by Jason Ryan
Byers’s promise of cooperation was short-lived. During a shift change at 6:37 a.m. on September 22, 1984, jailer Albert Chubb called Byers’s name and asked him to report to a doctor’s appointment. Byers exited the cell he shared with a dozen other prisoners, then sprinted to the back of the jail, where an exterior door had been left unlocked. Chubb, who had unlocked the cell door, then allegedly spoke to another inmate: “Don’t say anything and there will be something in it for you.”
Exiting the jail, Byers found a white Chevy Malibu—an unmarked police car—parked outside. The keys, he found, were inside the car. Byers turned the ignition, put the car in gear, and drove away, the high-profile defendant leaving a Charleston jail much like “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet had more than two-and-a-half centuries earlier. For the next ten hours, Byers’s absence went unnoticed. Two other jailers performed head counts that day, reporting all inmates accounted for. It was not until the dinnertime head count that jail officials realized the drug kingpin was gone.
As soon as the headlines screamed that Bob “the Boss” was missing, the finger pointing started between Charleston County Sheriff Charles F. Dawley and the Operation Jackpot task force. Dawley blamed federal agents, not his own jail staff, for Byers’s departure, complaining that members of the Jackpot team received information from an informant two days before the jailbreak that a guard was performing favors for Byers and that something suspicious was happening. McMaster denied this charge, but Dawley immediately asked for South Carolina’s state police force to investigate.
The federal agents on the task force were crushed. Byers was among the most prominent smugglers and kingpins netted by Operation Jackpot, and it took a considerable amount of investigation and luck, as well as a cunning undercover operation, to capture him. Beyond his arrest the government had secured a lengthy sentence for Byers without going to trial. Now, they grimaced. The savvy smuggler had fled without forfeiting his considerable assets, and it was more than likely he had sailboats and large bank accounts at his disposal in locales across the world. To make matters worse, they had no idea where he might be headed. Immediately following Byers’s escape, there were no clues as to his whereabouts or that he had left in the unmarked police car.
“I got a call at night that he’d escaped,” says Claude McDonald, U.S. Customs agent. “It just made me sick.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel got a call, too, from a Jackpot agent who advised him to lock all his doors and windows and arm himself if he had a weapon. Byers disliked Daniel, and no one was sure what he might do while on the loose.
The agents and local police were amazed that Byers could escape, though it didn’t take long for them to guess how it had occurred. Within three days the fifty-five-year-old jailer Chubb was suspended. Within two weeks Chubb was indicted for allegedly enabling Byers’s escape.
“I never heard of anyone escaping from the Charleston County jail. It’s very secure,” says McDonald. “There’s only one door in and one door out, that I know of. For someone to get out, they had to be let. And we knew that.”
Chubb’s arrest, however, did not stop the investigation by the state police. Moreover, Dawley wrote to U.S. Senators Fritz Hollings and Strom Thurmond, asking them to request the FBI investigate the Jackpot agents. Specifically, he urged the FBI to learn why federal agents urged Dawley to move Byers out of solitary confinement and why they withheld the informant’s tip, which had allegedly been shared between a member of the state police, a U.S. Customs agent, and Daniel. Both senators forwarded Dawley’s request to the director of the FBI, with Hollings writing that “the involvement of the Federal investigators demands review, and I would like your report as soon as possible.” McMaster couldn’t believe it.
Shortly after Byers’s escape, a lieutenant in the state police came into McDonald’s office and requested the Customs agent allow him to ask a few questions about Byers’s escape. McDonald obliged him, but strangely, he says, the questions became accusatory. The lieutenant had some kind of theory that McDonald and Forbes had arranged Byers’s escape so the kingpin could lead the Jackpot team to other suspects. McDonald became furious and screamed at the lieutenant, his words clearly audible to coworkers in the open office within the Custom House.
“Are you out of your damn mind?” McDonald asked the agent. “You sonofabitch, you can leave this office right now. Get up and get out of here.”
