn't code.
Speaker 2:
[34:24] That was real, yeah. So their first kid was at home with the babysitter. Randy, not a good dad, decided to just make a break for it. And also not a good husband.
Speaker 3:
[34:34] I mean, I liked his instinct to run. I think he should have done it much earlier, and he probably should have taken his wife and children with him.
Speaker 2:
[34:41] Right, right.
Speaker 3:
[34:42] That's the way you get the money, right? Exactly.
Speaker 2:
[34:44] So he hitched a ride in a big rig and rode all the way up to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3:
[34:48] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[34:49] And then he used a phony passport.
Speaker 3:
[34:50] That's a good move.
Speaker 2:
[34:51] Yeah. He used a fake passport, got on a flight to London.
Speaker 3:
[34:55] Okay.
Speaker 2:
[34:55] And it was there that he met up with someone, his girlfriend.
Speaker 3:
[34:59] Oh no.
Speaker 2:
[35:00] Oh, Zaron. You had to believe a guy like this would be stepping out on his wife.
Speaker 3:
[35:04] I probably should have.
Speaker 2:
[35:05] You know why?
Speaker 3:
[35:05] I'm so innocent, so naive.
Speaker 2:
[35:07] You know why?
Speaker 3:
[35:07] Why?
Speaker 2:
[35:08] Because he is a piece of.
Speaker 3:
[35:10] Oh, snap.
Speaker 2:
[35:12] So he met the girlfriend.
Speaker 3:
[35:14] Didn't enjoy the research, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2:
[35:16] He met the girlfriend, Maria de la Luz Magui, while still in Florida. The two of them met up in London and then just like flitted around Europe, living it up.
Speaker 3:
[35:25] Oh God.
Speaker 2:
[35:26] Remember, he had tons of money in offshore accounts.
Speaker 3:
[35:29] He's got a pregnant wife at home.
Speaker 2:
[35:31] He just gave birth postpartum.
Speaker 3:
[35:32] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[35:33] So Randy and Maria, they're staying in five-star hotels.
Speaker 3:
[35:36] I mean like when they were doing that part.
Speaker 2:
[35:38] When they're doing that. Yeah, exactly. Five-star hotels, roll in the dice in Monte Carlo, while Pam was back home nursing a newborn while the FBI pawed through her underwear drawer. Like this is fun. Everybody's having fun, I tell ya. So the thing is, there were some loose ends Randy had to tie up. He had to make a trip to Antigua to deal with some property he owned there. Why? He had a 60-foot Hatteras fishing boat there too. And the ship's captain was an old smuggling buddy of his. So when he and Maria got there, I hope it's one he can trust. Yeah, they stayed on the boat. And they figured they'd just like chill for a couple of weeks, like sip cocktails, soak in the sun, you know.
Speaker 3:
[36:21] So do you think they took a boat from Europe over?
Speaker 2:
[36:24] I think they probably flew.
Speaker 3:
[36:24] They flew and then just got a boat.
Speaker 2:
[36:26] And then, well, they had fake passports and stuff.
Speaker 3:
[36:28] Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:
[36:29] They just wanted island time. And then they're like, okay, you know, it'd be great, is once we're done here, we'll just take this boat and sail to Spain. How fun is that?
Speaker 3:
[36:38] Oh, there we go.
Speaker 2:
[36:39] Everybody's having fun, Zaron. So-
Speaker 3:
[36:42] Load up the yacht with all my favorite foods.
Speaker 2:
[36:45] One early morning in late October, 1987, the ship pulled into a small harbor, and there was a ship behind them, a big old gray one, Antiguan government.
Speaker 3:
[36:56] Oh, no.
Speaker 2:
[36:57] And the captain's like, you know, they're probably going to check our papers. And so they're watching this big gray boat, and then they see a small boat full of guys in uniforms with guns pulled, pull away from the big gray boat and head for Randy's vessel.
Speaker 3:
[37:15] Yikes. They're going to board us.
Speaker 2:
[37:16] So Randy just like starts barking at the captain like, put the zodiac in the water.
Speaker 3:
[37:21] Bro, you are not escaping on a zodiac, son.
Speaker 2:
[37:24] He jumps in and speeds away, leaving Maria and the captain behind.
Speaker 3:
[37:28] Of course.