Forbes, says McDonald, was similarly offended when he learned of the state police officer’s theory, especially since Forbes had been one of the two agents to go undercover and board Byers’s sailboat La Cautiva.
“It just rubbed David and [me] the wrong way to be even considered as a means for him to escape. That would have been the last thing we did,” says McDonald. “It was a ridiculous thought. But I guess [the lieutenant’s] theory was we were so innovative doing things that hadn’t been done before, we might try anything, including letting someone out of jail to get other fugitives.”
Though inmates said Chubb released Byers, he denied helping the fugitive. Prosecutors did not believe him. Among the incriminating evidence was a statement from an inmate in the Charleston County jail that he and Byers were smoking pot in the cell the evening before Byers left, when Byers turned to him and said, “I’ll be leaving you tomorrow.”
On Tuesday, three days after Byers had escaped, federal agents spent the day watching a large sailboat docked on the Ashley River alongside downtown Charleston. When the sailboat left the harbor and headed for open ocean, agents boarded a Coast Guard boat and chased after it. They boarded the craft, but found no sign of Byers. Agents also checked into the passengers on a Learjet that had landed in Charleston over the weekend to see if it’s arrival was tied to Byers’s escape.
The same day the sailboat was stopped in Charleston, police in Knoxville, Tennessee, called to tell the Charleston sheriff’s office that they had found an unmarked Charleston police car in a downtown parking lot beside a fraternal lodge, its license plate smeared with mud. It had been sitting there for at least two days, they said, abandoned. The Charleston police, who still hadn’t realized the car was missing, requested the FBI dust it for Byers’s fingerprints. In short order they found a match, and they concentrated searches in eastern Tennessee.
Knoxville is “at the top of the list,” said U.S. Marshal Mike Brown. “[But] there’s any number of places he could have gone—we’re running in all directions. He never divulged anything about where his finances were.”
In fact Byers was long gone from the Volunteer State, having arranged for a friend to pick him up in Knoxville. “The Boss” faded away, and the U.S. Marshals Service eventually placed him on its list of the fifteen most wanted criminals. Because a rocket launcher was found aboard his sailboat in Antigua, authorities regarded Byers as “armed and dangerous.”
Chapter Thirteen
News of Bob “The Boss” Byers escaping from the Charleston County jail reached Australia in two days. Upon its receipt, jailers kept a close watch on prisoner Les Riley. Byers was known to be a close associate of Riley, an Australian Federal Police report noted, and the fugitive had visited Australia before. His sailboat Energy had still not been found, and, as the same report noted, Riley had previously explored the possibility of escaping his Australian prison by sea, hoping to use a fake British passport to enter Goa, India.
Riley wasn’t counting on Byers to cross the world, break him out of prison, and escape by slow-moving sailboat. He denied the escape plan allegations by the Australian Federal Police, and searches of his cell and his wife during prison visits turned up no incriminating contraband or material. When Riley heard about Byers’s jailbreak, it was a rare bit of good news. Since being imprisoned in Australia sixteen months earlier and launching a legal fight against extradition, most of the reports passed on by his lawyers were gloomy. There had been four large indictments of fellow marijuana smugglers and three Operation Jackpot trials. Many of Riley’s former friends ended up testifying for the g
overnment, and, during debriefings and grand jury proceedings, surrendered information about Riley’s criminal activities. He couldn’t believe so many men squealed on their friends. Also disheartening was his brother Roy’s conviction and twenty-one-year prison sentence.
The Australian prison conditions for Riley and Wally Butler were severe. The facilities were dirty, overcrowded, and underfunded, said Riley’s American defense attorney, Martin Bernholz. Riley lost weight and complained of being fed lousy food with poor nutritional value. Bernholz compared it to chum, and when he visited his client, he brought a piece of chicken in his suitcase for Riley to eat.
Prisoners were often put in lockdown, and Riley had infrequent access to fresh air. He participated in scrums when prisoners rioted against the guards, otherwise known as screws or hacks, demanding better treatment and more freedom to contact loved ones and receive visitors. Guards stood on gangways and fired rubber bullets into the rioting crowd.
In one prison, Riley counseled a despondent friend, only to find the man hanging dead in a self-made noose the next morning. He encountered another prisoner stuck dead with a shiv. He stepped over the corpse and kept walking. Gallows humor began to infect Riley. He was once imprisoned with a man accused of butchering his spouse to death, and when Riley saw one guard had brought in a freshly slaughtered cow to share with his colleagues, Riley commented on the box of meat and bones lying in plain view. The screws had become compassionate, he said, and were allowing the accused murderer a contact visit with his wife.
Riley’s fellow prisoners loved the jest. The accused murderer wanted to chop up the American, too. Jokes could only lighten Riley’s mood so much. He was dispirited by the chance of receiving a sentence of life imprisonment and the overwhelming amount of testimony against him, said Bernholz, though he kept a stiff upper lip and didn’t complain when visitors came, not wanting to scare them off or spread any despair. In a letter, Riley described his Australian prison experience as a “nightmare” and said, “I have witnessed a way of life I never believe[d] existed among human beings.”
When Riley and Butler were transported to court hearings, Australian authorities undertook extreme security precautions. One Australian prosecutor said Operation Jackpot was the biggest drug operation ever mentioned in an Australian court. Helicopters were put in the air, snipers were stationed on roofs, and metal detectors were placed in the courthouse. During the short commute from the prison to the courtroom, Riley and Butler were made to lay facedown on the floor of vans, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Australian police kept their feet on the suspects’ backs to keep them from rolling about the car. During one trip shortly after their arrest, according to Riley, a policeman said he hoped no trucks backfired and startled him, otherwise he just might shoot Riley in the head.
“They treated Les like he was Al Capone,” says Bernholz, who was himself searched thoroughly in Australia, while Interpol agents followed Butler’s American lawyer through Asia.
Conditions were a bit more relaxed in the courtroom. Butler’s wife, Rebecca, brought her husband hamburgers to eat. After Butler’s arrest, she had gone home to Hilton Head for a while, but returned, saying she was “lost” apart from her husband.
“I get to the point when I say, for my own well-being maybe I should go back [to the United States]. I get into a depression, but it lasts about a day …” she told a newspaper reporter. “Wally’s in Alcoholics Anonymous. He quotes me things out of that about accepting things.”
Life was no easier for the Riley family, and the children were sent to live with Suzanne’s relatives while she stayed in Australia.
The legal fortunes of Riley and Butler had seesawed. When one side was unhappy with a ruling, they appealed to a higher Australian court, and because the legal questions were novel, the higher court agreed to hear the case. The conflict in the case boiled down to whether Riley and Butler could be extradited to the United States and tried for Continuing Criminal Enterprise. Extradition treaties between nations require that suspects can only be returned to a country to be tried for crimes that exist in the other country. While Australia had drug offenses on its books, it did not have a law exactly like the American kingpin statute, and Riley’s and Butler’s lawyers argued they could not be tried in the United States on that charge, which was the most severe one of those leveled against them. Australian prosecutors, supported by the American government, believed other Australian drug laws were similar enough to allow extradition under the kingpin statute.
The case lingered in the courts, Riley and Butler staying in prison. The men hired American attorneys, who could not participate in Australian court, as well as Australian solicitors, barristers, and Queen’s counsel, who were certified to participate in varying levels of the court system, and charged varying prices by the day. Among their attorneys were a former member of Parliament and the former Australian attorney general.
In Australia, says Bernholz, hearings could last for weeks. All arguments are made orally, as opposed to the American legal system where lawyers can submit written briefs. As Riley’s legal saga dragged on, the cost of paying for high-priced lawyers on two continents became substantial. Riley wrote one check to his lawyers for more than $700,000.