Speaker 2:
[37:29] Whap, whap.
Speaker 3:
[37:29] Total scumbag.
Speaker 2:
[37:30] Maria, if he did it to someone else, he'll do it to you. That's words to live by, ladies.
Speaker 3:
[37:36] Probably faster the second time.
Speaker 2:
[37:37] I know there are a lot of gals not along right now. If he did it to someone else, he'll do it to you.
Speaker 3:
[37:41] Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
[37:42] So Randy reached the dock at the harbor, hopped out of the zodiac.
Speaker 3:
[37:46] He made the harbor in the zodiac.
Speaker 2:
[37:48] Keep in mind, he was just chilling on the boat, right? Island time.
Speaker 3:
[37:52] He's just like in shorts.
Speaker 2:
[37:53] He's wearing baggy-stripped swim trunks, flip-flops, no shirt. He had nowhere to go but run up this hill, covered in saw palmettoes, those sharp growing palm bushes. Those things ripped him up.
Speaker 3:
[38:07] He's going to get torn up.
Speaker 2:
[38:08] His feet were bleeding. Oh, sure.
Speaker 3:
[38:11] They could just follow the blood trail.
Speaker 2:
[38:12] Well, and it's not like the antique ones were only coming at him on the water.
Speaker 3:
[38:16] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[38:16] They were waiting on land too.
Speaker 3:
[38:18] So I'm sure the Coast Guard's probably involved as well.
Speaker 2:
[38:20] A bunch of jeeps pulled up at the bottom of the hill and they're like, Randy, stop, Randy. And he just like kept scrabbling and they pulled their rifles. And you know, his like pants are sagging and they can see the top of his butt and his flip-flops. He's blew out a flip-flop. Randy, stop. And so then they pull out the rifles. Randy stops scrabbling.
Speaker 3:
[38:41] Oh, did they fire a couple of shots, you think?
Speaker 2:
[38:43] No, he limped back down the hill, topless, sunburned, bloody. So the police put him on a plane. They're like, you're out of here, buddy. We don't want your smuggling ass types here. So they flew him to Puerto Rico, where he was arrested by the feds, because contrary to common ignorant notions, Puerto Rico is part of the United States.
Speaker 3:
[39:01] Yes, and the DEA has full jurisdiction.
Speaker 2:
[39:04] So a lot had been happening in the eight months that he was on the land.
Speaker 3:
[39:08] He was on the land for eight months?
Speaker 2:
[39:10] Yeah. The feds tore up his dad's yard and found $2 million hidden inside PVC pipes. Meanwhile he's like, you know, sipping champagne in Paris. They ransacked another relative's house and found $500,000 in the basement.
Speaker 3:
[39:25] So he's just going down like his address book, going, let's just make a date today.
Speaker 2:
[39:28] Oh yeah, they tracked bank accounts, businesses, they connected the dots to the casino in California.
Speaker 3:
[39:34] Naturally, so now they're all screwed.
Speaker 2:
[39:35] He seized his houses and his cars. Pam, Pam was a single mother with two kids now who had to get a job cutting fruit at the local supermarket in order to make ends meet. That's how Pam was doing. His trial began in July of 1988. Two dozen members of his crew testified against him.
Speaker 3:
[39:56] Two dozen.
Speaker 2:
[39:57] Ouch, right?
Speaker 3:
[39:58] Remember that race I was talking about? Who's going to flip on who? We found 24 computers.
Speaker 2:
[40:02] Exactly. The first heat was wild. So prosecutors laid it all out. He and his partners had trafficked more than 300 tons of marijuana into the US. They'd run a smuggling empire that covered almost a dozen states, employed hundreds of people. So I mean, they were job creators.
Speaker 3:
[40:21] You could say it that way.
Speaker 2:
[40:22] And Randy had made somewhere around $68 million along the way.
Speaker 3:
[40:27] And he didn't think to put more of it overseas. He had it in his dad's backyard.
Speaker 2:
[40:32] He only had $2 million was in his dad's, but a lot of it was overseas.
Speaker 3:
[40:35] Okay, good for him.
Speaker 2:
[40:36] So the trial lasted three months. There were 64 witnesses. It generated more than 10,000 pages of transcripts.
Speaker 3:
[40:45] So in the end, they had a lot to say.