As Riley and Butler approached a two-year anniversary in Australian prisons, there were indications there would be some resolution. The High Court of Australia, the equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court, would rule on the case. A judge’s most recent ruling against being extradited on the kingpin statute encouraged the prisoners and their lawyers. Another favorable ruling, and Australia might be prevented from extraditing them on the most serious drug charges.
By 1985, Operation Jackpot had been declared an unparalleled success over and over again, most often by the man who had initiated the investigation and its promotion, U.S. Attorney Henry McMaster. The prosecutor had coordinated indictments for 117 suspects in four marijuana smuggling rings, and 92 people had been convicted or pleaded guilty. McMaster found himself the target, however, of complaints from colleagues within the federal government, including the DEA, who griped that McMaster’s marketing of Operation Jackpot overshadowed successful drug busts not associated with the investigation. The criticism was loud enough to attract the attention of the Department of Justice in Washington, who chided McMaster for not giving appropriate credit to each of the agencies involved. They also faulted him for referring to the investigation by its catchy moniker instead of identifying it as a Presidential Drug Task Force or an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
McMaster felt the criticism was unjustified. In a March 12, 1985, letter to Charles W. Blau, deputy associate attorney general, he sniped back at the DEA, mentioning that they had not supplied an appropriate amount of agents to the task force. He blamed the media for adopting the use of “Operation Jackpot” even though his press releases and remarks identified the investigation by its formal label and noted it was part of President Ronald Reagan’s effort to curb drug trafficking. As to sharing credit, he pleaded, “I have talked myself blue in the face with the news media, asking, pleading, and jawboning, to convince them that they should report in their news stories that this effort is a joint one, a team effort, by several agencies.”
Although many colleagues say McMaster was an adept politician eager for the spotlight, the U.S. attorney’s claims to Blau were not untrue. Two months earlier, for example, when speaking in Columbia, South Carolina, to more than a hundred lawyers at a meeting of the Richland County Bar Association, McMaster praised the work of the nineteen agents working as part of Operation Jackpot and credited the agencies they represent.
“Where one area of expertise ends, another agency picks up, and it works out real well,” said McMaster. “We think we’re well on the way toward eliminating the major marijuana- and hashish-smuggling operations in South Carolina, and we’re developing some cases on cocaine and heroin that we hope to report on soon.”
As impressive as the number of convictions migh
t have been, by 1985, Operation Jackpot had still failed to catch three alleged kingpins from the original indictments issued in May 1983: Barry “Flash” Foy, Lee Harvey, and Tom “Rolex” Rhoad. Additionally, Riley and Butler still were in Australia. Moreover, the investigation had suffered a setback in the fall of 1984, when Cam Currie, the assistant U.S. attorney who coordinated much of Operation Jackpot, became South Carolina’s first female U.S. magistrate. At the time of her appointment, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bart Daniel described her as “the best lawyer I’ve ever seen or worked with.”
“She’s top flight,” added Judge Falcon Hawkins. “I don’t know [what] the U.S. attorney’s office is going to do without her.”
Currie would be most sorely missed for her expertise on civil law and the seizure of assets purchased with drug proceeds. It was through Currie’s innovative legal maneuvers that Byers was jailed, and prevented from beginning a prison sentence, until he forfeited his hidden assets, including foreign bank accounts and sailboats. Of course since then, Byers dashed out of the Charleston County jail, hopped in an unmarked police car, and hightailed it to Knoxville, Tennessee, and on to destinations unknown.
As the weeks passed after Byers’s escape, there was no sign of the fugitive. A month after the jailbreak, though, investigators caught a break, discovering that four $2,500 cashier’s checks had been sent to the suspended jailer Albert W. Chubb from someone in Florida. The police immediately suspected it was a payoff from Byers. Soon, U.S. Marshal P. E. Morris was in Florida, requesting to look through photo logs and surveillance footage from each bank that issued a check. Morris noticed the same man purchasing each of the checks, but it definitely wasn’t Byers.