Speaker 2:
[40:46] He and Ben and Fisher were convicted of drug trafficking, fraud and running a continuing criminal enterprise. The government was ordered to seize $180 million of their assets collectively. This became the largest federal forfeiture in US history.
Speaker 3:
[41:04] Damn.
Speaker 2:
[41:05] Randy got sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. His dad got time for burying the money in his own lawn. Randy's brother didn't get charged, but the government seized his house and auctioned it off because it was used for illegal activities.
Speaker 3:
[41:22] Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[41:22] Oh, freedom. Maria got nine years for money laundering. Pam divorced Randy.
Speaker 3:
[41:30] She didn't catch any charges.
Speaker 2:
[41:31] No, Pam didn't.
Speaker 3:
[41:32] No.
Speaker 2:
[41:33] She didn't catch charges. She divorced Randy, so Randy and Maria got married while respectively behind bars.
Speaker 3:
[41:39] Wow, true love, huh?
Speaker 2:
[41:41] Sure. Randy was put in medium security lockup, but he had to be moved around a lot because he kept trying to escape.
Speaker 3:
[41:50] Oh, really?
Speaker 2:
[41:51] At one prison, Randy tried to escape by hiding inside a vending machine that was going to be taken out to get fixed. And at another, he went bigger. Here's one you're going to like. According to Rolling Stone, using a contraband phone, he conspired with a helicopter pilot to spirit him from the exercise yard. A prison official alerted to the plan, summoned Lanier to his office. If you think you're landing a helicopter in this prison, he warned, I'm shooting you and I'm shooting your helicopter down.
Speaker 3:
[42:22] This ain't France. We don't do that here.
Speaker 2:
[42:24] The helicopter escapes, but his wasn't the only one.
Speaker 3:
[42:28] Really?
Speaker 2:
[42:28] Remember Ben Kramer.
Speaker 3:
[42:29] Oh, right.
Speaker 2:
[42:30] In 1990, one of Kramer's buddies tried to put together an escape using a helicopter. They were going to have it fly into the exercise yard of the Dade Metropolitan Correction Center where Ben was serving time and pick him up. And then per the publication Jalopnik, quote, not surprisingly, the plan didn't work. As Kramer held on to the runners of the helicopter, He made it that far. And his rear rotor became entangled in a fence, causing the machine to come crashing down into the yard. Kramer suffered a broken leg in the incident.
Speaker 3:
[43:01] He's lucky that's all it was.
Speaker 2:
[43:03] So the feds had had enough. They sent Randy to the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where he was held in solitary confinement. I don't think the escape attempts were worth it to end up there. But Randy, like he chilled out eventually. He took up meditation, painting, chess, yoga. In late 2014, his lawyer and the government's attorney filed a succession of motions, all sealed in federal court. See, Randy, as I said, he was supposed to be serving life.
Speaker 3:
[43:38] Yeah, without the chance of parole.
Speaker 2:
[43:40] Right, but for reasons that never really became known or clear, that changed. Randy attended a phone conference and was told by the judge that he would be granted time served.
Speaker 3:
[43:50] Was this in the Clinton years?
Speaker 2:
[43:52] No, this was 2014.
Speaker 3:
[43:54] 2014?
Speaker 2:
[43:54] Obama years. Okay. So he got out October 15th, 2014. Maria had been released back in 1999.
Speaker 3:
[44:02] Yeah, because she only had the eight.
Speaker 2:
[44:03] Yeah, but it didn't matter because they weren't married anymore anyways.
Speaker 3:
[44:06] They broke up in prison.
Speaker 2:
[44:07] Yeah, they broke up in prison.
Speaker 3:
[44:08] So it wasn't true love.
Speaker 2:
[44:09] So good. According to Rolling Stone, quote, after his release, Lanier lived in a halfway house and drove for Uber, which he pronounces uber. And now, part of the conditions of his release is that he had to live in that halfway house for six months. He then had three years of supervised release where he couldn't have guns or booze. In 2018, he worked part-time instructing non-professionals at the Homestead Miami Speedway. And he's now CEO at a nonprofit called Freedom Grow, which helps provide, quote, services, comfort, and eventually freedom to other non-violent cannabis offenders.
Speaker 3:
[44:47] So he's trying to help his people.
Speaker 2:
[44:48] Yeah. And he also, at least as of 2022, is licensed to grow weed in New Jersey.
Speaker 3:
[44:53] Really? They gave him a license to grow weed?
Speaker 2:
[44:54] Apparently they did. And he appears on the weirdest podcast. Like, I think he got heavy into bodybuilding because he shows up on those types of shows a lot. He's like all ripped, all the pictures of him.
Speaker 3:
[45:05] He's prison yoked?
Speaker 2:
[45:05] Yeah. And then there's all the racing stuff. Car guys love him.
Speaker 3:
[45:08] Of course, I had thought about that. You said earlier, Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s podcast.
Speaker 2:
[45:12] He's on Dale Jr.'s, yeah. So Zaron, what's your ridiculous takeaway here?
Speaker 3:
[45:17] I know this is foolish and I know this is probably wrong, but I think I would have been a hell of a pot smuggler in the 70s and 80s. And once I hit a certain level, I wouldn't have been throwing my money into trying to beat Mario Andretti on the racetrack. I'd be trying to beat my way to Monaco to watch races and live up my life.
Speaker 2:
[45:37] Live the life.
Speaker 3:
[45:38] Because they can never get enough, these guys. They're always like, let me go a little bigger. Let me get a barge and go into New York Harbor. I'm like, bro, you have already crossed the line.
Speaker 2:
[45:46] Yeah, you can have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life and just disappear.
Speaker 3:
[45:51] Once you're in a double-digit millions, you can live so well around the world.
Speaker 2:
[45:55] You're good, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:
[45:57] Especially if you're not planning to pay taxes. You can actually invest in some legitimate business. If you have half of the talent or your partner does. But no, they're always like, let me go a little bigger. I know this one smuggler, he got a hundred million, and now they're competing with people that they really should not be competing with.
Speaker 2:
[46:12] That is also my takeaway. Why? They don't know when to stop.
Speaker 3:
[46:16] Right? It's like, they don't know how to be happy.
Speaker 2:
[46:18] And then they never wind up being able to enjoy it.
Speaker 3:
[46:21] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[46:21] Because they either get crazy paranoid or they lose it all or whatever it is. I mean, these are the stories that we tell. Maybe there are those out there who really pull it off and enjoy it.
Speaker 3:
[46:32] I know some people who are in the high stakes international pot smuggling business, and they all have lots of homes around the world and managed to do it well. I myself managed to get in and out of crime without having to do it anytime. So it can be done as long as you set your sights on the horizon and not in on some other dude.
Speaker 2:
[46:51] Yeah. It's good advice. You know what I would like is a talk back.
Speaker 3:
[46:56] Hell yeah. Oh my god, did he just say that?
Speaker 1:
[47:10] Hi, Zaron and Elizabeth, Blake here. I was just listening to your Dolphins on LSD episode, and I wanted to let you know, because you said you hadn't heard anything lately about using AI to decode animal language. But there is a program out there, it's called Project SETI, that's C-E-T-I, like it's a take on SETI with an S. And they are using AI to decode sperm whale codex, which is amazing, and they're actually learning quite a few things. So I follow them on LinkedIn, it's super cool.
Speaker 2:
[47:39] That's awesome.
Speaker 3:
[47:40] Thank you for that. You just made me so happy. I'm 100% gonna go see if they have anywhere else because I'm not on LinkedIn, but I will go check. Maybe I can just find a normal website or SETI, C-E-T-I.
Speaker 2:
[47:51] I love it. Thanks for that tip. That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculouscrime.com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky, on Instagram. Check it out. Go to YouTube if that's where you do your podcast stuff. Ridiculous Crime pod or e-mail us at RidiculousCrime at gmail.com. Most importantly, leave us a talk back on the iHeart app. It's free. Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Indy 500 Grand Champion, Most Improved, Dave Kustin, starring Annalise Rutger as Judith. Research is by Fort Lauderdale City Council Member, Marissa Brown and Antiguan Police Chief, Jabari Davis. The theme song is by barge operator Thomas Lee and jet ski instructor Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany 500, guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and Mr. Andre. Executive producers are pit crew chief Ben Bolin and bagel chef Noel Brown.
Speaker 3:
[49:01] Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 2:
[49:04] Say it one more time.
Speaker 1:
[49:05] Ridiculous Crime. Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.